Energy
-
August 27, 2018
A comprehensive guide to getting the most out of your blower door system
Authored By: Sam MyersA blower door system can do much more than tell you how much your building is leaking. It can also help you determine the location and severity of the leaks in different zones. There are also cases where you can use your blower door to determine if some ventilation systems are working properly. Knowing the tightness of a home and finding leaks is helpful to HERS Raters, BPI analysts, insulators and HVAC contractors. In this article we’ll introduce the blower door system and how it works for those who are new to the building performance industry. Then we’ll get into various methods to make your blower door work harder, impress your clients and increase the services you offer.
Air Tightness: Why Do We Care?
The reason we care about air tightness in
-
June 20, 2018
When it comes to home energy performance, comfort, durability and health, the United States falls short in the ranks compared to other developed countries. This is based on the 35 years of experience that Colin Genge has in testing houses from coast to coast and from selling diagnostic tools to over 10,000 technicians who have tested millions more.
Duct leakage in existing homes can range from 12% to 35%.
Most American houses have poor quality flex duct running outside of the envelope into attics and/or crawlspaces and typically leak an average of about 20%. Some as high as 50%! Code for new houses allows roughly 12% leakage but most houses are not properly tested if they are tested at all. See The Compliance Project for details. These figures are also reflected in past DOE studies of homes built across the US. Older homes are generally much worse especially when duct tape and flex fail over
-
April 23, 2018
As you may have heard, the RESNET 380 standard will replace RESNET Ch. 8 which dictates how raters test homes for envelope leakage, duct leakage, mechanical ventilation, and duct system air flows. Any home permitted on or after July, 1 2018 must be tested in accordance to the 380 Standard. The standard currently applies to all single-family homes as well as multifamily projects that are three stories or less. There are more updates coming for multifamily so make sure you are signed up to receive email updates from RESNET.
Definitions
One goal of the 380 standard is to improve consistency throughout the HERS process and to reduce the need for Raters to make judgement calls when taking measurements in the field. To help achieve this, the standard includes definitions for:
- Conditioned Space Volume
- Unconditioned Space Volume
- Infiltration Volume
- Conditioned Floor Area
- ELA & other metrics
Envelope
-
May 23, 2017
Expect to see changes that will allow oil and gas companies to sell more product even in areas where renewables and conservation are cheaper without subsidies. Hiding the science of climate change will make it easier for America to continue to avoid a movement to 21st Century technology that will leave American behind the rest of the world competitively. Consider that Norway will ban new gas powered cars by 2025 and Germany makes houses that use 1/20th the energy of an American house.
America could fall well behind the rest of the world but there is at least on bright spot as Tesla just became America’s most valuable car company in a few years and will soon dominate solar collection with a
-
May 04, 2017
Renewables create almost as many jobs as fossil fuels that receive all the government attention. More astonishing is that energy efficiency produces more jobs that both but gets zero attention from politicians. The following article (originally posted here) outlines these details. Credit: Jim Barrett, Chief Economist.
Coal is big. Solar’s bigger. But energy efficiency is the biggest.
Blog | April 28, 2017 - 10:19 am
By Jim Barrett, Chief Economist
-
April 17, 2017
One of the world’s largest projects built to save energy
Trump’s proposal to eliminate popular money-saving energy efficiency programs, including the EPA’s Energy Star Program and the DOE’s Weatherization Assistance Program will be a major loss for consumers, experts have warned — but also for the climate.
A professor at the University of California at Los Angeles were able to analyze data on the energy use of 178,777 commercial buildings from the years 2005 to 2012. Their findings show Energy Star and LEED-certified buildings used 19.31
-
March 21, 2017
The Washington State Department of Commerce has released, "Evergreen Sustainable Development Standard Version 3.0." Below are notes as related to residential airtightness testing:
Section 5.11: Airchange on rehab gets 3 pts for 7 ACH and 7 pts for 5 ACH. This could be difficult in some types of houses. Key step, is to find all the attic leaks around plumbing stack vents and chimneys that can be sealed off with foamboard, foam and sheet metal for chimneys. Then wiring penetrations and pot lights that must all be replaced with sealed LED units to save on leakage and power. This work is most easily done by removing the insulation which will allow the tops of all wals to be sealed between the 2x4 and sheetrock. All open joist ends must be blocked and sealed. Then look at joist spaces in the basement that should all be foamed. DOE has a Bypass Guide
-
March 13, 2017
Congratulations to Craig Senglin, winner of Retrotec’s $2,000 Equipment Giveaway at RESNET!
Retrotec’s $2,000 Equipment Giveaway celebrated the release of rCloud, a cutting-edge testing platform for the blower door and duct testing industries. The platform geolocates testing locations, performs automatic tests, creates sharable compliance reports, and secures results safely in the cloud.
RESNET participants who completed a contest form & rCloud questionnaire were eligible to win this year’s contest. Out of approximately 50 contestants, Craig Senglin of Energy IQ came home with the prize.
About Craig & Energy IQ
Energy IQ is a Trusted Advisor for energy code, energy efficiency, and
