But you may be missing a major energy efficiency issue in lighting: air infiltration.  This energy thief preys upon recessed lighting – can lights, high hats or pot lights – a highly attractive lighting type for homeowners and builders alike.  They are simple, inexpensive, easy to install, and very clean looking.  But many of these lights allow lots of energy loss and make home performance suffer.

Not all recessed lighting is created equal.  The cheapest can lights available are littered with holes.  Cut a hole in your ceiling and pop one of those in, and you have effectively left a 10 square-inch hole in your ceiling air barrier.  As you heat or cool your home, conditioned air literally gushes out through these openings.  We see this time and time again on our Home Performance Assessments, and will test your fixtures to see just how leaky they are.  Sometimes they are not, usually, they are.

Luckily, there are some great fixes available.  You may have heard about “IC-rated” recessed fixtures.  This means that they are rated for “Insulation Contact”.  While these are better than non-IC rated fixtures, because your insulation can be continuous over the top of them, they are not necessarily air tight.  And air tightness is the goal – to have a nice seal at the fixture that minimizes the amount of air that can leak through and around the fixture.  For new construction, you should look for an “ICAT-rated” fixture.  ICAT stands for “Insulation Contact Air Tight”.  (I think you get the idea.)

For retrofitting existing non-IC-rated or IC (non air-tight) recessed lighting, my favorite option is an LED light insert, which is made specifically for this purpose.  The color rendering is beautiful, they’re dimmable down to 25% of full power, and they’re quick to install.  These LED light inserts have a sealed housing, and with a couple of quick tweaks on your existing fixture they fit right in.  Add a bead of caulk and you’ve got a great seal.  In addition, they use 1/5 the energy of a comparable lumen incandescent.

A mid-range solution is to use a florescent product like the Powerlux can light insert.  This product adapts your existing can light to a pin style CFL (compact florescent) and contains the ballast in a thick trim housing that sets beneath the ceiling surface.  Because the ballast is placed in a location that is cooler, the light can operate at optimal efficiency and the ballast enjoys extended life.

A less expensive option is to either build a drywall box or install preformed, fire rated “pots” that go over your existing lighting up in the attic.  We seal them to the ceiling with foam.  With this fix, it’s important to use CFL since they produce less heat and use about ¼ of the energy than a comparable lumen incandescent.

Regardless of the solution you choose, it all goes back to limiting air infiltration in your home.  We measure this level of leakiness (or tightness, depending on whether you’re a glass half-full or half-empty kind of person) with a blower door test during our Home Performance Assessments.  Limiting air infiltration in your building envelope is critically important.  Why?  Big energy savings and improved comfort in your house.

– Jacob, Building Analyst

The post Leaky Lights on the Lam, Recessed Lighting and Energy Efficiency appeared first on Hammer & Hand.

And why wouldn’t you?  From global warming to the Gulf oil spill, from dependence on foreign oil to the impact of energy costs on your wallet, there are lots of compelling reasons to conserve.  And, given that buildings are responsible for at least 40% of carbon emissions in the US, our homes offer lots of room for improvement.

But where to begin?

This “Pyramid of Conservation” is a good place to start.  Developed by Minnesota Power (and brought to our attention by a TreeHugger post), the pyramid organizes energy efficiency investments into layers ranging from the simplest, most cost-effective investments to the most complex and expensive.

The idea is to start at the bottom of the pyramid and to work your way up, building a solid foundation of energy efficiency along the way.  Here are 3 secrets for home energy efficiency that the pyramid reveals:

