We Don't Need Home Energy Auditors

Bad news: A broken feather in Mayor Hales' cap:
Find City Council action at the link. 

Press Release: Home Energy Score Policy Adopted by Portland City Council  
Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016

Thanks to Lore Wintergreen, I can report the following:
The 12/14/2016 City Council action is subject to amendment upon public comments submitted before August 24, 2017. Send by email to:

 kyle.diesner@portlandoregon.gov using subject line: “Home Energy Score comments” or similar, or by mail to: Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, Home Energy Score comments, 1900 SW 4th Avenue, Suite 7100, Portland, OR 97201. Comments received after 6:00 p.m. on August 24 will not be considered part of the record.

Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) will hold a Public Hearing on August 24, 2017 from 4:00 - 6:00 p.m. at 1900 SW 4th Ave., Room 7A (seventh floor), Portland, OR 97201. These rules clarify requirements for home sellers, home builders, and home energy assessors.

Where Kyle Diesner received my criticism of the intended Mayor Hales action, and we talked at length about my disappointment, I was not invited to the further commenting.



I have no use for programs that elevate do-nothing green jobs, in defiance of the public interest. These flow from the US Department of Energy as Home Performance with Energy Star, HPwES , and Home Energy Score, HES . These programs do create employment for those who would have  a green job, but need the respectability of "working" with clean hands, in a clean shirt, and that is not an accomplishment. The programs are very inefficient in accomplishing actual home improvements, and must not be justified by any other goal. A Maryland study for all of USA reported an average sponsor cost for each HPwES job with some completion, of $3100. Find reported benefit to cost ratio of less than 0.1. That is a utility benefit vs. cost. Where a home owner may have more to gain, it is with the further cost of labor and materials, similar to the sponsor cost. Worse of the sponsor cost, accused programs have not made significant progress toward our possible energy independence and USA responsibility in slowing global warming. energystar.gov reports only 313,633 project completions from 2002 to 2013, and a trend of declining success. This total does not imply much completion in any home, and does not acknowledge poor return where blow and go interferes "forever" with best possible achievements.

The situation is worse in Oregon and other states diverted in the wasteful HPwES implementation, by a bad investment in a rival energy scoring program, Energy Performance Score, EPS . I have opposed EPS from the beginning, where I found it only confused home owners to inaction. Expensive and useless EPS is still offered , even as its buyers surrender to HES as an only and better scoring system. I believe Energy Trust of Oregon has wasted about twenty million dollars developing and pushing its EPS invention, about a factor of five more than it has doled out to ratepayers as incentives in job-completion rebates, over the matching time interval. Oregon's Public Utility Commission has been derelict in ensuring Public Purpose Funds are spent wisely. There is no admission of this criminal waste, as Energy Trust pushes its crew of HPwES/ raters to trick the people of Portland, Oregon:

Here is recent local news: (Click this headline to read one Oregon newspaper account.)

Mandate to require Home Energy Score for houses on market goes to City Council

This news is of a Portland City Council hearing held November 23, 2016. I attended, and spoke in opposition of the proposal. My comments were as stated in advance to our Citizens Utility Board .

Here are those remarks:

At 10/28/2016

I don’t support scoring and the employment of auditors as superior or necessary, in the achievement of ever-better home energy efficiency. For every home, we need a completion list for savings opportunities. Each completion is subject to three-party review and in many cases is eligible for 100% up-front financing, mainly to be repaid when a home is sold. No home may be sold without the competitive measure of its completion list. We eliminate incentive to pass problems on to the next guy, unaware if possible.

At 11/21/2016

I will be at the crucial City Hall hearing, this Wednesday, November 23rd at 9:45 AM. I hope I will have informed supporters, starting on a path to a better plan to achieve our promised residential energy conservation. We must stop our horribly-wasteful dissipation of Public Purpose funds in Energy Trust’s failed program that serves fewer than 1500 homes per year, while few contractors remain in the unprofitable business, and many cheat, ruining public confidence.

The HES plan would only further erode public confidence in their weatherization investments. The return upon investment in audits is near-zero, where real action is fumbled, trust is further eroded, and public support in financing is not offered.

I wish I had taken photos as a reporter, but will make do with publicly shared images.

I had only been to City Hall once before, outside like this and with no police presence. I was one of a usual half dozen who cared enough, with signs appealing for the City to expand, not reduce, enrollment at my high shool, Benson Polytechnic .

This time it was a public hearing in the second-floor council chamber.

Ninth up of the general participants and in that near seat, I spoke for a polite minute.

I stated only what I had already shared in this matter, input as comments to our Citizens Utility Board.

