A Library Of Evil In Fracking

Public officials especially, shall prefer the research of caring individuals, to the lies of scheming investors. What do those investors want? I think, to cash in at the back end on energy derivatives when truth and justice prevail, predictably. They don't care about any of us, further proof in schemes to drive up prices for their holdings of public resources, by exporting them, aided by bought government. And, all of this is part of a larger vacuum cleaner run by biggest insiders, that false evidence of prosperity floats a new real estate bubble, and more. Some cruelly inefficient homes, new, and especially old, are selling at record prices to people who should have learned a lesson. A trend like this for investors, is way beyond sustainable, lifted by lies and many trillions of dollars added national debt, in a weird new set of cycles:

The next fall will be historic and irreversible. Another bailout of the investor-gamblers to continue the game, will be impossible. It will come. You know it. We all know it. Many poor people will die, in their inefficient homes. Regulators and public servants who had a duty to serve the public interest, might be remembered, and despised. Fighting on for homes in Oregon will be harder, where we were off course on dead-slow, and have now abandoned ship.

Please see a Yahoo!  continuation of the above chart, to October 2014:

May anyone presume the indefinite future will be like the present? 

Fracking has helped to build the precipice. Fracking has never been intended to maintain "prosperity," but only to enlarge the bubble. Some engineers of disaster believe they are in control, and gain more, the bigger the bursting bubble and the greater the chaos. It is to our shame, and the ruin of all, that hedge investing is legal, to cause and profit from collapse.

Here are writings of believable individuals:

Free Downloads:
http://www.sccma-mcms.org/Portals/19/assets/docs/fracking.pdf 

Fracking Our Farmland, Our Families and Our Future: A New Toxic Legacy
Cindy Russell, M.D.
V.P. Community Health Santa Clara County Medical Association

Books, paperback or Kindle, at Amazon:
Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future by Richard Heinberg (Jul 24, 2013)

Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting With Disaster , by Walter Brasch (Feb, 2014)


At 8/17/2017, where this conversation is cited in comments to ACEEE, add this current chart of S&P 500. I think we have finally begun the descent.

In Oregon and all of the Pacific Northwest, I have played a role in discouragement of fracking investment through defeat of proposed coal, oil and gas export terminals. Yet the stock market madness grows to ever more terrifying heights:
DJI at 12/9/2017:

S&P 500 at 12/9/2017:

Is UM 1622 Already Decided? An End Of Weatherization In Oregon?

Is UM 1622 Already Decided?

Oregon's Public Utility Commission "Staff", whoever that means, has issued what appears to be the full breadth of an expected OPUC ruling:

Description:  Staff Report for September 30, 2014 Public Meeting (Item No. 1); Filed by Juliet Johnson.

Docket Name:  ENERGY TRUST OF OREGON EXCEPTIONS

Utility Company: 

Type of Activity:  STAFF REPORT, filed on 9/25/2014.

To view this document, please click on the below link:

        http://edocs.puc.state.or.us/efdocs/HAU/um1622hau162141.pdf

Here at document page 22, is the entirety of the staff recognition of my comments and the full breadth of my internet sharing, evident through all hyperlinks:

In response to this docket Phillip Norman provided excerpts from a blog that he writes.
In the blog excerpts he asserts gas prices will go up due to future unforeseen tracking
regulations.

Yes, that's a typo of fracking. Does Staff know anything about this evil? You will correct this typo, and nothing else in the issued ruling, in your evil misconception about cheap energy-to-be-wasted. Each deeply-felt comment got similar snooty dismissal. There is no excuse that you have not applied fifty year cost of energy in the math. And, you have not even questioned Energy Trust's undocumented queer math, so out of touch with the reality known to most home owners, who are not going to Cabo for the Winter. Is there more to it than wrong energy cost and the huge overhead in low-volume delivery?

Here at document page 74 is the recommendation of OPUC Staff in matters of single family residential weatherization:

Here at document page 74 is the recommendation of OPUC Staff in matters of multifamily residential weatherization:

If enacted, this means Energy Trust may spend Public Purpose funds, give small incentives as their queer means, for attic insulation only.  This ignores the fact that Energy Trust overhead is about $25,000 per home served, and rebate amounts are meaningless in the big picture.

At 10/3/2014, the deed is done:

Description:  Errata Order No. 14-343, signed by Commissioners John Savage and Stephen M. Bloom; DISPOSITION:  ORDER NO. 14-332 CORRECTED.  Copies electronically served 10/3/14.

Docket Name:  ENERGY TRUST OF OREGON EXCEPTIONS

Utility Company: 

Type of Activity:  ORDER, signed on 10/3/2014.