1. Knowledge Is Power
   To reduce the carbon footprint of your house, start by assessing the situation and understanding the efficiency problems that need fixing.  The home performance industry has grown to address this need, with its blower door tests, air duct diagnostics, computer modeling and other building science gadgets.  It’s powerful stuff.  A home performance assessment of your house will uncover all sorts of heretofore hidden causes of inefficiency, many of them quite inexpensive to address, along with a menu of remedies.  And let’s not forget green building design.  If done right, new homes and significant remodels draw on building science and design expertise to create highly efficient living spaces.  Passive House and accessory dwelling unit designs are often exemplars in this regard.
2. It Might Not Be Sexy…
   Non-sexy, non-flashy improvements make a big difference in increasing energy efficiency.  Things like weather stripping, caulking, attic air sealing and insulation may not be inherently enticing to non-geeks, but they are cost effective.  The result of focusing on the non-sexy?  Lots of carbon saved per dollar spent.
3. Harvest Low-Lying Fruit Before Climbing Higher
   Things like new high-efficiency windows or smartly-engineered heat pumps can save lots of energy, but are not the low-lying fruit for most homes.  The pyramid suggests that to maximize energy efficiency gains you should fully address the lower, more cost-effective layers of conservation first.  Don’t get me wrong.  There are lots of good reasons to consider new windows (better sound insulation, added comfort, aesthetics and design, elimination of lead-painted frame and sills, and yes, energy efficiency).  But on carbon-reduction grounds alone, lower layers of the pyramid should be examined first.  Details vary from house to house, which is why a home performance assessment is important in determining the most cost-effective measures for your specific house.

-Zack

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When we remodel well, we’re upcycling homes – repurposing houses to meet the needs of 21-century families, and to meet their ecological goals as well.  The embodied energy contained in older homes is just too valuable to simply wipe the slate clean and build entirely new neighborhoods.  Yes, we need to build low-impact and sustainable new homes like Passive Houses and backyard cottages, but we also need to be expert at green refurbishing, upcycling our city one house at a time.

The video below features the Great British Refurb Campaign competition winner, which was awarded an eco-makeover to transform an existing house into a model of green living.  In a recent post we mentioned the “Pyramid of Conservation” which helps would-be green dwellers prioritize the most cost-effective carbon-reducing investments to make.  You’ll notice in this video that the entire pyramid was thrown at the project – everything from new insulation to shiny new windows and solar panels.  The results are impressive: a reduction of carbon emissions of 80%.  (Thanks to TreeHugger for turning us on to this video.)

-Zack

Jargon alert: the homeowner mentions the 10:10 campaign, a global campaign to cut carbon emissions by 10% a year, starting in 2010.

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What role does durability play? (An apropos question given the recent declaration that Salem’s LEED-certified Courthouse Square is now structurally unsound.)  How about the context of surrounding urban form?

TreeHugger tackled these questions in a post today, and proposed the following “equation” to measure shades of green:

Energy Efficiency + Building Area + Embodied Energy/Durability + Transportation Efficiency

It’s a handy snapshot of the factors that we should think about as green builders and dwellers.  And each element of the equation presents real, on-the-ground green building strategies to pursue.

Energy Efficiency & Building Area – Ultimately this boils down to how much energy we each use in our homes or businesses … energy use per capita, if you will.  Our favorite strategies:

• Home Performance, with its home energy audits and energy efficiency improvements, helps address this piece of the equation, particularly for existing structures.
• For new homes (and remodels), Passive House technology is a powerful way to achieve impressive energy efficiency.
• And of course, total building area plays an important role.  After all, bigger spaces mean more air to heat or cool, more rooms to light.  Smaller homes like Accessory Dwelling Units can play a big (or should I say “small”) role here.

Embodied Energy – In addition to ongoing energy use we need to consider the energy that goes into actually building the structure, or its embodied energy.  While this number is usually a lot smaller than the energy used to operate a space over the course of a building’s lifetime, it’s still an important part of the green equation.  Our favorite strategies:

• Use reclaimed, “upcycled” building materials, sourced both on and offsite.  These materials preserve embodied energy and embodied narrative, too.
• Remodel!  When we remodel homes or businesses, we are in effect upcycling existing structures for new life and new functionality.  Inherently green.