I want better. Let each home owner have a checklist he maintains, and can amend with his own verified work, not obliged to entanglements with an interests-conflicted auditor. Materials and supervised contracted work will be fully paid-for in up-front loans for all, mainly repaid in new beneficial mortgage, when a house is sold. As a new or newly-engaged homeowner picks up the task of completions or simply recording past completions of critical home maintenance, third party verification will involve competing Diligence Reporters . These reporters with sometimes-new skill as technical writers, will generally be self-employed individuals working in the cloud, making understood reports of completion of checklist steps with photos and notes. It will be well-rewarded and satisfying work, of superior value to all. Disinterested inspectors of a jurisdictional authority, will happily supervise things that matter to the jurisdiction. Reports will have many uses that reward the responsible home owner, and will be gladly paid-for by the home owner. A reporter may have continuing relationships with specific builders, but payment and loyalty are from each home owner. This goes a long way to preventing worker/ employer fraud and wrongful credit not related to depth and quality of work done. We will throw a big monkey wrench in the action of Gresham's Law to devalue good. Homes without a properly interested owner-occupant, will have solutions, somehow.

I was among a small minority asking disapproval, mainly realtors, who do not place the new buyer interests first. Speaking with that realtor leadership, I reported that as an exceptional weatherization contractor, I rarely succeed in offered work to a newly-impoverished buyer of a too-expensive  home soon to be underwater, passed-along with badly-missing insulation, decrepit HVAC, plumbing, and wiring, with maybe a fence edged in-the-dirt for prettiness, soon to rot. OK, they didn't want to hear all of that, and some is added here.

The really big presence was of the Home Performance crew, in red shirts with white 5" round stickers saying RIGHT TO KNOW.

Right to know, what? Here is a 2015 sample Home Energy Report , a 1970 two-story home of 1800 sf in Arkansas, with numbers to be studied. Boost score from a 2 to a 6 at unstated cost, for actions mainly an indeterminate amount of attic insulation and tuneup of HVAC ducts. Auditor knowledge of your home will have evaporated next day. You can't read what is wrong now, and know detail of what needs fixing. Reports can't be verified and will have bias favoring the seller who grudgingly bought the report instead of obviously-needed repairs.

Want better than a crummy 6, and you did all that was suggested? No clues are imagined or offered. The report will not deal with matters that can be more important that energy waste, such as galvanized drain or water pipes that just burst in the similar house next door, the sure fire risk in an awful StabLoc circuit breaker panel, or the impending bad consequences of dried-out and fallen-off insulation of wires in overheated lighting junction boxes. We need very professional home inspection in direct service of the buyer. A little-trained auditor does not measure up up a certified home inspector, Energy auditors must not be elevated by ordnance with mandatory employment, superior to a home inspector. 

At end-November, 2016, another Sample Home Energy Report is posted, again a 1970 home in Arkansas, this time sprawling one level, 1500 sf. There is to-impress apparent use a of complex mix of construction and heat source details. Here is my math review of the report, filed at Google Docs. The example is very flawed. I have now done a similar math review of the 2015 example. These efforts are difficult, with a full day of my time invested. A report read only as a made-up score, has no value. The difficult review will always find report errors, with no means to challenge them.

Home Energy Score is a national continuance in the scandal of Home Performance with Energy Star, a program of the US Department Of Energy still teaching the lie that a blower door is the means and measure of residential weatherization, awfully failing to deliver served homes and delivering yet worse in involved honesty, after the lie. Read about the HES program here:

http://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/about-better-buildings-initiative  
and here:

http://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/Home%20Energy%20Score%20Overview%20Aug%202016.pdf.

HES offers hope of more rating business for involved HPwES contractors and their supporting organizations, without any promise of improved residential energy conservation. The goal is simply to produce numbers, and business.

At bottom of post here write on for the brave reader, about failings of rating systems. We find an ally in Martin Holladay, in a March 20, 2012 Green Building Advisor post titled Energy Modeling Isn't Very Accurate . Find a good summary of the origin and virtue of EPS. Find contradiction that simple EPS is called better than complex HES, for older existing homes. National Renewable Energy Lab found otherwise in a 2015 report, Assessment of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Home Energy Scoring Tool . 

I don't think we can know what to believe, except that as Martin Holladay advises, quoting modeling creator and critic Michael Blasnik, Experienced energy retrofit workers rarely rely on models. “When we make retrofit decisions, other factors like experience are more important than modeling,” said Blasnik. “Even if you need modeling to make design decisions, you don’t have to model every house. Model something well just once, and then apply the lesson to lots of buildings. If a house isn’t unique, modeling is a waste of time.”

I have forwarded this post to members of Portland's City Council:

Message

I oppose this action, as I presented in the 11/23 hearing, and as summarized in this post at my blog.

We need up-front financing for all crucial home improvements, that is best accomplished by a present home owner; with no incentive then to pass problems, unawares if possible, to a next home owner. Audits have nothing to do in this. 100% honesty in completions at fairest cost, is attainable. We have so much work to do in USA, to be better global citizens. We all will soon see the sobering energy poverty that is common in Europe, and will wish for energy independence, for our individual welfare. Energy independence must be distributed equally. Know there is great evil where public investment mainly promotes the independence of the already-affluent. Energy independence at modest cost and a massive commitment, offers affluence for all.

