Energy Bills, Bad Foam, and the Homes Nobody Fixed Right

This podcast is brought to you by Open Door Mission, restoring hope and changing lives. opendoormission.com. Well, don't look now. It's time for another Wise Home Energy show right here on, the Voice of Liberty,

WYSL, WLEA. Pure energy. And to take us there, none other than the major domo of Wise Home Energy, Jeff Flaherty in the house, and the crowd goes wild. Whoo. All right, Bob. I'm, uh, back in the house, just returning from the National Home Performance Conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Nifty. Cool. Yeah. They rotate it' around, uh, to different cities every year, and, uh, this year it was in Columbus.

And, uh, when I looked down the, uh, the r- list of occupants or attendees or presenters, uh, didn't see a lot of New York contractors. There, was Halco, uh, out of Phelps, New York. Mm-hmm. Uh, they, they bring a lot of people and present and, uh, myself, I was there from Wise Home Energy, uh, presenting on a few panels. And then, uh, didn't really see anybody else from Upstate New York. So it, it always saddens me that people aren't, uh, willing to invest in their education and in the career that they've chosen, so. Wonder what that's all about. Yes. Where, where are they? So in six weeks, we're gonna be up in Saratoga for a regional conference, so hopefully we'll, we'll see lots of, uh, contractors up there. But sometimes it's the ones that aren't there that are the ones that are, uh, driving homeowners and, uh, uh, myself, uh, crazy with some of the, some of the work they do. But, uh, when we were out there, it was funny. I was... You know, we were talking rates and, and I said,

"Boy, in New York, you know, the rates have really jumped up." I, I would say for example, on average, you know, years ago it was eleven cents for a kilowatt hour, and, and now it's seventeen cents. And, uh, you know, my friend in

California is shaking his head saying, "Yeah, we were once at eleven cents a kilowatt hour- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... and we're now at sixty cents on the peak hours," so, uh- Our delivery here, the,

I, uh, you know, I'm, with you on this. Our delivery went from seven cents to seventeen cents to nineteen cents to twenty-three cents- Yeah. ... and, was poised to go to twenty-seven cents in April when we found an ESCO and, we signed up with them. Is that right?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's gonna knock it back down. I, I, uh, I, uh... It's available to RG&E, National Grid, and, uh, and NYSEG. And I already did NYSEG in Hornell, and it- Okay ... dropped the, one bill from $1,761 to $631. Beautiful.

Yeah, you have to be your own best advocate and, and research this, uh, stuff up because, uh- It's craziness ... it, it is. It is. There's a... I'm in a Facebook group and, um, it's like NYSEG's bills are doubled. It's called something like that. And, uh, it's interesting. People will post in, in, you know, these energy efficiency programs have been around for decades and, and they, post, and sometimes the, the bill is just the, the kilowatt hours and it, and it's like, whoa, if you're using that much in a month, you're heating with straight resistance heat or you have a, a small hotel. I'm not really sure you know, if these are residential houses.

So it's, it's all relative to how much you use, and sometimes people don't show what they're using or, or their energy, use, uh, intensity for how much they're using for their size home. It-- Sometimes we don't get all the pieces and parts. Um, so, but that's why we always have said that energy efficiency is something that will pay and, and keep on, uh, giving once, once you have that lower usage. We can't control the rates, but, uh, with a, a well-thought-out scientific plan, we can control, uh, how well the home, uh, uses energy and how well it, loses energy.

So, um, those are, uh, those are some of the topics we had this week. Some of the, the classes, it's funny. There'll be about. six sessions per, per time slot. They're usually like an hour, an hour and a half, and in a lot of, times you're torn between picking the session that's right for you. You might have competing sessions or some I was presenting in, so I couldn't go to the other ones, so, uh, that's kind of a, a challenge. But the one

I went to, uh, humidity control for comfort and, health, and, it's kind of interesting to bring this abstract information to life is that he had something called accidental dehumidification. And, uh, so we talk about dehumidifiers and humidifiers, but in a home, when we see, uh, moisture forming on a, a window, uh, in the wintertime, or we see, uh, moisture, mold-like substances forming on a ceiling in a bathroom, uh, he says, "Well, this is accidental dehumidification. We didn't plan to do that, but we pulled the moisture out of the air and put it on a surface."