To view this document, please click on the below link:

        http://apps.puc.state.or.us/edockets/orders.asp?ordernumber=14-343

The public shall judge that only attic insulation matters; all other measures are not cost effective. This is mean. It is wrong. It ignores all facts I have presented for OPUC consideration. The idiotic air sealing pilot program I have criticized , though called Final, and should-be-dead, is continued somehow.

And, here let us call a distinction in single family programs between existing homes and new homes. Public Purpose funds should never be spent on new homes. Their quality of construction is a matter of code enforcement and commercial, not society, quality control. Perhaps new means are needed to ensure quality with spec homes, as with an assigned and paid outside party. Quality increments in costs are borne without issue in new mortgages. It is only in the matter of somehow-defective existing homes, that  interest is due for an unwary public. Energy Trust and OPUC shall have no fiduciary relationship with new-home builders. Especially, Energy Trust shall cease offering bribes to new-home builders to apply meaningless Energy Performance Score labels, EPS,  a commercial product sold to Cake Systems and taking about $1000 per label from Public Purpose funds, just in payouts to builders; perhaps double that counting assorted overhead. The illegality in not being subject to any test of benefit. Acquiring a rating is a commercial decision, and many rating systems are recognized by Oregon Department of Energy . It is wrong to use public funds to favor the ETO/ Cake Systems product. This aside, where is there a need for public incentives in new home construction? OPUC is doing nothing about misadventures with EPS, while acting to wreck existing-home weatherization.

An End Of Weatherization In Oregon?

Of course not. If residential weatherization becomes fully detached from Energy Trust and the OPUC, the public will demand new management, and some workable use of the taxes in a still-mandated Public Purpose Fund. Programs not engaged in residential weatherization will not be tolerated.

Comments Upon the 9/30/2014 OPUC Public Meeting
I did get to speak at the hearing, but no one at this "public meeting" had any influence. Action had already been firmly decided without need or any real consideration of public comment. Were those who spoke recorded, even? The process has been a sham, and I accuse the American Legislative Exchange Council has played a very silent but big role in the crime. We get badly installed attic insulation where our Public Purpose Fund and Energy Trust have anything to do with it, nothing more. Outside the Portland area, agencies other than Energy Trust perhaps still have good resort to Public Purpose funds, and may not be shut down by hammer-wielding OPUC. Commissioners accept that in five months, most Portland-area weatherization workers will lose their jobs, and good riddance to us. A six month delay was asked; five were granted in compromise from first-offered four, unilaterally by godlike Commissioner John Savage. Dispirited, many will seek other work with a future, immediately. This is stupid, really, really stupid.  I think this is deliberate elimination of public support of weatherization, eliminating the involved taxes upon natural gas and electricity bills. I hope we say good riddance to OPUC and Energy Trust, after re-creating a Public Purpose Fund as a draw upon state income taxes, say 1%, whatever is a similar amount. Weatherization should be for everyone, even those heating with wood, and strong association with fracked natural gas, even for electricity, has been troublesome. I hope the utility tax, while still in the law, will be impounded for issue in up-front loans through an Oregon State Bank. Where for all these years half of the tax contribution has been from home owners and only 15% has come back to them, we have some catching up to do, for fairness. And hereafter it shall not be that any favored person is given anything. All action shall be in the form of fair loans to anyone, for qualifying highest-integrity work, as it should always have been. If nothing were being "given away", there could have been no basis for the lynching.

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.

Program Overhead Costs Killing Weatherization

In Oregon, program Clean Energy Works Oregon , has overhead cost of at least $5000 per home "served." $20,000,000 of "stimulus" money from US Dept Of Energy Better Buildings Neighborhood Program  has been squandered in 3200 homes. That is administration cost wrongly, illegally ,  not subjected to required cost/ benefit tests. Money spent in program administration only. None employed in the involved loans to home owners to actually, perhaps, do some good. $20 million/ 3200 = $6250 per. $5000? Well, maybe CEWO still had some of the $20 million left when stupidly given another year or so of life in a $10 million illegal gift of State of Oregon funds. Such administration cost looks a little less outrageous if a project costs at least $20,000, so CEWO will push needless furnace upgrades, windows that don't save money, a big photovoltaic array, whatever it takes. If your bid doesn't measure up, say coming in at only $14,000, your contractor, so used to all the fat-to-be-skimmed, won't really be interested. If you buy into one of these bad deals, you will never recover your investment in savings. Paying off your big fifteen year loan at 6% interest, you might not be able to afford things you really need in retaining a home: safe wiring, working plumbing, a sturdy roof, protective paint. It may be all of your maintenance budget, and a lot more, in the hands of that self-biased, hard-selling-schmooz "weatherization" general contractor.