The failure of high-overhead-cost sponsor programs in HPwES and the various rating schemes, is dwarfed by failure of another program invented in Portland, Oregon. Read this of program Clean Energy Works Oregon, now a business named Enhabit :

aceee.org/files/proceedings/2016/data/papers/7_319.pdf

But the high cost associated with this high-level of service has proved to be a non-sustainable business model. The organization also faced a significant decline in its sales from $7.6 million in 2012 to $3.1 million in 2013, which led to cuts in the workforce and a shift in the business model. During the past year, the program has changed its name to Enhabit and its focus to “home renewal” beyond the traditional home performance upgrades to include seismic upgrades, radon reduction systems, and solar energy installations (Portland Business Journal 2015). In addition, up to 49 percent of financing can also be used for non energy measures, creating an avenue for contractors to fund non-energy related improvements.

I estimate that program costs of inefficient and unsuccessful Enhabit, are more than double the awful cost of HPwES, mentioned above. This is a sad end of an up-front financing vision, which we still need, in Oregon's legislature, offered by State Representative Jules Bailey, bill HB 2626 of 2009. We must not fail to learn lessons in this, as we seek a sustainable, low-program-cost, weatherization program, in rejection of Energy Trust's current programs. We must not let Energy Trust and poor-partner Enhabit wander on, playing games with rating schemes, serving fewer than 1500 households each year, with expenditure from residential contribution to our Public Purpose Fund, of about $100 million. I see that as overhead of $67,000 per home served.



At year-end 2016, add to this effort that failed to deter adoption of this 
City Of Portland Measure . 
Please read this, and see the blatant attempt to prolong waste in Energy Performance Score! This isn't about supporting a national HES experiment. Home Buyers will find further mayhem in a confusion of meaningless numbers for their unimproved homes.

Add here my appeals to the City, as Google Docs:
Proof of Conflicts of Interest 
Direct accusation against the most-serious conflict of interest 
I am very disappointed my region, and the nation, do not act now to mobilize weatherization of our homes in a way that will work, in up-front financing for all. 

The Science of Sealing Attic Wall Headers

Google it:

the science of sealing attic wall headers

M writing is detectable near-top. At this blog, pick Label: Sealing Wall Headers , here or at the right.

I think the process of heat transfer at attic walls, via paths at wall headers in an attic, can be imagined with this captioned photo:

Always in my work, wall headers are 100% sealed with flexible grout, as they are revealed. Gaps as here, are sometimes very large. Blackness of insulation pushed to the right speaks of the heat transfer process, now blocked by the sealing. Energy in convection pulls air down in some wall areas, and up in others, attempting to equalize attic and wall interior temperature. Dirt of outside air is deposited where passage is down, in the constant churn of air. The process has little to do with air infiltration, but rather is throttled action of attic floor pits.

The process in any home shifts with room use and weather outside. No one has attempted rigorous analysis or testing, or should. Yet, we need to estimate the benefits of sealing in defense of the fair cost of sealing, $200 to $500 in any home.

I estimate the savings as that of an inefficient attic floor pit, 10% bare area equivalent , of conditioned space ceiling area. The home of the photo above has 1366 sf heated space, and I charged a meager $200 for the 100% sealing with my flexible grout.

Estimated savings are $2.4*0.1*1366/3 = $109 per year. Two year simple payback. Bases of the math are: heating with a gas furnace 88% efficient, 4400 65° HDD, natural gas at real cost $2 per therm. I wish for math to show that annual savings are at least 20% of the $200 cost. That is achieved, however you do the math, and whatever you think is fair cost of energy. 

Recovery of invoiced cost could never be achieved if the home owner had hired the top HPwES contractor in Portland, Oregon:

This bid  is mean. It is knowingly based on lies. It is criminal.  Allowed and encouraged criminal conduct kills public trust and kills weatherization activity.


Failure to do 100% sealing of attic floors must be seen as inexcusable. Excuses are offered by powers in Portland, Oregon, that consequences are not measurable by a blower door , and methods tried are rejected by nearly all contractors  Final Evaluation Report - New Homes Air Sealing Pilot  . In a state of confusion, lacking conviction through scientific understanding, air sealing does not happen. None is required.


There is no longer an Energy Trust incentive for sealing air leaks in single-family homes in Oregon.  


And yet, in Oregon, the phony blower door purveyors of Home Performance with Energy Star , have large rewards from public funds, that are denied to a true believer in home sealing. This in effect is a conscious and very great harm against me, where my superior work is acknowledged, as I foreswear blower door madness. It is an action of Gresham's Law , even though the rewarded competition charge ruinously in their fraud. Usually, with counterfeit, good is ruined because it is less profitable to the public.