And, and so we always think of, uh, the first step is maybe to, uh, add a dehumidifier, but what you could do is warm up. the surfaces. So there, uh, there's really the temperature, there's the relative humidity, and, then there's the dew point, and sometimes we, we can get focused on, uh, maybe one of those metrics, but we, uh, we're focused on maybe the wrong one. So we wanna look at the dew point. So sometimes it's, it's adding insulation that'll warm up that surface, so then it' won't, it won't actually condense and, cause some of those, uh, health issues like mold or, uh, uh, you know, building durability type issues. So- Is that typically the walls then, or can it be any surface? Yeah, it can be any surface. So, that's really, um... What happens is. heat goes to cold, uh, and wet goes to dry.

Uh, so it, it's always moving from, um, a high point to a low point, so it'll find that cold surface. So one of the things is to keep all the surfaces uniformly insulated so that you don't have cold surfaces, and that's what happens in basements a lot.

You have, um, less insulation on older homes. Uh, we're not heating the area, uh, typically. And so you have a little higher moisture content, and that'll, that'll kind of create that musty smell because that moisture is finding that cold spot and condensing on there. And, and so it's costly to go add dehumidification. If you can insulate and bring those temperatures up, maybe you don't ne- necessarily have to dehumidify right away.

So, uh, it's interesting to bring that Uh, kind of abstract idea to real world. All I, I, I always say it's like pouring that cold glass of iced tea on a, on a summer day, and that condensation forms on that glass, and that's happening, happening throughout our homes based on, based on the conditions.

So I always get really, uh, excited about the conference. It's hard to be away, but you come back with just, uh, some nuggets. You get to meet like-minded people that are, uh, uh, on the cutting edge of how to fix houses, how to fix houses better and, and what's, um, what's working in the field and, and how we can, uh, lower energy usage. Because it is a topic all across the country, you know, post, post-COVID, uh, things have been going up, uh, uh, at a, a feverish pace, so. Have noticed that. A-and by the way, folks, we h-hasten to jump in here and add that, uh, this is how you get expertise, experience and, uh, and new ideas, uh, you know, brought to you by Wise Home Energy, which is the sponsor of the program. And, uh, I will shamelessly plug your phone number, which is? Five eight five, two seven zero, fifty-eight thirty-six. And as you say, don't be cold in your home, and the w-the summertime, don't be hot and sticky in your home. Yeah. Just pick up the phone. Yeah, pick it up. Give a call, give a text. Uh, really that, that initial 15-minute consultation is, is where we wanna find out if we're a good fit. Um, we wanna find out what your concerns are, what you wanna fix, and if we can offer that, then we'll keep, uh, moving down the, the process and, and scheduling appointments. If we can't, we'll point you in the right direction.

Sometimes it's not-- uh, the problem that you're calling for isn't within our, uh, skill set or there's somebody better that we can refer you to, so that's something that we wanna, we wanna do right away.

Uh, had a call recently for some ice dams. My, my rep goes out to the home and, and finds out that they just had their home insulated a year ago. And, uh, we, you know, we looked over the contract.