Durability – No matter what its LEED rating, if a building ain’t durable it ain’t really green.  Replacing flimsy or poorly-installed materials is costly financially and for the earth.  Same story when forced to scrap falling-apart structures.  Our favorite strategies:

• Use quality materials sourced by experienced building professionals.
• Apply exacting craftsmanship by a builder like us.
• Build based on lasting designs.  Functional, beautiful designs are sustainable because they have lasting values for building users.

Transportation Connection – We touched on this in a blog post last week (Sustainable Building 101: Don’t Let “Green” Structures Go Gray), but no matter how “green” the house, if it forces its owners to drive everywhere, then it’s not really a sustainable dwelling.  Our favorite strategies to make the transportation connection (addressed in last week’s blog) are infill development, accessory dwelling units, and remodeling existing structures in existing neighborhoods.

Comments or thoughts of other strategies to address the green equation?  Please share in the comment pane below.  Thanks!

-Zack

The post Shades of Green Building – Measuring (and Reducing) Carbon Footprint appeared first on Hammer & Hand.

So old school!  Okay, in one sense, they’re totally right.  The traditional way of building does require leaky walls because those leaks accomplish two critical functions in traditional walls.  The leaks:

1. Maintain good indoor air quality by providing fresh air.
2. Avoid moisture build-up by facilitating air flow into the wall cavity.

But from a green building perspective (or just a cost-savings one) the problem with the leaky-walls approach is obvious.  Heated (or cooled) air that escapes through holes in the walls of a traditional home adds up to lots and lots of squandered energy.  Hundreds of dollar bills are essentially being sucked out through those leaky walls.

Not good for the wallet or the planet.

Modern green building techniques make leaky walls oh-so-passe.  Walls that incorporate vapor barriers and are designed to facilitate drying can readily address moisture concerns without depending on leaks in walls.  So you can build or retrofit “tight” now without creating mold, mildew and rot problems.  Home performance building science guides this approach.

But what about indoor air quality?  How can we get the fresh air we need?  Answer: move away from uncontrolled leaks and toward controllable and adjustable sources of fresh air:

1. Install windows you can open.
2. Use mechanical ventilation systems to deliver fresh air inside and exhaust stale air outside.  Better yet, install a heat recovery ventilator (standard in Passive House projects) to minimize the loss of thermal energy that normally escapes with the exhausted air.

Simply put, walls don’t need to breath, but home dwellers do.  The good news is that we don’t need leaky walls to get people the fresh air they require.  Instead, we can create tight building envelopes with good windows and smart mechanical ventilation.  That’s the green response to the “walls gotta breathe” myth.

-Zack

P.S.  Thanks to Martin Holladay’s blog post “Ten Green Building Myths” for his treatment of the “walls gotta breathe” myth, as well as nine others.

The post People need to breathe – walls don’t. appeared first on Hammer & Hand.

Green building expert Alex Wilson just revealed #3 of his Top Ten Green Building Priorities: Ensure a Healthy Indoor Environment.  Indoor Air Quality (or “IAQ”) is key to creating living space that supports the health of occupants.  Wilson’s steps to guaranteeing a healthy indoor environment?

• Deal with moisture.
• Keep pollutants out.
• Avoid VOCs.
• Avoid chemicals and compounds.
• Provide fresh air.
• Provide for psychological health.

Some of these points are self-explanatory or straight-forward, but others require the application of some building science and even home diagnostics.  That’s where home performance assessments come into play (see photo on right of an assessment underway).  These audits test your home’s inner environment and uncover the culprits of moisture build-up, pollutants, and lack of fresh air.  Armed with this information, building analysts prescribe a suite of improvements, often simple ones, that can transform your home and give it a clean bill of health.

Of course, when we build new we can apply these principles ahead of time to avoid indoor air quality problems in the first place.  Environmentally-friendly building products and finishes are key here, but so are building technologies like rain screens that help ensure that moisture does not build up in wall assemblies.  By being careful about the design and construction of our green buildings, we can be stewards of the natural environment as well as clients’ living environments.

