Live Blogging an Energy Retrofit.

Today, just in the nick time for year end, our house is getting a comprehensive air sealing and insulation job. I've been waiting a long time for this, and excited for both the process and, obviously, a more energy efficient and comfortable house afterwards. Upright Frameworks, our friend Josh Wojcik's firm, which has the reputation of being the most thorough firm in the state for complex air sealing work, is doing the work. The audit was done by DeWitt Kimball of Complete Home Evaluations. Using Conservation Services Group's Real Home Analyzer, we're modeled to achieve a 29% thermal reduction and this qualifies us for the Efficiency Maine Home Energy Saver rebate of $2500. We're also planning to take advantage of the now expiring $1500 federal tax credit. We're starting at 3242 CFM50--a fairly leaky house.

5:30 am -- I'm up early clearing boxes and junk out of knee walls so the guys can access the source of the air leaks. But the house seems abnormally cold, even for our low nighttime setpoints. How ironic is this: on the day of our weatherization, our oil tank has run dry. Apparently, since our last fill up in mid October, we've burned through all 275 gallons faster than any other period before. Yep, 275 gallons in 75 days--confirming, for us, that this is a great time to get this work done.

6:15 am -- Opening up all the hatches and doors to the knee walls that are so typical of Cape Style construction like ours, I don't need a blower door to feel the flow. And it's not much of a weather day--no wind and high 20's at the moment.

7:15 am -- The crew arrives and it might as well be an assault party. Trucks, trailers and all manner of tools and gear. I've been forewarned to supply the crew with coffee and I'm ready. 

7:30 am -- Task one is to remove the PINK in the attic. Our house, the core of which was built in the early 80's, has the classic cape rafters--about 10 feet of tail from the attic deck to the soffit. All the batt insulation is stapled and, in the brilliant way that builders of that era accomplished cold roofs, held back from the roofing by 2" strapping.

7:40 am -- The favored tool of high tech energy efficiency? A homemade handle with a sort of boat hook on the end that is used to rip the batt insulation out. (Note: one of the biggest cost factors in our job is the labor of ripping old, poorly performing insulation out.)

8:30 am -- Oh the irony of this--two more trucks pull in to the driveway simultaneously. The Downeast Energy oil truck to replenish 275 gallons of fuel oil. And a flatbed with 5 pallets of cellulose insulation. 

8:45 am -- Oil tank filled. 249.9 gallons at $3.15/gallon. $786.94 for 2.5 months of late fall and winter. (Note: oil provides our heat and domestic hot water. Two adults, two kids, one non-showering Jack Russell Terrier.)

8:55 am -- The oil delivery can't get the line to bleed so we need a service call. Fortunately, my friend Pat Coons at Revision Heat comes to the rescue and can have a guy over right away to do the bleed AND work their boiler system optimization magic. Stay tuned for how that goes. Nothing like getting it all done in one day.

9:50 am -- Josh has an amazing crew. How many contractors have you seen that run from the house to the truck when they need something? Each guy has a specialty--and is passionate about what is not easy work. Zach, ace fibreglass yanker outer and cellulose dense packer, tells me he's allergic to the PINK. Dave seems to be the small space guy, and claims if it's 1' by 1' he can get in. (A point of pride amongst all of them is their ability to get into tiny spaces.) We have a funky connector space between old house and new addition that isn't that small, but when I've been in there it's tight and claustrophobic. He's been in there air sealing and prepping for cellulose for almost two solid hours. When I ask how our house compares, his answer is "cake walk."

11:30 am -- As our contractors will attest, I've harassed them endlessly leading up to this job about material selection. My concerns are health and IAQ, embodied energy, and global warming potential (GWP.) In the end, the choices we made aren't perfect, but using David White's soon to be released GWP calculator (that measures the net benefit of CO2 reduction of various materials on various assemblies) I was able to come to terms with some of our less than ideal material choices. The primary material in this project is recycled newspaper cellulose insulation from National Fiber, which is treated with a natural mineral borate as a fire retardant. Cellulose is the ideal material for our particular situation, and with its 82% recycled content and low embodied energy, I will sleep well at night. In a couple of spots, they've needed to use XPS board foam but only minimally. XPS from Dow, the blue board foam, is awful at a GWP of 1430 times CO2. However, even with those horrid numbers, we're only using a little, and it nets out significantly to the positive in David's spreadsheet. For the air sealing, they're using fire retardant caulk and Todol medium expanding spray foam. The latter is also a GWP baddie, the blowing agents essentially the same as the XPS, but for some many applications, such as a one inch drywall gap in our knee wall, it's just the perfect material. This total usage of this is quite small--only 2 cans so far. Other materials are Insulweb, some galvanized around chimneys and that's it. 

