An End of Rebates, A New Job for Rebate Organizations

If we secure the needed investment funding in Oregon, weatherization retrofits will become just a matter of conscience and cause, with all qualifying projects funded interest-free. A flood of work will be released. Organizations employing power through handout of rebates, will be reinvented. They will find plenty of work in supervising the qualification of projects, and supervising the just conduct of the large amount of work yet to be done, to stop being a wasteful nation.

I don't think homeowners not on the edge, ever needed rebates as cause for action. It was just a matter of fairness. To not miss out on money a more clever or careful person might find. Kind of like the bargaining for low air fare. We never minded contributing to survival of our needed carrier. We just didn't want to pay more than someone else.

Now, some who have drawn rebate money as a permanent drain of the Public Purpose Fund, might wish to reinvest their energy savings to help others. That 3% tax on utility bills should accumulate hereafter, being let out only on interest-free loan. If the fund is a growing pool, it will not be seen as available for other government needs.

Clean Energy Works Portland

Oregon has a very promising young politician, State Representative Jules Kopel-Bailey, serving Inner Southeast Portland neighborhoods. Through his leadership, Oregon has a new initiative for enabling weatherization in homes, enacted as the Clean Energy Fund. Listen to a Podcast here, where goals are simply expressed, in an interview conducted by Jesse Jenkins, of The Energy Collective.

Here is the enacting legislation , HB 2626 of the 2009 Oregon legislative session.

And, here is a longer "C-Engrossed" version.

Progress in this plan is at a snail pace. Here is a small public enactment within City of Portland, as Clean Energy Works. A pilot program has expired. There is nothing to apply for. Where is the commitment to action? There was one publicity posting of a pilot project in The Oregonian, as presented online here. Newer OregonLive posts brag of the pilot program.

The City of Portland is directing action at benefiting contractors, with delegation through Energy Trust of Oregon, to empower largest contractors or to low-skill general contractors who employ home performance testers, and subcontract work for profit. Everything should empower the people in need, to simply qualify projects, and do work themselves, or choose their own contractors. The big-guy testing is rarely useful in qualifying work, and is contrary to service where a conflict of interest is established. All testing should be impartial, by other organizations.

The public deserves stronger action now. This isn't about jobs. It is about getting investments done, with rapid payback in energy conservation. I think there is a special need to motivate and enable owners of rental property, where tenants suffer for lack of insulation or a crummy old furnace. Let the no-interest enabling money go to contractors and materials suppliers on behalf of, and in the service, of tenants. In an owner-occupied home, savings from lowered utility costs repay the loan. An owner of rental property will find means to pay off a ten-year loan. Up-front money is harder, and the tenants, and The Earth, suffer.

I am proud of the former Oregon State Representative for my neighborhood, now US Senator, Jeff Merkley, who offers the up-front weatherization financing nationwide, in Bill S. 1574. Oregon proudly followed British Columbia, with our Bottle Bill. This action is far more important. It WILL empower work more effectively than after-expense incentive payments. Please see more about association with HB2626, here.\

I want to be part of debates in Oregon where the legislation is acted-upon, as required, by Oregon's Department of Energy, for ALL residents.

Fire Safety and Insulation

Talk of vapor retarders, linked to fire safety issues, should be followed by more independent thought on the fire safety issues. Everything in life is compromise against competing concerns. I'm proud to present a clean, physically-safe attic. Yet, I can not offer a maximum in fire safety. I'm stuck with lots of pre-existing features not open for discussion or change. Residential codes allow a bias in favor of usability and resale value, and I think that is where I am aligned. I put in clean, serviceable batt insulation, when starting with none. I don't mind a bed of rock wool or cellulose to start, leaving in-place with contribution to better fire safety, in addition to avoiding land-fill even for some dirty stuff. Cover the dusty stuff, I will, and in an attic floor, I doubt covering batts degrade fire safety.

I have taken the step of burning samples of Tenoarm and old, reject batt kraft facing, in my garage. Both do burn. The tarred kraft facing with some ready fury. The Tenoarm, not contained, sustains flame, but progressively falls out of the flame in drops of melt. I don't know how to proceed further, and leave advising to some Federal consumer-protective force.