–Zack

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In his Inhabitat.com blog post entitled “Green Buildings on the Rise Despite Recession,” Timon Singh covers the recent release of a major study by McGraw Hill Construction that demonstrates that not only are US homes getting greener, but the demand for green buildings, and builders’ activity to meet that demand, is increasing.

This certainly matches our experience here.  Not to say we’ve had banner years lately, but (knock on wood) we’ve weathered the storm pretty well.  There are lots of reasons for that, but certainly the sustained interest in our green building chops plus new interest in housing types like Accessory Dwelling Units has helped us along.  The study both validates green building as a savvy business approach as well as supports the notion that doing well and doing good can go hand in hand.

A big reason that green building is gaining traction these days is that green strategies are good for the planet as well as for the household budget.  In terms of ongoing operating costs, green homes cost less to live in and are therefore more “sustainable” for cash-strapped families.  This convergence of environmental sustainability with family’s financial sustainability explains why things like home performance assessments, energy retrofits, ADUs and Passive Houses attract so much attention.

Singh reports that the McGraw Hill study found that fully one quarter of all new construction in 2010 was “green”.  Furthermore, between 2008 and 2010 the value of annual green building jumped 50% to $71 billion … and it’s expected to almost double by 2015 to $135 billion!  Harvey M. Bernstein, vice president of Global Thought Leadership and Business Development at McGraw-Hill Construction is quoted by Singh:

“In today’s economy, firms that specialize in green or serve this market are seeing a tremendous advantage — and they’re doing good at the same time. Green building leads to healthier places for us to live and work in, lower energy and water use, and better profitability.”

Certainly we’ve got a lot of work to do to make our built environment truly green, but it really does feel like we’re gathering some serious steam.

– Zack (Connect with me at +ZacharySemke)

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The blog Jetson Green turned us on to this story in Solar Today, “Energy-efficient construction adds $820 to cost of home“, which cites a recent study by the Building Codes Assistance Project showing that bringing the average new home up to the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code costs a scant $818.72, and brings $243.37 in annual energy savings.  That’s a huge return-on-investment over the life of a home.

While the 2009 IECC is a relatively modest standard of energy efficiency, the study provides yet another piece of evidence and support for the notion that efficiency measures make homes more affordable to live in.  Put another way, green buildings are not expensive and “cutting-edge” anymore; they’re mainstream and can make housing more financially sustainable for occupants.

We certainly see this in Passive House projects: a modest increase in cost brings a huge decrease in ongoing operational expenses.  (That’s what 85% reduction in energy use will do for you.)  Same holds true for home performance work and energy retrofits.  Relatively modest up-front investments in energy efficiency reap big, ongoing rewards.  And if you factor in the likelihood that energy will be getting more expensive in the future rather than less, then energy efficiency investments make even more sense.

– Zack (Connect with me at +ZacharySemke)

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As we work as a society to grapple with the environmental problems that confront us, one of the primary challenges (and opportunities) is to eliminate “externalities” in markets, “costs or benefits not transmitted through prices,” (Wikipedia) that negatively impact environmental health.

Gasoline is a classic example of one such externality.  When we pay at the pump, the price of gas reflects the cost of extracting, refining, transporting, distributing, plus some taxes.  But the environmental costs of oil extraction and of gasoline consumption (read oil spills and global warming) are left out, allowing the price to be artificially low (even at $4/gallon).  If these externalities were included (“internalized”), the price of gasoline would shoot up, demand for gas would decrease, and demand for fuel-efficient vehicles would skyrocket.

What does this have to do with houses?  Currently, information about the relative energy performance and consumption of our buildings is not available to prospective buyers in the marketplace.  In fact, it’s not even measured in any systematic way.  So it’s impossible to effectively compare energy performance between homes, or assign a value to that performance.  No info means no value means building energy performance is, largely, an externality in the marketplace.

Why should we care?  Because investing in energy efficiency and building performances does have real value that should be included in market decisions.  And, if internalized, that market value would provide powerful incentives for retrofits and green building, which would be good for the planet.

