Portal Rules Considered By Energy Trust

I invested today in a meeting with rule experts at Energy Trust of Oregon. With promise of pending rules revision, I am told to go ahead and make/ sell >R5 portals. I will take this to mean use of maximum insulation within a structure thickness of about 2", where there is available hinge and latch hardware. I will aim for R7, with 1 1/2" EPS foam panels, 1/8" MDF facings, about 1 7/8" thickness, and a minimum of wood spacers and supports. Where I employ found manufactured attic ladders with a common 1" insulated door thickness, the claimed R5 will be sufficient. 


Rules are not revised for makeshift weatherization. A crummy uninsulated ladder will have to be covered with an R10 tarp, hoping for floor sealing. There will be no interest in disparaging the "American" products.  If a found kneewall closet door is weatherized, it must be gasketed, and somehow dressed with about 3 1/2" EPS foam, or fiberglass batting, to R15, but I can install my door that is ample R7. I can offer a sleek R7 two-inch thickness factory-built ceiling portal cover, but a coper with found wood or drywall covers, will need to stick on R30 insulation, somehow. If the builder of Oregon State Park cabins is called to fix floor hatches, he will be obliged to get that 4" block of urethane foam to stay on this time, somehow, and this time somehow intimate with the wood. 


An aspect of this decision is doing nothing to restrict sale of junky products at lowest-possible price, the American way. Reformed quality requirements for outside doors will not apply to attic ladders. Builders may continue to throw up a piece of drywall in a ceiling-access hole, leaving a problem to be coped-with by an insulation installer, who MUST invent something. In a parallel non-correction, a handyman may continue to pocket another dollar, installing a non-IC can light, sold with no restrictions, no store-shelf warnings. I must twist the customer's arm to replace that can light at the full dollar-more cost, when I insulate that attic and refuse to use the insulation barrier suggested by Energy Trust as a preferred method.


I should be happy that I can shame the coper competition, which does not show up, at the Better Living Show. Somehow, I am not. I dearly wanted a simple R5 rule for all home service penetrations, with no special mention of attic, closet and crawl space doors.


I will take non-contradiction of this post as my rule authority.

A Cure for Tarp Madness

The issue with house service and convenience features, other than outside-wall windows and doors, is to not miss opportunity to save some energy, and to not allow conditions that rot. Think of a circuit breaker panel set into an outside wall. It is a blind penetration that won't let in any life-giving light. Therefore the minimum associated weatherization is air-tightness, and total R5 for that area of the wall, to be achieved outside the panel. It stays clean and dry, at near the temperature of the conditioned space. There is a vapor barrier, that is beneficial wherever you live. In Louisiana, or Port Aransas, Texas, humid outside air is not condensing under influence of your AC. In Barrow, Alaska, the space is not below the dew point in coldest winter, and sucking down the consequences of a little household health-giving humidity.


In keeping with this intelligent diligence, I am allowed, even openly encouraged, to stop at R5 as I construct and sell attic and crawl space portals. Yes, they are air-tight. They further stop passage of humidity. No plop-batt sops. Not the site-build failure I found in a wonderful state-park cabin floor. (Please see A Failed Floor Portal, among pdf Offerings, at my web page