Through a customer, I am awakened to concern for fire safety in the insulation of sloped ceilings, that connect knee wall closets with an upper attic. Such passages are found with various draft-stop provisions, more often wide open than draft-stopped. When wide open they tempt provision to moderate roof temperature, by baffling over new insulation. If roof joists are 2x4, I argue that R15 batts, pressed-down, leave sufficient breathing space, and that works even if the bottoms of the slope cavities are draft-stopped. I recently completed a new-drywall insulation placement with 2x6 roof joists, where breathing spaces were forced by DuroVent plastic baffles. Upon prompt by drywall contractors, I must reduce the applied insulation from R21, to R15. I may instead argue that the spaces should be draft-blocked, removing the baffles.

I wish a blog or some other internet forum might moderate discussion toward appropriate compromises.

Vapor Retarder Two-Thirds Rule

When placing insulation in Portland, Oregon, I rarely use material with a bonded-on vapor retarder (kraft face). I am aware of propaganda favoring cellulose, and raising fear of fiberglass batts, in The Big Burn Video. Proponents of cellulose have dealt with criticism of organic cellulose as inherently less safe than inorganic mineral insulation, and tilt the table too far in the other direction. The video presents ideal cellulose, and fiberglass with no description. I imagine the fiberglass was a least-favorable setting, with air channels (chimney path) the length of flammable kraft facing. A fair comparison would have fiberglass totally filling joist bays, with no kraft facing.

I will never use kraft facing in a wall or in a new-construction ceiling. There I use complete, taped sheathing with polyethylene sheeting designed for the purpose, Swedish Tenoarm. Aside from fire safety concern, I save time and get better fit, in custom-cutting unfaced batts. I also follow the advice of the USA importer of Tenoarm:

http://www.conservationtechnology.com/building_design.html.

I will use kraft batts in an attic floor, to isolate new material from found loose-fill insulation. I use original reasoning in study of dew point data for my location, as reviewed in this posting, with a current update. The commonly-understood two-thirds rule states that a vapor retarder should be to the warm side of two thirds of the applied insulation.

Beginning Thoughts of Math, Carbon Footprint

In effort to show the value of home energy conservation efforts, I have done math for heat transfer, and fuel costs crunched for my city. Now, I want to join the game of declaring benefits as reduction of carbon footprint. An advantage in this is that low, subsidized, cost of heating fuel is divided out. I accept numbers from a recent issue of National Geographic, March 2009, p 67:

Driving: a gallon of gasoline adds 19.6 lb CO2.

One KWh electric use adds 1.5 lb CO2.

100 cf of natural gas emits 12 lb CO2.

I need to back up a few steps, and understand where I am expected to go, with reduction employing such numbers. Start with the EPA Household Emissions Calculator.

Here is my annual carbon footprint, living alone, working hard as a weatherization contractor:

12,438 pounds CO2 in driving 13,400 miles per year.

2,808 pounds CO2 for 239 therms of natural gas in an efficient furnace heating my modest 1000 sf home and productive workplace.

7,063 pounds of CO2 to generate 7663 KWH of electricity per year.

22,309 pounds CO2 before savings efforts volunteered, about 1000 pounds of CO2, through car maintenance and through steadfast recycling.

Numbers correspond fairly well with the National Geographic conversions. I am near the 20,750 per-person US average. I have begun to share my home, and that will push me below the average. The sharing of my home is in fact the most powerful thing I can do.

Better-educated by this study, I am inspired to save a few thousand pounds of CO2 emissions per year. Here are several ways I could save 1000 pounds: Drive less by 8%, fifty gallons, or 1080 miles. Reduce electricity use by 14%. Reduce my use of natural gas for heating, by a harder-to-do 35%, or 85 therms. There is promise in all of these. Only heating reduction through conservation, what I do for others as a contractor, is painless.

I began this writing exercise upon concluding that large effort in a customer's attic of 720 sf, going from R13 to R40, would save only fifty therms, the equivalent of using thirty gallons in driving. It was a small gain, but beyond painless. It is a more than twenty percent annual return on the customer's investment, forever, and further value in more-comfortable living. The customer will still look for harder ways to reduce footprint.

Free Access to Codes

In a previous post, I expressed my wish that all public regulations important to my safe workmanship, should be available for free online access. I am pleased to find that the National Electric Code, maintained by NFPA, the National Fire Protection Association, can be read online. You only need to register for access. There is no cost. I wish it were word-searchable and printable. If it were pdf, I could readily enlarge for less challenge in reading.

Now, how about building codes?