Wishes Of OPUC Hearing UM 1622

I will attend the 9/30/2014 9:30 AM hearing of Oregon's Public Utilities Commission, in the matter of Docket UM1622 . If I am allowed to speak, I will offer my wishes for a good future of residential energy conservation in my state. I will be speaking with the unique voice of one who does the work with highest diligence, honesty and creativity. I do the work by means of my own invention, not as a rube dragged into scams by national scandal of the US Department Of Energy, dumb-dumb Home Performance With Energy Star, HPwES. HPwES teaches that infiltration is what makes us cold. Tighten up a home with the magic of a blower door. Measure the results and the savings with a blower door. Not so! Fresh air within our reasonable control against excess, is nearly free . The US Department of Energy never did the math. They know nothing of math . Where we find foolish programs lacking return on investment, we have been dragged in by DOE , EPA, and their propagandist ICF International.

I want Oregon to lead the nation in a better way, anticipating the hard times ahead, where, within ten years , our queer bubble of cheap energy expires. If responsible people act wisely, they may avoid being cursed in those days ahead, for cruel inaction. Work done today not only has payback over a life of fifty years; it avoids the inflation in labor and materials, amplifying benefits in energy cost savings. When economy is most needed, it may be out of reach.

My contributions for the hearing are  naive PDF printings of four blog posts found here. What a wonderful thing, Google's Blogger, where my writing may be read and PDF-printed in any language. I think these printings are blessed with sincerity lacking in the simple trash of some contributors, such as far-right-fracking-lover Cascade Policy Institute , cheering the end of inconvenient energy conservation our grandchildren-be-damned.

So, what shall I say at the hearing? (I hope others will help me to edit this list.)

1. Don't take a path where we become honor-bound to eliminate Oregon's Public Purpose Fund, no longer engaged in residential weatherization, which is its justification. Weatherization with government sponsorship must not have as its only goal the reduced cost to Utilities supplying energy. If because of bad choices and mismanagement of programs, OPUC and Energy Trust take a direction contrary to consumer interest in saving energy by known means of insulation, tight construction, better HVAC systems and better lighting, then the government sponsorship becomes disgraced and obscene. We must not take that path. Let us instead consider measures only by their public good. Any measure with fifty-year annual return to utility customers greater than 6%, shall be within bounds for Fund sponsorship. The rate of return shall include expected inflation in cost of accepted measures. Measures without proven durability shall be excluded. A full palate of qualifying measures shall be managed for each customer, by a customer-managed checklist.

2. Delivery of residential weatherization pursuant to Oregon's Public Purpose Fund must be increased on a grand scale . This will be difficult while retail cost of energy remains low. The State Of Oregon shall require policy based on fifty year cost of energy and fifty year durability of weatherization measures. Then, encourage increase of action by up-front financing in a loan fund that shall grow to at least one billion dollars. Immediately impound all Public Purpose Fund revenue as a true fund, none to be disbursed except as in loans.

3. Reinstate attic floor sealing and duct sealing as sponsored measures. These have been removed happily by Energy Trust, only because they are an obstacle to blow and go cheap and dishonest weatherization, the mainstay of Energy Trust's reportable accomplishments. Done right, they are inexpensive, and customers find investments repaid in about two years. Proper HVAC ducting should have no leakage.

4. Abolish Clean Energy Works Oregon. This organization is illegally outside the regulation of the Public Purpose Fund, and should never have been formed.

5. Reform or replace Energy Trust Of Oregon as principal implementor of weatherization. Where all sponsored action is through loans, the absurd weatherization measure of the month, in rebates, is gone as a driver. We will find better drivers. All weatherization measures will be tracked and quality-controlled, regardless of payback priorities. Eligible measures for loans will be tightly controlled and no home may receive a first-round total of more than, say, $5000.

6. Bring all homes into management, especially rental homes. Know that parallel programs will be in place immediately for business properties. Priority in business property weatherization loans shall serve renters of business properties.

A Real Insulation Job, In Detail

Here examine one point in the scatter chart of the previous post:

Do you wonder what someone should expect for a measly $2600 of insulation work?
How about this? A dangerous, broken, leaky attic ladder was intelligently replaced. The floor insulation is boosted from questionable R13, to a durable R40. A large portion of living space wall area had freely communicated with the attic, and that is now sealed fireproof and airtight.

To see before and after, and a lot more, please consult these Google Documents:

Laurelhurst Paid Invoice Here note $319 per year predicted savings. The $2600 investment with wonderful safety and usability consequences, is repaid in a very-acceptable eight years. Weatherization measures alone are repaid in about two years. I earned only $15.90 per hour here, and must charge more. At fair invoice of $4000, I would have earned $30 per hour, and payback would have lengthened to about thirteen years, still a very good investment.

A $168 rebate on the $400 installed cost of insulation is rather irrelevant. A rebate of any amount on the so-important sealing work would have been very relevant. The attic floor sealing cost of $200 is repaid in nine months of savings, the usual story. It hurts to know weatherization sponsor Energy Trust saw no value in my sealing work, offering cruel insult of the competence and diligence, of one repelled by foolishness and abhorring the scandal of HPwES blower door liars. No one is guided in floor sealing, by a blower door.

