Why the Blower Door Beats Every Shortcut

Welcome once again, ladies and gentlemen, to another edition of the

Wise Home Energy Pure Energy Show with Jeff Flaherty. Pure Energy. And he-- look at this. He just happens to be in, the studio. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Bob. I'm, you know, I'm really the sidekick of the show. No.

I'm, uh- No, you're not ... I run second seat here for sure. No, no, no. This. is, this is your stage. It's a co-show, I think. It's Bob, the Bob. and Jeff show. Well, I' just make sure. that you're, uh, that you're, sounding as spiffy as you' possibly can, technically. Well, you keep me in line, I know that. Well-

There's a, there's a button that. you hit when if I'm not getting in line. The Shut Up Jeff button. That's right. It shocks my system. Haven't used it yet. Well, it's great to be here, Bob. Yeah. Merry

Christmas to you- Merry Christmas ... and all, all the folks at Wise Home Energy. Yes. We, uh, we always think that there's the three wise men. We think that there, there's, uh, we got, uh, we... three wise women and three wise men and a, few more to the team. So yeah, we're excited for the holiday season. It's like you're a government agency, you know. Yeah. The jobs just keep on multiplying. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's crisp out there. It's, uh, it's been a wonderful, uh, season so far. Yeah.

As we record this show in early December, uh, really, thankfully, not- nothing much has happened. Now, don't write to us and yell at us if after the show airs once the blizzards descend-

... and drop 60 inches in three days or something. It will happen, right? Yeah. We're gonna get it. It's, uh... yeah, we take the good with the bad around here, but, uh- The bitter with the better. That's right. And so as we say, don't be cold in your home. Pick up the phone, right? So-

Oh, you pick up the phone and then what do you do? Yeah. Then you, then you call Wise, and then we come out and things happen. And we recently, uh, went out to a home, um, for a, uh, a client who just had work done by another contractor, and, uh, uh, a rebate entity asked us to go out and assess. And, uh, to be quite honest with you, that's, that's not something we wanna do because it's, it's, it's time-consuming and it's also, uh, heartbreaking to be able to tell somebody something isn't quite right. and it could've been done right, but it's, it wasn't done right. And- Before you- get into that, what, what's a... Tell us what a rebate entity is. So there's different entities that, uh, you know, uh, I'm, I'm try- trying to be, uh, of coy here, but, uh, there's rebates and grants throughout the state. So there, uh, there' might be the Federal Weatherization program. There, might be the utility rebate program, um, NYSERDA.

Uh, so any entity that kind of funds a little bit of the program has a vested interest in, uh, making sure the, the project was done properly. And, and this one was purely like a comfort, uh, complaint, and something was, was done wrong. And so the home had a furnace and a, a air conditioner installed and some insulation. And so we went out to the home, and built in the early '90s, and, um, we started doing our, uh, c- uh, cursory, uh, initial investigation really. We haven't even, uh, finished it up, but some of the things that we instantly saw, and this is a company that's, uh, you' know, uh, you know, a bigger company that, um, you know, I think sometimes because there's rebates there, you know, maybe just, um, going through the motions. And so down in the basement we talk about the rim joist foam. So you s- you foam that rim, uh, which foam does two things: it' air seals and it' insulates. So you, you air... That's the one-foot wood structure that's on a typical, um, uh, basement, uh, that your first floor sits on. And so you foam the exterior portion, but the open block. So usually that sill comes out a little bit and there's open block, and they didn't seal the open block so that- Hmm

... that air leakage and there's convective loop through that, that whole block, so that has to be improved. So this is the sill plate that sits on top of the block wall. Right. Okay. Exactly. And, um, so that's kinda, that's... that knowledge has been around for decades that you, you s- you seal that area.

Um, and it' was a tricky basement. I don't look forward to, to trying to fix that or touch that up. And then, uh, up in the attic there was, uh, insulation blown. And so once insulation is blown, um, it's not- something. that' anybody wants to dig into. You'd, you'd have to disrupt it. So we didn't... We opted not to do that on' our first visit. We used, uh, infrared cameras and, and blower door testing, and there's some recessed lights. And so- when we do that blower door testing, we've talked a lot about that, where we, we measure the home, uh, cubic foot per minute at an exaggerated rate, which is fifty pascals. It's just a measure of pressure. So when we're at fifty pascals, we can use, uh, secondary, uh, pressure devices to measure, uh, connectivity to outdoors or to indoors. And so the attic seemed to be a little more connected to the, uh, uh, indoors than the outdoors than we would have expected.