Let’s say I do a deep energy retrofit of my home, making it more comfortable, quieter, safer, cheaper to operate, and better for the earth.  Shouldn’t the value of my home rise compared to a comparable-but-not-retrofitted home?  Sure, I can tout the work I did on the home to prospective buyers, but without a trusted measure of actual building performance, I can’t effectively “transmit” the value of the retrofit into the resale price of my house.  Being the green-minded, enlightened fellow I am, I’d probably do the retrofit anyway, right?  But it sure would help to know that my investment in the home would be accurately valued by the marketplace.

Now say I’m a prospective home buyer looking for a nice, low-impact home.  How can I evaluate the energy performance of the houses I’m viewing and considering for purchase?  In my quest, I can look for a LEED home, maybe find a house that recently had an Energy Trust-supported home performance retrofit, or look for a smaller home because less area to heat mans less energy consumption.  All of these are reasonable approaches… but wouldn’t it be great as a buyer to know the actual level of energy performance for each of these homes and be able to compare them during my buying decision?

We do this all the time when buying a car – we compare MPG as a key factor in determining value and in determining the price we’re willing to pay.  The MPG rating ensures that fuel efficiency is transmitted to price.

We need an MPG for houses!

Enter the Energy Performance Score, or EPS.  Developed by Earth Advantage Institute with Energy Trust of Oregon backing, the EPS “provides an estimate of actual home energy consumption as well as related carbon emissions, and shows homeowners where they rank in energy use on a regional and national scale.”  It’s a great measure that allows buyers to compare energy consumption between homes and gives homeowners market incentive to do energy upgrades.  It’s also good for builders and developers because it promises to provide market incentive for energy efficient building and increases demand for green building and home performance work.

Where’s the rub?  Well, EPS is entirely voluntary.  To really have power in the marketplace, the EPS should be included in every MLS real estate listing.  Universality is the only way to truly “internalize” building energy performance in the marketplace and incentivize performance upgrades throughout the market.

That’s why we’ve signed on to Oregon Environmental Council’s Jobs & Prosperity initiative, which will work at the state level in 2011 to mandate the inclusion of EPS in listings.  It’s a market-based solution that will help us move our built environment closer to where it needs to be in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and performance.

Because the Energy Performance Score measures the relative energy consumption of homes, it recognizes that both size and performance matters.  So it dovetails well with our work with Accessory Dwelling Units, small infill housing, Passive House buildings, and home performance improvements.  With small footprints and/or high performance, all of these green building strategies will be reward with good EPS scores.

If you’re interested in supporting the Jobs & Prosperity campaign with its Energy Performance Score provisions, please sign on here.  Meanwhile, have a Happy New Year!

-Zack

The post A wish for 2011: an MPG-like rating for all homes on the market in Oregon appeared first on Hammer & Hand.

The race is on!  Yesterday, Clean Energy Works Oregon announced that 750 Portland-area homeowners will receive up to $3700 in instant rebates for home energy retrofits and remodels.  Combine those rebates with the no money down/no fee financing offered by Clean Energy Works Oregon, and you can transform the way your home feels and performs with no up front costs.

It’s simple to connect with these incentive dollars, but it’s important to act quickly before the 750 rebate slots have been snatched up.  Visit cleanenergyworksoregon.org and enter “CNHHA” as you fill out the online application.

We’ve been in this game for a while, and it’s hard to overemphasize what an excellent opportunity this is for our clients and their homes.

Unless you own a high performance home, chances are your house is leaking away precious energy every minute of the day.  That’s bad for your pocketbook and for your comfort – this rebate allows you to address that, and it’s good for the planet, too.

Visit cleanenergyworks.org and remember to enter “CNHHA” as the instant rebate code to receive an energy retrofit of your home backed by Hammer & Hand’s fine craftsmanship and expert building science – all financed by Clean Energy Works Oregon.

Tell your friends and family!

– Sam and Daniel

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