CEWO is not alone in the maladministration. USDOE tells stories of its actions to grow the map, including taught deceptive marketing, gifts of stupid blower doors and more. Good deals need only publicity, never a hard sell.

Weatherization not done well, and so very expensively, is then being reconsidered. Should we just call it quits? Have we already plucked enough of the low-hanging fruit? Sadly, people even including our well intentioned Oregonian reporter , take that question seriously. In fact, we have hardly begun to weatherize our homes. Our wastefulness is growing. New homes are still built with energy bleeds including dozens of leaky incandescent or halogen can lights. More large attic floor defects are hidden every day, under spotty blankets of obstructive loose-fill insulation. Energy is cheap. Cheapest labor and materials must be found. Who cares? We are confused by the counterfeit, rationed weatherization for a random few.

In contrast to the cruel mindset of CEWO contractor-participants, please consider my experience in what a good insulation job should cost.

There is no place in the CEWO, Better Buildings, HPwES, BPI scheme, for the real job opportunities. Among the real job opportunities, each is to be done with full diligence . Instead, it is taught that a $3000 or more purchased BPI-liar certificate is prerequisite, creating a moat about those few, honored participants in the scam. Those participants dominate a badly shrunken and demoralized weatherization workforce, lacking pride. Those working outside the system then are unregulated and fully untrained. A few may be like me, just behaving with better morality, inventing the needed self-education.

Please know that 42 of my 104 insulation jobs include the creative work of inventing safe access with an insulated and gasketed ladder . On average, insulation is less than one third of job cost. Publicly-supported weatherization should provide for the access cost. It should also permit home owners, not those pocketing weatherization Generals, to hire heating contractors, electricians, roofers and perhaps a few other specialists, for associated prerequisite repairs else neglected. We have a common interest in the health of our homes. When someone suffers and must watch an investment decay, no one benefits.


The wastefulness of CEWO and other Better Buildings programs seems awful, but may the standard programs of Oregon's Energy Trust under our Public Purpose Fund, have even higher perceived overhead? The hundreds of millions of dollars spent by Energy Trust shall be strongly focused on residential energy efficiency. Consider the following Energy Trust statement in 2008 :

Market value of savings/generation (2002-2008)

Because of Energy Trust programs, electric utility customers use less fossil fuel generated
power and have lower utility bills. As of 2008, the electric bill savings from customers
participating in Energy Trust programs is estimated at $132 million a year. By sector, the
savings are:
Residential $ 60.5 million
Commercial $ 32.9 million
Industrial $ 38.6 million

Because of Energy Trust programs, natural gas utility customers use less gas and have lower utility bills. As of 2008, the savings on gas bills from customers participating in Energy Trust programs is estimated at $11.9 million a year. By sector, the savings are:
Residential $ 6.7 million
Commercial $ 5.2 million
Industrial $ 0.17 million

The total combined savings value to customers stemming from Energy Trust programs is $144 million annually as of 2008.

About half of Energy Trust's expenditure of Public Purpose Fund money shall have related to residential energy efficiency. Say $20 million are spent each year in the cause of residential weatherization, using numbers at program onset in 2002. If only 800 homes per year are served , that is an overhead of $25,000 per home engaged. Am I wrong? Shouldn't Energy Trust and its enabling Oregon Public Utilities Commission be deeply, deeply ashamed?

The answer to high overhead per home served is to increase the number of homes served by a needed number of times-fifty . How shall we do this? That is what the OPUC should be talking about at a hearing approximately September 30, 2014 . Will they?

Following ACEEE Blog, Furnace Fans As Energy Hog

I'm just a seventy-year old educated person doing weatherization of homes by myself as I see fit, learning and sharing methods and concern over policy issues. I blog. I maintain web sites. I have leading-edge insights in things I pursue, such as fast adoption of better LED down lighting. Writing on 8-26-2014, I am obsessed with an impending meeting in Portland, Oregon, on about 9-30-2014, a hearing of Oregon's Public Utility Commission in turmoil over strange assessment of weatherization cost-effectiveness . I have a lot to learn, if I am to have a contribution to a better outcome. In my research I see valuable writing by ACEEE, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. They have a blog, and near top I find this post :

Taming an energy hog with efficiency standards 

---

June 25, 2014 - 12:12pm

---

By Joanna Mauer, Technical Advocacy Manager, Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP)

The Department of Energy (DOE) issued new efficiency standards today that will dramatically reduce the energy use of a little-known home energy hog. Furnace fans, which circulate heated and cooled air throughout a home, consume more than twice the electricity in a year as a typical new refrigerator. The new standards will cut the cost to power furnace fans by about 40% and also deliver improved comfort.