Um, so we didn't... again, we didn't dig through it, but that's... We're, we're wondering if the air sealing was done properly. So, um- So this is buried down in that blown-in insulation now, right? Yeah. The first thing you do, it's kind of like painting. You wanna scrape and sand and prep, and then you paint, and the paint's the pretty part you see, and the insulation is all that you kind of are usually left to see. So we, um, don't wanna go dig through this whole attic just yet.

Um, and then they had a room over the garage. And so she has some complaints of, uh, some uneven temperatures.

And so we've tried to dig... Uh, so the room over the garage, we, we've talked about that in the past, that that can be, um, quite a uncomfortable room. And we had c- cantilever it out so it's part over the garage and part just out in the open. And the duct work, this is pretty typical. The duct work will sit right over that cantilever.

And, uh, using some pressure tests, we, uh, found that a, a couple of the cantilever floors were 32% connected to outdoors. One was 51% connected outdoors. Ooh. That's cold over there. Um, and that wasn't addressed.

And- And, and all of the surfaces, including the floor, are exposed to the outside. Yeah. So it's, so it's-- we're into this comfort game, and so we try to find the pre-data, uh, to see what goes on. And, and, and it, it... the client took a long time to even find what the old furnace was. So one of my, one of my theories, potentially, was what happened is furnaces are generally oversized. So how-- One quick way you can tell if your furnace or heating equipment is oversized is its design temp is, in this area is, uh, usually five degrees or zero degrees, maybe two degrees if you go to, uh, uh, um, down a little southern tier area. Uh, so we design to that temperature, and we put this all into a computer model to, um, determine what we're gonna need on the coldest day of the year at the design temperature, it's called. Well, there's fudge factors in it because the people who made the Manual J calculation, they don't wanna be responsible for having too small of equipment, so they put some fudge factors in there. So we generally see it oversized as it is. Um, so then they come and put this new furnace in, but they, they've tightened it up, but we don't really know how much they tightened it up because the pre-data isn't that great. Um, they can't really provide us with anything. So- And again, this dates back to the early

'90s. The house dates back to the early '90s. The work w- that they ch- she just had done was just a year old. Oh, okay. So, so that kinda, that's got, that's a good break point of, you know, why people should choose Wise, Home, Energy. Um, th-that's...

'cause you, wouldn't run into this. If someone was investigating our work, you wouldn't run into this problem, and the reason being is we take lots of pictures. So not only do we take pictures of the assessment, um, as the work is being done, we're taking pictures of the air-sealing measures. So these are top plates. The top of walls is the two-by-four. We're sealing that' with a foam or a sealant product.

Recessed lights. Um, all these different areas, we're taking all these pictures so you don't have to dig through the cellulose. The blower door, we would take pictures of that, and we would provide those to you. We don't, we don't really hide those. We take them all for your benefit, for our benefit, um, for the, the rebate. Uh, if someone's providing a rebate, they need the pictures. So we take all those pictures, and what you really have when you take those pictures is kind of where the last contractor left the home. That's what the conditions are of the home when we walk in the door. So then you do the work.

We have the, the proof, uh, uh, in the pictures, and then we retest, and now we've got pictures of that. So this is all documented. It's, geotagged to the home. It's, timestamped to the, to the day that, it was installed.

And that, information is so critical. It, it's really shocks me, uh, you know, in the land of Kodak. We are in the land of, of, uh, film and, and photography and digital, uh, um, uh, cataloging of things, and how contractors aren't doing that is, is really disappointing. Uh, and, and c-customers should, uh, demand that.

That's, um, that's what they're paying for. How do you know, the work is done? We-- otherwise, we gotta vacuum out the whole attic, uh, to verify. So you'd actually, you'd actually have to remove all that blown-in cellulose? If we wanted to verify that they properly air sealed it. We have, with the infrared camera and some of the pressure things, we have suspicions. It's indicating that there's something missing up there. It might be, good enough. I don't, I don't know, um, you know, that it, it needs to come to that point, but, I think there's something missing in the attic portion.

And, and then what happens is, so they, they probably did seal it down a little bit. Um, they didn't really downsize the furnace much. So they-- the home was already oversized. Then you air seal the attic and insulate a little bit more, so it cools it down. So now the heat isn't being distributed as evenly as, uh, it could be. And, and so just, just a quick glance and blower door readings, uh, we haven't done the, the Manual

J calculation. We would have never installed a, a furnace this size. And what happens is, it's a two-stage they have in there. It's at forty-one thousand at its low stage, so it's giving out forty-one thousand BTUs.