Sealing Attic Floor Pits

Dropped ceilings in closets are seen in an attic, as floor pits. Photos here, with corrective action, are of a home built in 1953. Attic air is freely admitted to walls the full height of rooms below, amplifying the ceiling-area heat loss or gain, by an order of magnitude. Let's try the math here, on that order of magnitude. Numbers in play are represented by L and W, the dimensions of the ceiling, and H, the below room height. I see that the influence of closet interior walls is debateable where the door is normally closed. Figure the amplified area as 2* (L + W) *H, where L = 46, W = 31 and H = 96. 2* (L + W) *H = 103 sq ft. LW = 9.9 sq ft. The amplification factor is 10.4. If insulating 9.9 sq ft saves $7/ yr, the larger saving is $73/ yr.

Carry the argument of an order-of magnitude multiplier a bit further. For this closet, if the door were left open, the area exposed to attic-room temperature difference increases by the interior side-wall area below the drop. The larger amplification factor is 13.5. The smaller amplification factor, (2* (L + W) *H) / LW, is a minimum for home situations. I imagine home situations where the minimum is larger than 10.4. How about a long, deep wall used as a ventilation chase? Ten ft long, a foot deep. The amplification factor for a one-floor 8-ft chase is 17.6. If the chase runs down two floors, 16-ft, the amplification factor is 35.

I argue to my rebates manager, that pit closure is far more important than air sealing opportunities in an attic floor. Pits are often overlooked or are improperly fixed when found. Old insulation may be draped over a pit, merely hiding it, with slight impediment to air flow driven by the temperature gradients. A loose-fill installer will almost never know of the neglect. There are no incentives to pick up that old, dirty insulation to find and fix pits or other problems, in practice. In my area the testing trade, Home Performance, is promoted by a fifty percent of cost rebate for air sealing work if that achieves quite-large drop of infiltration, 300 cfm or more under test conditions. That is absolutely unhelpful here. The problems are not made detectable by blower-door conditions of pull from the attic. A pit doesn't contribute to infiltration.

My closure of the pit employs half-inch drywall pulled up to floor joists, and edge-sealed with spray foam. I prefer GP Densarmor fiberglass-faced drywall, kept as scrap from my closet projects. Screw a length of 2x4 under the drywall for lifting and anchoring. Sandwich the drywall with another 2x4. I shape Densarmor edges with a Shurform plane. Ordinary drywall is too brittle, and paper facing resists trimming of edges.

This relatively simple pit closure took more than an hour of actual performance. With an extra trip it is far more costly to an installer, if not known in advance and rewarded through a contract. If a contract change must be argued or if the worker is somehow detached from responsibility, a proper fix is not mere due diligence. It is unlikely to happen.

This home was like a test lab for pit sealing. A rare opportunity, yet daunting since problems were detected upon bidding. Daunting since more time would be spent in the attic in summertime heat. Daunting since pulling drywall up under floor joists requires more than a bit of cleverness.

There were three more pit areas, one including a dropped ceiling over a bathtub; another a long wall with dead volume associated with a grand fireplace; and another very simple at a dropped ceiling over the home entry. That at the fireplace involved working in extremely cramped overhead, out to an outside wall, and had six hours of actual performance. Multiple visits dealt with rerun of interfering wires. All of these problems were happily hidden, until I pulled up nice-looking insulation.

I challenge Energy Trust of Oregon, and other rebate organizations, to do a better job of serving and protecting Utility consumers. All stuations that invite being overlooked, should be specifically reported by weatherization contractors, to secure diligence rebates. I ask for a new rebate program, where reported pit closure qualifies rebate-times-ten for involved floor area. All diligence rebates should be presented for public examination and learning. This reward approach is consistent with the fact that some pits are large enough that pit walls could be insulated instead of making a difficult but fall-protective cover. The alternative reward of fifty percent of repair cost is of comparable size, and would work if the conflicted tie to reward those invested in Home Performance, were removed. Keeping the tie here is absurd, yet that is the dogged position of Energy Trust of Oregon. Keeping the tie is a grave disservice to homeowners. While I owned a blower door, modestly invested in Home Performance, I NEVER found a problem not more-readily detected by simple observation. I never found a home without a great excess of infiltration, to be dealt with by progressive and obvious measures such as window replacement. Tests taught nothing.

Here is related comment upon feedback to focus on unique and interesting opportunities, and to raise the state of the art in weatherization. At the last Energy Trust Trade Ally meeting I attended, I shouted out that blower door testing for unique purposes should be rewarded directly to the contractor, a token amount of $50, if he offers a report of why and what learned for PUBLIC DISCLOSURE. A family of public reports would raise the state of the art among contractors nationwide, would inform the DIY public, and would sell Home Performance services. We all need to better imagine the situations where blower door and/ or infrared thermography testing profits the homeowner. The situations may be uncommon.