Most furnace fans come as part of a furnace. But in homes with central air conditioning, the fan circulates cooled air during the summer in addition to the heated air during the winter. Furnace fans consume about 1,000 kilowatt-hours per year, or almost 10% of the total electricity use of an average U.S. home. And yet, while the energy use of furnace fans is significantly higher than that of other common home appliances (see below), because furnace fans are inside a furnace, their energy consumption is hidden to most consumers.

And, I comment:

Your furnace fan likely consumes more than twice the electricity of your refrigerator. In time a new furnace will implement some cost savings for you. But, please think. In most homes, most of the load on that fan is in hacked-in D-boxes entering and leaving a furnace. We must NOT continue to build heating systems where ducting is an afterthought of the arriving installation crew. We must install intelligently-designed hydrodynamically-efficient plena . These plena must not be judged solely upon higher installed cost, to be avoided.

The fan is not simply the hog. It is the summation of fan with leaky and stupid ducting. We should replace that ducting now. When your furnace fails, and that is the cost-effective time to replace it , be ready with the better ducting already in place. Your installer won't give much thought to your ducts if called in an emergency, perhaps not offering improvement under any circumstance. Fix ducts now, upon your own initiative! The engineered plena and strongly-attached, zero leakage ducts, will only make your furnace more serviceable. In the deal, get rid of heat capacity in ducts , acting just like leakage.

At 9/28/2015, admit that electricity draw by a furnace with a squirrel cage fan goes down , if ducts are more resistive and blower flow is reduced. Added cost with poor duct design is in longer run times, and greatly increased run times to cope with an important room that has inadequate register flow. The savings in motor electrical efficiency are very large , but this is not associated with a campaign for better ducts. In time, I will rewrite the previous paragraph. I will not relent in campaigning for well-built ducts, asserting that octopus D-box ducting is foolish.

At 9/27/2016, begin reporting of experimental measurements of blower behavior as function of duct resistance. Here is a setup to measure furnace electrical power draw, as one of the efficiency parameters:

Caption:

This Kill-A -Watt meter is in series with all electrical power draw of my furnace with very-efficient ducts. The display here is of 7 watts dead draw. In a heating cycle, the power steps up to 130 watts while firing and then to about 450 watts (5.2 amps) while the blower runs. 

If I fully cover the return air filter with cardboard, I hear rumbling complaint, and power draw falls to 400 watts. The lesson is that duct inefficiency will have little effect on momentary power draw, yet large impact on fuel and electrical energy consumed, in proportion to cycle time, inverse to blower flow rate.






My challenge in assessing savings from improvement of duct efficiency will be to sense change of blower flow rate with logical reduction of duct resistance.

Google:
Squirrel cage blower flow rate impact of reduced duct resistance 

Find AMCA, Air Movement and Control Association International, Inc. , via Wikipedia at top of the search. I hope that AMCA can help me in test setup for the myriad of home situations I will face. I am advised by excellent blower manufacturer Rosenberg USA , that flow rate is not easily or accurately inferred from static pressure measurements. I don't expect to get much help from any furnace manufacturer.

I can reach some conclusions about operation with variable duct resistance, from two non-obtrusive holes in my furnace ducts. Operate my new Testo 510 digital manometer in scale Pascals, Pa. I don't need any heat in warm late-September, but run the thermostat up to force heating cycles.

With furnace firing and blower running, read 33 to 35 Pa across the filter. Close 75% of floor registers and read 27 to 28 Pa, corresponding to a 10% drop in flow through the filter. After firing stops, and with registers again open, observe 32 to 33 Pa filter pressure differential.

Extreme changes to ducts aren't likely to change blower flow by more than 10%. Where reduced flow is with same heat input, the temperature at registers will go up, and cycle time will change little.






I learn here that measurements of operating cost effect, may not help to justify duct innovation. Perhaps it is enough to offer such for reasons of getting ducts buried, out of harms way. and for better regulation of equal register flows without need of dampers and their confused settings. In the process, ensure there is zero leakage of ducts, and a minimum of the leakage-like effect of needless thermal mass of steel, swinging with furnace cycles.

Where I offer sealing and insulation improvement along with duct innovation, I despair of making sense of measurements now possible with my investment in instruments, from long-term monitoring of expected home energy savings. 

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.