Um, we would have installed a forty thousand two-stage probably, uh, which w- goes down to, uh, twenty-eight thousand BTUs. So that's really... We're designing for the coldest day, but it's never really the coldest day for many hours. So when it's thirty and forty degrees out, you don't need that high, heavy hit of, of heat. You want more of a moderate, slow tap. And tell them why. Tell them what, what happens. It's, it's-- it slams on quick. It's inefficient for your furnace to be on quickly.

It turns your thermostat. Usually, your thermostat is there's one unit that tells the furnace how warm the house is, and it's, it's wherever you put that furnace. So if, if people say-- or thermostat. People say, "Oh, I, maybe I should move my thermostat." Well, you could do that. You could move it to the second floor, but if, if that temperature's seventy and your home is out of bounds, your, your first floor might be seventy-five. So it's just, it's just a, it's just a measure to say when the furnace should come on and off.

But as it, as it slams up and down very quickly with high heat, it's not gonna be like a very consistent low heat to warm up you, uh, your, your furniture, your walls. And so- You want your temperature to be uniform as much as possible- Yes

... together. Yes. So it's not like, uh, seventy-four, sixty-eight. Yes. Seventy-three, sixty-nine. Yeah. So and, and on that regards, we just had a, a wonderful, um, testimonial from a client. I, I'm tangenting off to a, a third break, right? But, uh, this, this gentleman, um, was a, was an energy kind of, uh... He was an engineer retired from Xerox and, um, he, his furnace was, uh, kind of failing and, and he wanted an air source heat pump. And he called up four companies and, and some of them were saying, "Uh, those don't really work here. People are just trying to force us to do this." And, uh- They, you know, he pushed back on them and they'd throw him quotes, and he had quotes all over the place.

And he called us out and we said, "Well, this is our process. We need to look at the home first. We can't guess from the internet. Uh, we need to test the home." So in testing and talking to him, he had a room, a bedroom and an office that were extraordinarily cold. They were cantilevered out. He had tried to fix them in the past. He paid someone to fix them, and it didn't work. And we, science-based, went through... I don't recall the blower door numbers off the top of my head, but, uh, when we pressure tested those rooms afterwards, they were great. But his testimonial, he had, uh, a, an Ecobee, which can have some different, um, thermostat, um, data loggers throughout the home, and he said, "Now my home is within one degree between the first and second floor, and it was never like that." What, what... What's that word? You-- We had a little jargon alert here. Uh, an Ecobee? Yeah. So an Ecobee is a, a thermostat. You know, it's kind of similar to, uh, you know, smart, uh, connected thermostat.

Um, uh, there's other types out there. But you can add on these little sensors. So they're not gonna control the furnace per se unless you set them that way, but it's, it's just gonna tell you a little bit of, uh, how the different temperatures are throughout the home.

Ah. Interesting. Um, and it'll show the variance, so that's the big thing. You get those data points and, and so we know it, we know it works. Um, what's disappointing is that other people don't know it works also. So i-i, you know, we, we just, uh, we, we, we wanna use that tried and trued science process to, um, get to that comfort level throughout the home. And, and so we're still working through, uh, going back to that original story, um, you know, that lady's home, we've, we've have-- we've left some data loggers and she might be using the home a little different. Some bedrooms might be getting closed 'cause somebody, you know, a child's off at college. And, um, so we're trying to figure the, this all out of how they're using it now, but because we don't have those, uh, pictures, um, and data points from, uh, where the original contractor started, it's, it's gonna be a little bit of a guessing game on our part. We're just gonna kinda treat it as, this is our audit, and this is what we found and, and, um, uh, and, and go from there. And, you know, w- the end result, um,

I'm-- don't wanna be the person to say, well, it's the wrong size furnace. Um- But if that's true- It's probably true ... you, you'll have to say it. I mean- I will say it- Tell the truth ... in my opinion. And we can look at that, too, with the, the usage, um, gas usage.

You, you know, you're not gonna have a heavy, heavy usage if, if it's a smaller size, uh, um, furnace that you need. You're listening to the Wise Home Energy Show, and the wise voice you hear is that of Jeff Flaherty of Wise Home Energy. Uh, if you're, uh, cold in your home, just pick up the phone and call... It's 585-270-5836.