It said they'd air sealed the attic. He went up to the attic, and it wasn't really air sealed. So, uh, when that happens, we try to look at, uh, how long it's been. So if it's been within a year, we advise them to go back to their rebate program and, uh, let them know that they'd like a quality assurance visit. So maybe we can help them, um, remediate that situation, get it fixed up right the, the first time. So some of those companies we, we run against on a, a recurring basis, um, it's disappointing when I hear their names. Sometimes they're so big that their names have, uh, recognition and, uh, uh, credibility based on the size of the company. When I see the work, uh, that, the credibility is not there and, and it's disappointing. Uh,

I, you know, another, um, call we had recently and, and the guy said we are competing with these two big private equity companies and was, "Oh, well." And so he took my scope and he said, "I want you to change it, and I want you to do it like they're doing it." And I'm thinking, "Well, they don't have any training. They don't have any skill set." Okay. And I just put in the contract, "Here's, here's the price. Here's what we're gonna do. Uh, I can't guarantee, um, you know, the outcome of this, this, uh, insulation package." "Why not?" I said, "Well, it's not my design. It's, it's someone else's design.

I can only say we're gonna do it as good as we can do." E-Eli speaks up. Now, Eli is just like me. I just try to, I try to sound the warning bells like Eli. That we just wanna say, "Look for these, uh, concerns in your home and make sure you're, you're making sure that you're, you're going through a checklist and, and you know what work is gonna be done, what pictures."

Because it... And the guy, he kinda understood it. I said, "This isn't my design. You're basing this design off of two other contractors that don't really do this work for a living. So all I can say is, I will take pictures of my work. I will do the best I can, but this is not my design. Why would I, why would I guarantee this design?"

Sure. So and he, he, he said, "Oh, I get it." You know, he said, uh, you know, uh, you know, the option that I was providing, he said it wasn't within his budget. And I said, "All right, as long as we're on the same page, we're gonna, we're gonna do our blower door.

We're gonna reduce the air leakage. Uh, but it's, it's not the preferred design that I would use." So, uh, those are the type of, um, calls and consultations we try to have with people so they don't just, uh, end up with a heartache, uh, a year or two down the road.

And, you know, I was saying, uh, you know, I should get off, off Facebook for sure, but one of the Facebook- ... uh, books, uh, groups I'm in is Attic Insulation. And, uh, it's just people will post different things. "What do you think of this? What do you think of that? I'm a do-it-yourselfer. What should I do here?" And some people, uh, you know, comment professionally and some people comment, uh, you know, kind of crazy as they do in the, uh, the internet world. And so this one gentleman had said he had just gone through Empower and they had insulated his walls and he just read that they were gonna rot, rot his house out. We're gonna rot his...

And, and I didn't even know where he was and I said, "Look it, there's, there's a quality assurance program. Here's my website. Give me a call. I'll, I'll consult with you. Don't worry about this. This is not a problem." So we've been, we've been communicating back and forth, uh, via text or... And, and he is very concerned that the work that was done is gonna destroy his house. And that's, that's pretty frightening to have, uh, you know, that weighing on you. And it's... I try to reassure him that it's, it's fine. If there's any problems, you're on it, you're looking at it. It's, it's more of the person who's not looking at, um, what's going on in their home. So what he was concerned about is he had insulated his walls and then he must have found some resource that said, "If you insulate your walls in an old home, you're gonna rot out your home with mold."

So and I said, "Well, no, let's just slow down. Let's look at the moisture con in the-- count in the home and see what the relative humidity is." And he had some other concerns and It was, it was interesting and, and you, y- you think everybody sh- thinks that way about their own home. They're-- We're very concerned and, and we're very concerned to not only spend money and waste money, but we don't wanna spend money and destroy our home.

So he, i-i-it-- I... Hopefully I've talked him into a, a good place that, hey... He wanted me to come down, and I said, "I don't, I don't think I need to come to your home." It's-- He's not in, in our area. I said, "I could probably do this with pictures. We're gonna guide you to make good decisions."

And, and the progra- the project hadn't been closed out yet. So the project has to be closed out before it can go to a quality assurance visit. And, um, so it was nice 'cause everybody thinks you're trying to sell them something, and I don't... You know, it's nice to be able to just say, "Hey, here's the proper course of action. You're already going through the program. Um, they'll fix it. The state'll make them fix it if there's anything wrong.

