ShelterNerd

Just for the record, Cellulose dense pack at 3.0 lbs/cu ft tests at R-3.6 per inch with a moisture sorption of <15% with an airflow resistance of 13 (lb/s ft)/(cu ft/s)

By comparison, the type of micro-filament fiberglass I use is JM Spider fiberglass which can be dense packed behind a scrim typically at 2.2 lbs / cu ft dry at R-4.3 / in at with a moisture sorption less than 5% and an airflow resistance of 46 (lb/s ft)/(cu ft/s) so it has a higher air flow resistance than cellulose and can easily be installed to a higher R-value than cellulose.

JM Spider can also can be sprayed-in similar to damp spray cellulose at a density of 1.8 lbs/cu ft at a moisture content of 10% or less at an R-3.6/inch, in our projects this is faster but very slightly more expensive than the scrim blown-in-batt method largely due to the fact that it requires more expensive equipment and a higher level of employee training and certification so we generally use the scrim and blown-in-batt dry system.

In my market both of these Spider applications are about the same cost and both are equivalent in cost to dense pack cellulose but still less expensive than foams and with none of the flame retardant chemicals or other concerns associated with foam.

"Sharpening the Saw"

We come here to improve our understanding of our craft and become better craftsmen as a result of staying engaged in continued learning and questioning of what we think we know.

We're here to sharpen our minds, and inspire our creativity, and to learn which tools and techniques will make our work stand out.

On the other hand I often tell my crew that with enough nails and coffee we can accomplish almost anything so maybe "Nails and Coffee" would be a good one.

The high production council has dominated NAHB policy for a long time. When we look at who are the majority of dues paying members of the organization it is remodelers, small local builders and small production builders who make up the vast majority of our memership.

Many of us joined only for the discount on workers comp insurance and general liability and discovered the organization has a lot of good educational and professional resources that make it a great deal. The University of Housing, Builder Bookstore, and even the Research Center, with their mentoring of the Green Building Guidelines and noe the ANSI standard NAHB-ICC National Green Building Standard all add huge value to being a member of this group.

The high production builders are a small part of what our organization is but they have been having closed meetings and throwing their considerable financial weight around to direct the lobbying of the NAHB for a long time.

Bravo to Jerry Howard for having the guts to stand up for the small builders in a time when we really need an ally.

I think it is counterproductive to call the LEED system a fraud but Henry's point is very valid and it's great that he is getting it out to the public and to the leadership of the USGBC.

LEED and other green building verification systems are focused on changing the marketplace and the way we build homes by rewarding designers and builders who look at their buildings as full systems with resource efficiency, life cycle cost, water and energy conservation, indoor air quality and other impacts taken into consideration in their design, construction and commissioning. It's about building better buildings and also about improving the way we build in America.

Unfortunately the cost of the LEED certification causes the USGBC to self-select for super high end buildings that are often loaded with glass and lit extravagantly at night for "marketing (ego) purposes." These glass box billboards inevitable waste energy compared to the proletarian building with few windows and thrifty management practices. This doesn't make LEED a fraud, but it certainly points to the need for improvement in many areas.

Henry is a great guy making an important point, more power to him for that!

MFournier
Shelternerd is my Breaktime handle and the way my name shows up when I respond here. This is Michael Chandler responding to your comment about my proposal.

I understand your concerns about uneducated weatherization contractors doing more harm than good and that is why my proposal specifically uses licensed DOE Energy Star or BPI energy auditors to do the evaluations before work is contracted and the energy audits at completion to verify the workmanship and to assure that only homes that can save enough to offset the cost of the loan payment would be brought into the program.

I'm not trying to make homes "very energy efficient" I agree that can't be done for $5,000. I am also aware of the unintended consequences of insulating walls in old houses and don't believe that fits within the budget or scope of this proposal.

But, as you point out, there are many old homes with leaky duct work in drafty attics and these homes both old and newer million dollar plus homes could defiantly save $50 per month with $5,000 worth of ceiling and duct air sealing and a sealed crawl and, in air conditioning climates, some radiant paint or a thin layer of spray foam on the underside of the roof sheathing.

Those who are focused on zero energy homes have the 2030 stimulus package to focus on. At $96 billion dollars a year ($187,000 per minute) I think it's a lot for tax payers to bite off and I'm trying to promote a more modest alternative.

I also think there is a great potential to put many more people to work on the modest project of tightening up crawlspaces and attics and duct work on a lot of houses if we can just pick the high return items and let the occupants pay for the cost through their energy bills (or property taxes as some have suggested). the real benefit is that when the initial work is done they are left with an accurate energy audit and are educated on what steps they may want to take next to continue the work.