Fair compensation of my superior work is threatened by counterfeit weatherization under HPwES. 

Laurelhurst Floor Sealing

As is common, I needed lighted work conditions to make intricate wood support blocks for seals of GP Densarmor drywall.

I use GP Densarmor drywall and flexible grout to seal a chimney chase. This is just one of the many sealing challenges in this job, chosen to illustrate need of in-attic carpentry to make support blocks. Lights, a good work surface for a chop saw, and a vacuum cleaner are essential. Do not accept flimsy fire-unsafe foamed-in plastic. 

Choose Densarmor drywall for plugs that may be refined with a Sureform shaver. The two such plugs in this job each needed lowering into place with a lanyard, and several chopsaw refinements of the scrap 2x4 plug retainer.










Laurelhurst Ladder, Insulation, Decking

Laurelhurst Attic Ventilation Here note foolish cut-in by roofers of roof high vents, only promoting the infiltration losses of house heat. The attic has no soffit vents, but has opportunity of excellent attic ventilation if attic windows are replaced with something modern and motorized, not yet on offer.

Better Math On Weatherization

We see in an article in the Oregonian Newspaper, on 8/3/2014   that Energy Trust Of Oregon , my local handler of public funds for weatherization, has found that weatherization doesn't pay, even when computed for a 45 year life of a measure. I prove that wrong, always. There are very good returns even in a home where Energy Trust saw  nothing to be done, with firm no-bid by a competitor. It's a post at this blog generally challenging Energy Trust's policies:
Math Of Under-R12 Attic Floor Insulation Rule, For Incentives 
The good returns are far more than a matter of adding floor insulation and have no resort to a silly blower door. They include attic floor sealing, thorough R30 insulation in attic walls and installing LED lights, all rejected as profitable measures, by Energy Trust. A five-year payback is computed for hard-covered R30 attic wall insulation in a further blog post for this home:
A Skylight Insulated >R30, With Plywood Hard-Covering 
There is similar under five year payback for upgrade to LED lighting in most cases, and even faster payback for air sealing.

As local enabler and enforcer of US Dept. Of Energy’s Home Performance With Energy Star, HPwES, Energy Trust teaches that a blower door is the engine of weatherization, finding energy-saving opportunities and verifying their completion. “Weatherization” is first about tightening our houses in ways that measurably decrease “infiltration.” The tighter, the better. Little-trained fools are building scientists, who infer what must be done from the blower door numbers. Without the numbers, solutions can not be found. The captains of weatherization under leadership of Building Performance Institute, shall be BPI certified  believers in the testing in and testing out every home, with a blower door. Air sealing shall be trusted and supported with public funds, only where done, very poorly, by the BPI liars. This is baloney. It must not continue.

Work under HPwES is done poorly, in part, because a blower door generally reverses flow in leakage paths, inviting repair only in living spaces, along a carpet, say. Repairs must instead be done in the attic, at hidden crimes of windwash encapsulated in walls; never with, or needing, clues from a blower door. Specific needed repairs, perhaps difficult, will never be included in a HPwES estimators' authorized work list. Where a diligent worker might volunteer, unhappily in darkness and danger, and it is not expected, why should he bother?.

Despite the notions about infiltration, Energy Trust does not require  that such "prep" must be done before rebate-offered addition of insulation. This is madness, with "weatherization" very often doing more harm than good. Money to be saved in the prep, then barred for decades, is commonly double that to be saved by added insulation.

Fresh Air Math
One problem in tightening up houses against exchange of fresh air, beyond the obvious in quality construction, is that it does not save much money in fuel costs. That is what Energy Trust is now awkwardly and confusedly admitting. Little energy is needed to raise or lower the temperature of air. All gases have low specific heat .  One might excessively tighten a house, but there is no money in it, that would offset excessive cost in extreme tightening. Further, significant tightening in existing homes, promised with HPwES, has almost never been delivered.

A healthy home should be refreshed with 0.35 air changes per hour, 0.35 ACHnat.  In a 1000 sq ft home with eight-foot ceilings, this is 0.35*1000*8/60 = 47 cubic feet of fresh air per minute. In a Portland, Oregon year with 4400 heating degree days, heating with an old gas furnace, and with $1 per therm consumer cost, this air is heated at cost of $35 per year. Say the real cost of natural gas counting irreversible depletion and environmental ruin, and military adventure, is $4 per therm. The cost of the fresh air is still only $140 per year. Of this fresh air cost, little is controllable. 