12:15 am -- Old school, new school. When our house was built, the conventional wisdom was to keep roofs cold. Soffit vents let air in, perfect vents or, in our case, strapping provided a place for air to flow that, at least in theory, would prevent ice damming. It's all different now. One of the first things Josh and crew did was tear out the soffit vents and seal them off. Then, from above, dense pack cellulose down the rafters. They're not anywhere near done, and already this house feels less drafty.

 

1:45 pm -- I’m on a conference call giving a demo of Energy Circle PRO, and someone’s got a sawzall going that’s rattling the entire house.

 

2:35 pm -- Off my call and upstairs to see what was the matter.... In order to access a part of the knee wall that had no other entry point, the crew gave themselves permission to hack a hole in my daughters’ sheetrock wall to gain access. Troast is the energy guy and he’ll want it done properly, was their rationale. And they were right. I continue to be extremely impressed with how thorough this team is and how passionate they are about doing the job right. Upright Frameworks’ quality reputation is well deserved.

3:00 pm -- As much as I’ve written, talked and been around energy retrofits, I’m reminded of what an extensive operation this is. Six guys all playing a key role, each clearly knowing their trade, and everyone hustling his ass off. It really is an assault. And yet, in the span of one day, the building performance of this house is about to be changed radically.

3:15 pm -- Some decisions to make. There are skylights in our roof, and no access to the rafters beneath them. It’s a pain to cut a hole or drill up through the soffit to get in there, but Josh wants to do it right. Rock on I say.

3:30 pm -- They don’t call it dense pack for nothing. Some of the completed rafter cavities in the kneewall, held in place by Insulweb, feel as hard as a punching bag. Josh says this isn’t necessary, but I like the way it feels. I really like the fact that the guys are pushing the envelope for our house.

 

4:30 pm -- The technician from Revision Heat just reporting on the results of his boiler optimization. (Note: we have a relatively new and fairly efficient Hearthstone with Riello burner, so improving on it is no cake walk.) He was able to reduce stack temperature from 439° to 350°, meaning a helluva lot of wasted heat is no longer going up the chimney. He also got the CO levels from 9.5% to 12.5%, which translates to a cleaner burn and less fuel use. Nozzle size was lowered from .85 to .75. Overall the total efficiency measure went from 83% to 87% which, according to the State of Maine, translates to an 8% reduction in fuel use. Not too shabby.

6:31 pm -- Josh just left. We're going to finish up in the morning--a few tricky locations still to be tackled and, of course, the blower door test to see how we did. I'll report in the morning. Awesome day. Thanks to the Upright Frameworks crew for everything so far. 

Day Two

5:45 am -- The project isn't done, but with some of the major air sealing and insulation pieces complete, I just enjoyed the first winter's night in my NEW house. Of course, the Energy Circle house lives by programmable thermostats and setback temperatures. We're also Mainers that like it cool when we sleep. Our settings are: Comfort (or daytime)--67°; Economic (or night)--62° downstairs, 59° upstairs. Waking this morning my first observation is the noticable change in the evenness of the house's temps. As I write this, which is before our day temps click in, it is a uniform 65° almost everywhere. Even the basement ping pong room, which only has a stub of our hydronic system, is at 57° where it would normally be 51°. The top of the second floor stairway, usually the place where you could feel the stack effect in your face, is nearly still. I am thinking hard about how the customer mindset (me in this instance) values comfort. Right now, I'd say worth every nickel that this project cost.

6:06 am -- A friend reminded me that our Interconnected House Video would be a good addition to helping y'all understand the challenges of our house prior to this retrofit.. Here you go:

8:00 am -- The final parts of the job include some complicated shed roof insulation (which would have been easy to insulate when it was built; and now is not quite so); insulating the kneewall in my daughter's bedroom (which required cutting a 2x2 hole in the drywall, and some serious contortionism); and a final clean-up and test-out.

9:50 am -- As Will and I sit here at the kitchen table, working away on the last day of the year, Dave is immediately above us air sealing and insulating a kneewall. No better way to assess the thoroughness of an air sealer than by listening to him slave away 5 feet above your head...

10:30 am -- Setting up the blower door, and Josh is getting nervous...

11:00 am -- The initial numbers look like we've cut 1,000 CFM off the previous 3,242. Now the crew is revisiting all the sites to look for and deal with additional air leaks.

11:40 am -- Josh and I have just combed every square inch of the house with infrared camera in hand and, in spite of the significant reduction, there are leaks that he's not satisfied with. Not surprisingly, those leaks are in our home's unique and tricky spots: where the old part of the building connects with the new, in kneewalls, and other areas that the old-school builders that constructed the house left leaky and uninsulated.

1:00 pm -- During the final test-out, we're seeing 2,100 CFM -- a 35% reduction from our starting point of 3,242. That's about average for the Upright Frameworks team. "Not bad for a couple punks from the woods," says Josh, leader of the best, most thorough air sealing team in the state of Maine.