Uh, let's just take a breath here and..." But that's the challenge with the internet. There's bad, there's bad feedback out there, uh, on, on insulation and insulation protocols, and, uh, people say that foam will, will ruin their house. And we've got some calls in the past month or two where homes are foamed, but they're just not performing, and we have to get the blower door out and some diagnostic, uh, smoke and... And the interesting thing is, like, the work is minimal, but it'll be pr- very costly because it'll be very, um, uh, kinda minutia-driven type work where we gotta remove panels and soffits and, and to, to get to the, the little finite points that they should have got the first time. Time-consuming.

Yeah. Labor-intensive. Yeah. And it's... So it really, uh, it really shows you really wanna pick a contractor that, um, you know, has, has some experience and, and has done jobs like that before. And, and sometimes we look at them. I was reviewing one when I was out of town. I was reviewing the pictures and I said, "This..."

You know, "Did we tell the client that this foam looks like it was off ratio?" Uh, which is bad. It could be still off-gassing. It has no fire paint on it. Uh, that is very, um, uh, important.

Uh, so what happens is foam, uh, can burn when it's has fire to it. So closed cell foam is, uh, the foam that we tend to spray, and it's... If you put a lighter to it and then you take the lighter away, it'll stop burning, but it, when it burns, like any synthetic material, it, it, it off-gasses a very bad gas. So then there's open cell, and I could tell by the look of this that this was open cell. That is very flammable because the, the cells are open, so it can really take off and burn.

And so in an attic that you can enter, you... that has to be fire, uh, fire painted. So we need to let the client know that we may not be touching that work, but it's still appropriate for you to know that whoever sold it to you didn't do it to code and, and put, uh, y-you know, your family at risk, uh, by not having this paint on there. So, uh, there's a lot to know in this industry and in, in, you know, making sure that, uh, somebody isn't just selling what's, what's on their, uh, truck. And, and so we don't... That's what I was saying earlier about the consultation. We don't just sell what's on our truck. We wanna s- have provide a solution for you.

We want you to remember us in five, 10 years, uh, if you move or if you tell your friends and family that we solved your problem, so they'll call us, and, and we can do the same for them. We don't just wanna install, uh, an insulation product or a, a heating system for the- Yeah ... sake of installing it. And you, and you notice something here, folks. You notice the, uh, the individual approach.

Uh, there's no cookie cutter stuff. There's no, "Oh, you just need a bigger furnace," or, "Uh, you just need to spray some foam up here," or, "You need the pink stuff," or whatever it is.

Uh, it's, it, it really is a process, isn't it, Jeff? It is. It is. And it's, um, it's tried and true, that blower door test. We want to measure that air leakage in the home. Uh, and that, that blower door frame, we've talked about it before. It's part of the, uh, NYSERDA no-cost assessment. That's an assessment that everybody's paid for on their utility bill, so you might as well take advantage of it. And it, you know, it doesn't mean that much, maybe how much air is leaking out of a home. But, uh, I guess if you, you know, think of it in terms of a boat or, uh, uh, a gallon of milk you bought from the store, if you, if it was leaking at a, a unreasonable rate, you'd, you wouldn't take that boat out or that gallon of milk wouldn't get home to your fridge with any milk left in it. So the leakage is, uh, such a critical part of the, uh, assessment.

Uh, and then the insulation levels, that's the envelope. Really, we're looking at how the home retains heat in the wintertime and, uh, how it wards off heat, uh, in the summertime in this, uh, climate zone. And, uh, we had a, a person recently, um, send me over a, uh...

He s- he was from Buffalo, and he said, "Hey, can you do this job for me?" It was through a grant program. And he said, "I don't have anybody to get a plumbing permit in Rochester." So he sent over the work scope, and

I said, "Well, why don't you just use, uh, a plumber I can refer you to?" And in the meantime, he'd sent over the work scope, and it was just basement work, uh, and this, this hot water tank he wanted to install.