In corresponding bigger numbers, times twenty, now consider blower door test numbers. A blower door measures infiltration with the home strangely exhausted at the rate thought to occur if a twenty mph wind were blowing on all sides, driving air inward. The odd air flow measurement is labeled CFM50, cubic feet per minute at fan pressure differential of fifty pascals, 0.0073 psi. CFM50 and ACH50 are roughly twenty times larger than reverse-flow rates at natural conditions. I think that all payback math for weatherization should be computed with natural gas cost of at least $2 per therm, and use that number in my math. The math  of fresh air cost is: Annual Heating Cost = 0.074 * CFM50, $70 per year for that 1000 sf home with 47 CFMnat. I hope you are still with me, and see the consistency and bases, in the math.



Now talk of the range of control of infiltration. It is rarely more than 1.0 ACH50, 0.05 ACHnat, 7 CFMnat and 140 CFM50, for that 1000 sf home. Annual value in this range of control is $10 per year, at $2 per therm for natural gas. I have known this for years, and have alerted the fact to Energy Trust in hope they would cease promotion of blower door scams. 

In a reasonably tight home where obvious drafts have been controlled, we feel winter cold of air not from infiltration, but from convection of air against cold walls, floors and ceilings. Cold surfaces, felt especially at floors, exist because of poor insulation and because of bathing of back sides with outside air. Stopping that bathing of backsides, and thorough placement of insulation, are what weatherization is about, not some pretense with a blower door.

Where Energy Trust now salutes disappointing returns in weatherization  they fail to understand their error and to be ashamed. They will happily go on with little residential work to do, and more money to misspend on utility and business payouts. Creepy blow and go contractors they love and award their top Three Star rating, who have refused to do air sealing, are hereafter and forever more, defended against criticism.  In all of this there is yet no admission of blower door stupidity. In Portland this Summer we saw distasteful door to door pushing by HPwES/ CEWO  blow and goers claiming to offer free Energy Trust money. I accuse that these kids in new Company shirts with Energy Trust logo, were paid with “cooperative marketing” dirty money, with nothing free for a home owner. It seems HPwES, Clean Energy Works Oregon, EPS, all the programs promoting blower door scams, are alive and well. How can they persist against declared uselessness of actions purportedly guided by a blower door?

The City Of Portland is shamed through endorsement of CEWO, which was hatched in a pilot program of its Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.  BPS stationery has been applied in annual CEWO bulk mailings, a letter, and a follow-up postcard. It appears that Portland taxpayers have paid the cost of this mailing campaign.

I have gotten a letter like this every year, for three years, mailing costs totaling a half-million dollars I reckon. I find the letter scandalous on many counts, starting with offensive foot-in-door threat about deadlines, wanting reckless action. This one arrived 8/13/2014. If a million have been sent, and there are 3500 takers, it proves the offer is correctly judged a very bad deal. We hear instead that 3500 unusually willing and able to take on an inflated $20,000 pile of fifteen-year debt, proves that it is not a bad deal. If you need $3000 of very important work and need up-front financing, you are out of luck. If you are a renter, too paying into our Public Purpose Fund, you can just pay the higher bills, perhaps demeaned with public support. Your landlord knows that helping out, doing the right thing against bleeding of energy and personal suffering, is not expected or rewarded in our City.

So, what shall we do with blower doors? They shall not be used in many of our homes. In our homes, in the matter of sealing wall headers , we have expended the testing budget. There might yet be some academic testing as we defend the real reasons all wall headers must be sealed. I would like to buy mine back , at dimes on the dollar, to be part of the academic effort. My own home is a test lab, testing in at 10.1 ACH50, and probably now down to less than 7.0. I would share my findings on what works. From all of the BPI blower door madness, we have learned nothing about what, in controlling air circulation, contributes to a healthy home. It was only about rewarding and enforcing the reckless HPwES believers, all results confidential for protection of scammers.

We shall go on tightening our houses against attic floor pits and air-barrier encapsulation of all insulation, knowing it is not a game of blower door numbers. We must act with knowledge added insulation does pay, after measures of sealing, upgrade to LED plate lighting and safety modernization of wiring and plumbing are done first. Insulation cost is repaid in much less than twenty years even at modest $2 per therm energy cost. Regulators such as Oregon's Public Utility Commission may be commanded to employ fifty-year cost of energy in the administration of public funds for weatherization. Cheap and evil fracked natural gas will expire in less than ten years , evident to any responsible person, and government must act responsibly. We are not done with weatherization. For the poor especially, and especially for meanly-neglected renters, we have hardly begun.

Working With Cotton Insulation Batts

This post is edited and reissued as:

https://energyconservationhowto.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-deep-energy-retrofit-fall-of-2013.html   

Please go there.

Better, find all posts discussing cotton batt insulation:

https://energyconservationhowto.blogspot.com/search?q=cotton   

This is the superseded post, not deleted.

Out of necessity for a customer, I have gained lessons in the usefulness of UltraTouch cotton batts in residential weatherization. Here is a sharing of those lessons.

The owner of the reported home aimed to be best green, in needful improvement of insulation, in Fall, 2008. Then, and now, UltraTouch denim batts by Bonded Logic, Inc., offers

impressive claims.