I’m new to this blog stuff so I’m just going to assume that it’s okay to have a dialogue here to address some of the many questions I’ve received in response to my post below.

- If the savings are there for the taking why aren’t homeowners already doing it?

There are several factors at play here. First, many are unaware of the magnitude of the opportunity esp. in envelope improvement and are unwilling to spend money for an energy audit and would rather just blindly keep paying too much for energy.

When they do hit the home equity line or savings account for energy upgrades they tend to get sold on 20 SEER heat pumps and tankless water heaters without consideration of envelope opportunities that would have a better payback (like putting a V-8 in a car with four flat tires.) Or they add insulation to their attics without air ceiling the ceiling plane first (adding insulation to a wall with an open window.)

Many of us see our savings and home equity loans as “emergency money” and annual bonus money as “fun money.” Neither of these categories lend themselves to duct sealing, energy audits, and insulation upgrades. They just aren’t sexy enough to attract discretionary spending.

Finally, many of the homes and light commercial properties that need the most help aren’t owner-occupied. They’re rentals, and landlords are singularly un-motivated to spend time and money to reduce their tenant’s energy bills.

So we need a system that gets people into an energy audit and weatherization package that is no money down and no net change in monthly cost to the occupant with no impact on that sacred home equity line. There is a socio-economic component to energy policy here that must be taken into account. The default option is to continue to waste fuel living in a drafty, uncomfortable home with unhealthy indoor air.

- Is it necessary to require the utilities to handle the payments?

We need an alternative way to encourage weatherization projects. Even though these investments can pay for themselves people are resistant to making the investment. But we shouldn’t expect the utilities to do more than advertise to targeted neighborhoods in their monthly statements and forward the monthly payments to the state energy office for processing. They can get some benefit from the good press but the people who really stand to profit are the insulation and weatherization contractors who will do the work.

- Can we design it so the loans provide significantly greater payback than the payments?

In many cases this will be the case. But I don’t think it makes sense to exclude a building from the project due to the fact that the savings are only just equal to the payment. As energy costs go up the savings will increase. I think a case can be made that participation in the program should be extended to buildings where the break even point is at a 15% increase in energy cost. But we need to avoid having unhappy customers if the savings are significantly less than the cost.

- Each building will need an energy audit before and after.

This is an important part of the plan. In many cases though the first energy audit will not include a blower door and duct blaster test. No point in testing a house with open gaps in the ceiling and floor and duct work in an advanced state of decay. The weatherization contracts could also give the State Energy Office access to before and after energy bills for research and monitoring purposes. Every house will get a post-weatherization audit showing what has been accomplished and what other options the owner might take to continue the work beyond the scope of this program.

The post weatherization HERS rating may become valuable if the house is offered for resale as many areas may soon require an energy disclosure when selling a house as they require a termite report now.

- Who’s going to pay for all these energy audits?

The people with the most to gain from this program are the insulation and weatherization companies who will be doing the work. They would hire the licensed HERS raters to go into neighborhoods to line up as many weatherization contracts as possible. The cost of this auditing and sales push would be covered by the companies doing the work but the auditors would be third-party verified for quality assurance and follow-up sample auditing of their work would be performed by the state energy offices on an annual basis similar to the way the pesticide applicators get spot soil samples taken annually to verify proper pesticide application.

- What happens to the monthly payment if the house goes into foreclosure or is sold?

The weatherization payment goes with the electrical connection to the next owner in the same way it does now and similar to arrangements made for buried propane tanks. If a seller wants to convey a house unencumbered by the weatherization contract it would need to be paid off at the closing. If the electric bill goes unpaid the power gets shut off and the payment goes into default until the bill is paid and the power turned back on.

- What do you mean by saying that people of all income levels are too hand-to-mouth to afford a $5,000 weatherization package, doesn’t hand-to-mouth imply low income?

Welcome to America. Many people with $100,000 plus incomes are solidly middle class but chronically live beyond their means due to bloated home equity and credit card debt. Many of the relatively new McMansions they live in were built to the lowest code-legal standard and would benefit greatly from $5,000 worth of weatherization. Our energy problems are not limited to low income homeowners and the solutions won’t be either.

- Where is the money going to come from and what’s in it for the lenders?