And the pictures showed the roof deck in the wintertime, and the snow completely evenly melted on the lower, uh, section of the roofs where there was blind knee walls. And, and this contractor's been in the program for 20 years, and so sometimes you just don't know their knowledge set. And I just, I emailed back, I'm like, "Did you, did you try to diagnose the, the knee walls? Because there's no snow on these roofs. You can, uh, really help this person out by insulating their attics." And it was ironic 'cause it was right around the corner from our office and- Um,

I forgot what he said. I mean, I don't like to tell people how to, how to do their business. They might not wanna, uh, you know, do it differently than they're doing it. But, um, but I saw it and I thought, "Wow, this guy's probably got ice hanging off his roof every single winter, and here's the guy standing there with some test tools, and, um, he could fix it, but he maybe just doesn't have the knowledge of how to prioritize."

Um, you know, that. It's kinda like getting in your car. You could turn up the radio or you could put your seatbelt on. You know, you probably wanna put your seatbelt on if you only got one option. So, uh, but I, you know, I like the radio too. Or like, like- So I like to do both.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I like the old joke, you know, if, uh, you're not gonna wear a, a seatbelt, turn up the radio so you won't, you won't hear the crash. Uh, but it's... So, so I assume this got resolved- I- ... in this case. I don't know if it did get resolved because I, I, you know, he, he kind of came back and said, "Well, yeah, we sorta looked at it and we," you know. And, uh, it, it just made me wanna say, "Well, why don't you give the job to me and let me go, let me go do it right? Or maybe in a year I can re-enroll this person," because it, it just made me think of d- are people prioritizing the right thing? It, it, it's... I sort of say it's like a car accident, right? I mean, it's a... You come up and someone's got a, a broken bone, uh, or a little cut on their elbow, you know, you probably have to go, uh, address the broken bone first. You have to prioritize the biggest, uh, need. In home performance, in energy efficiency, the biggest need is at the top of the home. You, you wanna make sure that's done, uh, well, uh, then you can start moving toward the other things. And, and truly, aside from that, it's el- health and safety first before you go to the top of the home. So you wanna make sure there's no carbon monoxide leaks in the home or, uh, mold and, and moisture issues first, and then you can start- Or open cell, open cell foam. You don't want that to- Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. Uh, we had another job that we went to recently where, um, the lady had called for the assessment. We send out a, uh, prep guide to prepare for the assessment to tell them not to burn wood because we can't do a blower door test. Uh, when we got there, uh, they had forgot that, so they had their wood-burning stove burning. We cannot, we cannot wait around for it. It's a, it's a long time to cool down, so we go about our process. Now we have no data, and the husband was a little bit at odds with the energy audit. "I don't know why you're here. I already insulated all this. I insulated the attic," which I think we didn't have access to.

"I insulated the crawl space underneath," and, uh, they had foamed it. And he said he had done it a long time ago, like maybe 20 years ago. Uh, so I'm looking at the pictures. We, we store all our pictures on a, a software so we can, uh, review them and... I'm looking at the pictures and, yeah, the, the husband was saying, "What's the point?" You know, "Why are you here?" You know? But the wife is cold and uncomfortable and... So as

I look it over, um, the wife has kinda started communicating with me, saying, "Well, why didn't," you know, that we're, there's air coming in at the base of the sliding glass doors and this window over here. And, and a lot of what we do is not...

That's kinda like being at the dam, uh, plugging the holes. That's just a, that's a willy-nilly trying to plug the holes where we might have to reduce the water first and do more of a comprehensive plan. It's hard for us to... A lot of times people will say, "Why don't you weather strip the door?" And it's, and we look at it and we're like, "Well, that's a modern steel insulated door that someone sprung." It's not it's not level. It's not, it's not closing the door anymore. Like, the weather strip's gonna look g- like garbage.