UltraTouch™ Denim Insulation is the successful combination of 35 years of insulation experience and a revolutionary patented manufacturing process that has created a superior and safe product.

UltraTouch is made from high-quality natural fibers. These fibers contain inherent qualities that provide for extremely effective sound absorption and maximum thermal performance. UltraTouch has No Fiberglass Itch and is easy to handle and work with. UltraTouch contains no chemical irritants and requires no warning labels compared to other traditional products. There are no VOC concerns when using UltraTouch, as it is safe for you and the environment.

UltraTouch is also a Class-A Building Product and meets the highest ASTM testing standards for fire and smoke ratings, fungi resistance and corrosiveness. UltraTouch™ Denim Insulation contains 80% post-consumer recycled natural fibers making it an ideal choice for anyone looking to use a high quality sustainable building material.

UltraTouch makes installation user-friendly. The inclusion of perforated batts allows for quick and easy off-size cavity installation. Simply measure, tear, fit and you're done!.

Many bags of UltraTouch R30 in size 23"x48" were purchased, for placement in the crawl space, by a hired top-notch weatherization  contractor, and for the attic, to be placed by the home owner. Things did not go well, with more than $8000 paid to the contractor, and more money tied up in mis-applied  or stockpiled cotton batts, by the home owner. All for little, if any, saving of energy. The home owner was responsible for misunderstanding how to insulate an attic, but was misled by the bad example of the contractor's work in the crawl space, and couldn't find guidance anywhere.

In reporting here, I intend to be useful to contractors and their management authorities everywhere. I hope to also get the attention of batt manufacturer Bonded Logic, Inc.. Bonded Logic may not sell product with no responsibility to advise in competent usage. From an experience here, consumers should learn that benefit from cotton batts is not easily obtained. There are many ways to use them inappropriately. Cotton batts are not uniquely "green;" in that deserving slack over misuse. Search, that now readily finds this blog post, nets little other help, and finds a lot of condemnation. Cotton batts are useless placed alone as wall insulation, where they can't adjustably fill cavities, and cavities not full may have no effective insulation. The recently-added Bonded Logic brag of perforated batts  is empty. Batts still will not fill a wall on thickness, and perforations will likely be at unlucky widths. 

Here, I find pretty decent usage of cotton batts in an attic floor as top layer with flexible fill-in of fiberglass, liking that they tolerate being walked upon. In a crawl space, after a lot of work, I guess they are ok.

Photos that follow are drawn from a Web album with similar captions:

Repairing The Installation Of Cotton Insulation Batts In An Attic and In A Crawl Space 

The attic treatment of cotton batts began with taking down batts unwisely hung from roof joists. After a couple of years, mold was starting to grow above the batts, at the underside of the roof sheathing. Batts were wet.

Cotton batts dropped from roof joists and brought up new, would cover about three quarters of the attic floor.

Top up an R21 insulation base layer using new R11 batts. Supplement R30 cotton batts crossing floor joists, with R30 fiberglass batts. Protect all soffit vents with plywood baffles, and place R30 all the way out to cover exterior wall headers.

Note a Romex electrical wire here, correctly running over, not through floor joists. With thick insulation, electrical service should be permitted by simply lifting top-course batts.

Plywood decking is very important to work access. Plywood is raised 5" above floor joists, upon new 2x4 uprights 24" oc.

Furnace return air ducts are covered with R21 insulation, minimum, including a firm skin of poly skrim kraft upon R11 basement wall insulation. Duct insulation is tucked into top layer batts, or is screwed to plywood decking.










With the blocked access, the home owner was concerned about the placement of the crawl space batts. The batt installer, after days of awful work in this, would not be confronted.  Thinking things weren't right, the home owner chose to forego a rebate claim, and didn't know what to do for resolution.

In the course of attic work, I inspected the crawl space. I reported that, as expected, the twined-up batts were sagging everywhere, only in contact with flooring in lines at edges. Full floor contact is mandated by regulating authority, Energy Trust of Oregon, ETO. Their rule stated:


Insulation shall be installed so that there is no air space between the top of the insulation and the floor.



Unacceptable work is not eligible for rebate, so a rebate now would give the home owner some compensation for the cost of needed repairs. The installer refused to accept any responsibility in this, but we will see what happens in review after the repairs.

In time, I devised a repair plan, posted for more than a year, and shared for comment with responsible parties, manufacturer Bonded Logic, Inc. and regulator Energy Trust Of Oregon. There was no thinking or standing up with me for the interest of the home owner.

This is the actual method of tying up crawl space batts that I had to work with. Batts were generally in pairs of matched 48" length, one 23" wide, the other somehow sawn 21" wide. The twine was fairly useful near to floor joists, and I left it in place. At about every 9" on average, in the slot between batts, I stapled up a loop of 17ga electric fence wire about 20" long, thus:

The battens typically were cut to 43" lengths. I used about 200 eight-foot lengths, costing $1.79 each. The lumber cost is significant.





