This proposal does ask the federal government to send more money for staffing to state energy offices and community colleges. It does not require utilities to loan money to their customers or to make zero-interest loans. However, since the penalty for not making your monthly weatherization payment is that you get your electricity shut off the loans are very low-risk. State energy offices should be able to bundle quantities of these $5,000 micro loans into securities that can be sold to banks and other investors at an attractive interest rate that would be included in the monthly payment. The electricity companies could earn a small processing fee but would gain good press from their participation.

- What’s wrong with just continuing the time-honored practice of offering free weatherization to low income homeowners and tax credits to the rest of us for doing this work?

Beyond the issues of tax farming and the fly-by-night operators who promote shoddy work for tax credits what we need to do is grow an industry here, not just weatherize two million buildings. When we give something away, either through direct subsidies or tax write-offs, we de-value that thing in the marketplace. We create a sense of entitlement in the consumer that makes it difficult to sell that same item on the open market for a price that reflects its true value. This undermines the industry.

The solar industry has been crippled by a feast and famine reality caused by being so dependent on tax subsidies. This alternative financing strategy doesn’t undermine the value of the work. The beneficiaries of this program are paying full price for the work they are getting done, it’s just being financed creatively. By nurturing an industry we can better take advantage of economies of scale and make the service available to rich and poor and renters and small businesses alike without impacting the national debt. Why should taxpayers pay to subsidize something that pays for itself?

- Won’t this create a huge new bureaucracy?

As it stands, state energy offices are chronically underfunded and need more support. They would be asked to partner with the Department of Energy, Energy Star and BPI to implement this project with training help from the existing community college systems. The money to do this would come from our taxes but the money to do the work would be paid for by the beneficiaries. We are not so much creating a new bureaucracy as strengthening what we already have to solve our nation’s problems as economically as possible. Most importantly, since these are not gifts, there is no income, need or credit verification required. It’s just a contract to have work done for a fee on a payment plan. Much less paperwork.

- What about the 2030 Stimulus Plan being promoted by Architecture 2030?

This plan and the 2030 plan can certainly co-exist, but I have 30 years of experience building high performance buildings and the 2030 plan is based on the assumption that it is pretty easy to make a building perform at 30% better than code and that 50% better is also easily attainable. My company just built a house that had a 9” thick ICF foundation, solar water heating and radiant floor with tankless propane backup, passive solar glazing, 6” foam in the walls, 8” foam in the roof and 37” overhangs for summer shading. It was still only 35% better than code. It's harder than it looks. I know that 50% better than code is attainable in new construction but to make it wide-spread in renovations and to spend $96 billion a year in deficit spending in pursuit of this goal seems unrealistic to me. 96 billion seconds is 3,043 years.

- I like this idea and want to help, what can I do?

Obviously, plenty of you are already finding my e-mail address and phone number thanks to the miracle of Google. So I thank you for your enthusiasm and ask that you lose the phone number. E-mail is fine, Michael@ChandlerDesignBuild.com will get to me.

But what I will tell you all is to contact your government representatives, your state energy office, your governor’s office and utility companies. If you are a member of NAHB spread it within your HBA and to your contacts at National. The building industry has benefited greatly from the recent bail-out, we would do well to promote a low-cost initiative for a change. What you can do is spread the word.

- What’s next?

It does come down to dollars and cents on many levels and so long as coal and oil are subsidized such that it is cost effective to burn 100,000 BTU of coal to deliver 35,000 BTU of electricity we will continue to have a problem.
- Let’s put a resource extraction tax on coal, reduce the tax subsidies on oil and divert those resources to support the solar industry instead.

Instead of end user tax subsidies on weatherization and solar let’s put the subsidies at the front end of production.
- Let’s subsidize the production cost of solar and weatherization components and raw materials and let market forces drive innovation and push the price down for all consumers, not just the ones who need a tax break.

Our power grid is at the limit of expansion but instead of replacing the grid we can shift to a distributed model of electric production.
- Let’s put solar PV on all government buildings and build PV shade structures on parking lots to turn them into electricity producers that put the electricity into the grid closer to where it is being taken out.

Let the cost of conventional energy rise gradually through elimination of subsidies to change the payback equation.
- I’m not running for public office so I can say that I think gas should be $3.75 a gallon and coal-fired electricity should be much more expensive than it currently is.

Use government investments to deliberately nurture and build a sustainable alternative energy industry.
- Control the flow of government infrastructure projects (solar office roofs and parking lots, micro-cogeneration projects) to even out the demand in the alternative energy industry to change the boom and bust cycle to a steadily expanding market.
- Invest government money in open-source research to drive innovation. The possibilities in solar, quiet wind, micro-cogeneration, and electric vehicles are unimagined as yet.