They're, they're sorta not meant to be re-weather stripped. Um, so it's, it's hard to, uh, go through some of that stuff. So the, this gentleman had foamed underneath his crawl space, the ceiling, but all the duct work is underneath the foam.

So the duct- ducts leak, and they leak a lot. And so that is where we get into defining the thermal boundary.

Um, he had done a decent job on what he had insulated, but I sorta understand why they're uncomfortable. Um, and, and it's, and it's explaining this stuff. So they have a tankless hot water heater, and so you're gonna have two pipes. One's supposed to go outside to bring in combustion air, burns in a box, and then exhausts out. It's a, it's a closed system where the air from outside comes in, burns, and goes out. Well, if you don't have the... A lot of times lazy people don't read the manual, whatever the case is. They don't pipe the intake pipe outside.

So as you're exhausting air out of your home, your home does not shrink. I mean, we all wanna call our tax assessor and say, "Hey, I turned on my furnace. The home shrunk." Honey, I shrunk the house. Yeah, I gotta, I get to pay less taxes. It doesn't happen like that. When you pull air out of the house, guess what happens?

New air comes in, and it comes in from wherever it wants to come in from, but it comes in from out- outside unfiltered and unconditioned. So as the hot water tank burns, new air comes in. And she said, "Why are you recommending venting this intake pipe outside? What does this have to do? This is my basement." And it, it's hard to explain that, well, your air is, you're just pulling in new air every time. Now, I don't know how often- A tankless water heater is on, uh, in this home, but every time it's on, it's- Ev- every time you use hot water, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, isn't that the design? So the same thing, the same thing goes with natural draft hot water tanks, 80% furnaces. That's the same thing. When they burn air and it's not a sealed combustion, uh, properly vented unit, it just pulls in air from outside.

So, uh, that'll be an interesting one. I'll, uh... And normally we have on our form, we're gonna, we're gonna charge you to come back and do the blower door. So, um, we'll have to see if they... You know, I'm, I'm kinda curious on, on that particular project. Uh, but having your goals down of what you wanna fix allows us to really, uh, have razor focus and come into the home and, and properly diagnose it and provide an option to, to resolve that situation if that's what you wanna do. So, uh, the r- the grants and rebates are alive and well. We have something for everybody. There's, there's a low income program, there's a moderate income program, and then there's, uh, an, a no-cost assessment for everybody, and rebates to make upgrades like, uh, insulation or heat pumps and, uh, and

I think we're just... I don't know if we're gonna see the, the, the costs go down. I, I, I... If I were a betting man, uh, the costs keep going up. So, uh, if you do it now, you're gonna save the next 10, 20 years on your, on your energy bills. So, um, and especially if you wanna solve a problem. If this is your home and this is where you're gonna stay for the next five or 10 years, uh, we can make that comfortable, healthy, uh, efficient, uh, at, at a, at a reasonable, uh, price and yet you'll know it's done. And it'll make it easier to sell when you do go to sell. So, uh, give us a call. It's 585-270-5836. You can call or text. You can go to the website, it's wisehomeenergy.com.

Uh, we, uh, we like fixing homes. It's sort of, you know, not that fun to go out to homes that people don't really have anything to fix and they say, "Oh, I just wanna kick the tires."

Uh, so, uh, townhomes, those are interesting ones. Uh, we... I've got some lo- regional townhome, uh, owners that call, and they don't realize that this stuff can be fixed. Even though you have to have the HOA approve things outside, we can get up in that attic, we can do things and, uh, appropriately, uh, improve that home and make it perform much better. At voice of, uh, Jeff Flaherty, and, uh, more, uh, histories from the tattered case book of Wise Home Energy, right? Yeah. The super energy sleuth. Paid program here of Wise Home Energy. Give them the phone number one more time, Jeff. 585-270-5836.

Very good. And we'll see you next time on the Wise Home Energy Show, WISLWLEA. I can see behind your eyes.

The things that I don't know. If you hide away from me. I'll keep