Now consider how this might have been done, starting with new batts. I think each batt might be thrown up, upon a 2x3 or 2x4, to then be progressively secured higher-up, with wire and battens. The wires might be preset on other wire or lumber, adding to material cost but saving labor.

The same number of battens are needed whether or not there is benefit of prior twining. Lumber cost here remains about $400. 

There is a nicer solution that has higher material cost, but would be superior overall:

Complete coverage with 3/8" CDX plywood sections costs about $15 for each eight-foot length of joist bay. Four eight-foot 1x2 battens in the same service would cost about $7. The lumber cost is doubled, but the isolation of insulation is a good deal, that should be mandatory. No insulation anywhere, not even on an attic floor, should be left raw, to be abused. Reduced labor costs might more than compensate for plywood cost. Where insulation is already hanging down but is not foul, this is a really good solution.



Home Performance Education For The Determined Or Advised Reader

The situation of waste found in this home had existed for nearly three years.  

Enter then, myself, first for the attic work. I was discovered through new home owner membership in Angie's List. Already in Fall, 2011, I had been banished as a Trade Ally of Energy Trust of Oregon, and could not be found among the "players." Banishment for a year, but now seemingly forever, was for reporting to each customer the things I do, that are not done by those within the embrace of Energy Trust, contractors who brag upon the misperceptions of "Home Performance With Energy Star," HPwES. 

The problems with HPwES begin with a basic false claim, that a blower door is the guide and measure of weatherization progress. As guide, in eight years of ever more-professional service, I have never seen a situation needing guidance of a blower door. As measure, achievable sealing rarely has value of more than $20 per year.

I have repaired many large energy bleeds not at all detectable by a blower door. Most attic floor pits, as with the generally-found chimney chase, have little effect on blower door readings. Where the goal is real or jiggered improvement of blower door readings, by hundreds of CFM50,  correction of floor pits is not rewarded.  

Even where they might affect blower door readings, bleeds are almost never found that way. The clean-shirted technician can not and will not be in the usual dark and dangerous attic while his blower door is operating.  Workers will rarely take initiative to fix the things they might see and care about, of course unknown, then not in a contract. Buried problems usually have much higher opportunity cost, than any benefit.

Among issues that could be seen and expressed, the home owner was very upset by ugly and useless "sealing", as characterized by this crude aerosol orange foaming about the exhaust duct of the kitchen microwave, in a kitchen cabinet. 


















The conditions of unacceptable sealing found, and their repair, can not be summed up in a few photos. For the detailed story of sealing, please download and study a large pdf album:

Real Sealing Fixes HPwES Sealing In An Oregon Attic 

Where CFM50 = 7.5 * (Hole Size, sq in), total ducts hole size is 71 sq in., as with more than two 6" ducts (28 sq in each) fully detached. If workers found two duct sections detached, and reset them without comment, that is not duct sealing action of goop troops. It should not count. If ducts can fall down, then how could workers justify leaving the crawl space inaccessible after their departure? Leakage of 205 CFM50 is still huge, and should not be allowed. None of the steel ducts were found or left with required screws. Nearly all joints, now stiffened with goop, remained closed by dried-out ordinary duct tape. This was not duct sealing by some scientific process, and was not worthy of compensation. Most of the involved money should be reclaimed to compensate the home owner for the cost of my fully replacing the ducts, needfully and with courage, restoring access for extremely difficult work in the crawl space.

I don't believe sealing actions could have amounted to more than a few hundred CFM50. A 100 CFM50 reduction is closure of 13 sq in, a total equivalent hole four inches diameter or a gap 1/16" wide and 18 ft long. The great majority of reported reduction was from knowing fraud in devising a to-be-closed air handler room yet attic floor pit, with a gasketed new door. It is not allowed that an interior door may be closed in pre or post "Home Performance Testing." The door was a mystery to the home owner, perhaps to be closed for convenience.

This was my third run-in with this contractor, where I did the real sealing. In one, there were a car-bashed large hole in the garage wall, hidden behind a woodpile, and two closets with large leakage to outside controlled by closing doors; of course none found by blower door.

No one does better sealing of an attic floor or HVAC ducting than I do, with absolute disdain for fraud of Home Performance. I find problems as one must, digging down and dirty, by sight. I don't just reduce duct leakage. I methodically eliminate it, verifiable by sight as I go, and in method-sampling photos.

Here is discussion of my improvement of the crawlspace HVAC ducts in this home:
http://energyconservationhowto.blogspot.com/2013/11/more-hvac-circuitry-in-crawl-space.html 

The ugly obstructions beginning at the access hole are gone! Repair of the cotton-batt insulation could only be done after removing the found HVAC ducts for recycling. Quite a pile. Hundreds of pounds of steel that had responded to every furnace cycle .