All right. Now, you brought up an interesting, uh, topic. Uh, uh, this never occurred to me, but you just suggested it in that last, uh, case history you gave us. You have a-- I, I suspect there' are quite a few people, you know, in our area here, uh, who use your house, their house in that way, where they have kids that go off to college and maybe one or two rooms are not in use, you know, except intermittently, or maybe

Grandma is a snowbird and she goes to- Yes ... Florida, uh, from, you know, November until March or April. Uh, how do you factor those things in when you're trying to do this? I mean, you're, you're trying to come up with an optimum solution. That's a really good question. Yeah. Really, an, an energy assessment is a snapshot in time. We don't know how the home is gonna be used. Moving target.

Um, so I have a relative, I don't wanna say who it is, but my mom-- oh, sorry, um- ... keeps the, the rooms closed, uh, several bedrooms. We don't mind give her name, uh, but her, her initials are MOM.

Um, so, you know, and, and it's... What happens is the furnace and the ductwork, if properly designed, are designed to give out that flow and release that heat.

So when you shut those vents, it's not a perfect system, so you're kinda-- the air is still being forced over to those vents. Those rooms will get colder, um, and, but the air is still being pushed, so it still could be p- uh, the little cracks and seams can be pushed out into the walls. Um, and it's... So if the, if it was designed and it's designed to fit the ductwork to the furnace and then you close those doors and close those dampers, it's now just pushing, you know, half the load out to the house. So the furnace'll come off, it'll, it'll cycle off quicker, which isn't as efficient. So it's, it's counterintuitive.

Uh, unless that room is really, really leaky, um, you're probably best suited to just leave them open. If it- Leave them open ... if it's, if it's- Wow ... relatively sized. Um, now the, the, the counter to that is if you maybe were gonna lower your furnace and maybe just use a electric space heat for one room, you'd have to kind of do the dollars to dollars or apples to apples comparison.

But it's, um, yeah, the system was designed to kind of be, um, running at, at full bore. And, uh, and most homes aren't. They're bal- you know, balancing. So one of the things that, uh- Well, they will be after you've been there.

Right. Exactly. And, and in even balancing, we, we only get into that once in a while. We kind of usually run with the existing ductwork unless there is clearly something, um, off. Uh, but the way the ductwork was put in, it has to have the dampers already installed, uh, down in the basement typically, or we have to, uh, modify the ductwork and add those dampers. And then you really look at the CFM that the system is designed to deliver

And then balance it out, uh, with a room-to-room, uh, CFM that you want delivered to that room based off its heat loss. So it's, uh, might not be exciting stuff, but boy, when you're comfortable in your home, it's exciting. Well, you know, certainly experience helps.

And, and you guys at Wise Home Energy have that in spades. It re- it really does help. And, and, you know, going back to, you know, why choose us, um, you know, as I said, the documenting of our work, um, leadership, uh, the organization, our, our general manager is on the board of the Building, uh, Performance Contractor

Association in New York. Uh, in February, I'll be presenting, um, two sessions at the Clean Energy Conference in f- in, uh, Saratoga. And, um, and, and then it's really a little bit on this. It's, it's about why, why some of these jobs are failing. We're not following the solid, uh, building science principles that we've all been taught or we should have been taught in, in, in using our continuing education. Um, and, and, you know, recently we just, we just had a client call us up and, uh, did his house, uh, three, four years ago, and he had some hot spots, and we came out and, um, we said, "Yeah, there's, there's some issues there. We're gonna fix that. That wasn't done to our standard."

So it's really, uh, when we do a whole house job, your insulation is a, a lifetime warranty. We guarantee the performance on it, assuming, you know, trees don't fall through the house and, uh, uh, natural disasters and, and, uh, occupants don't, uh, mess with the stuff.

We guarantee the workmanship and the performance for life. So do... Are still-- Are a lot of people still on the learning curve, Jeff, where they- they think in terms of... And I think most people,

I- I'm not trying to answer my own question here, but it just would occur to me that a lot of people would just proceed on those old assumptions, if you're cold in your home, you need more heat or you need more insulation. That is- Or something like. That is- Or some combination ... usually it. And, and a lot of times you're just calling, uh, the one company or the other. There's, there's companies that, um, uh, are involved in a similar process as us, but they might not be using that process. So when we use our visual skills, there's something great about visual.

I mean, there's, we, we wanna document all that stuff, but it doesn't tell us everything. So when we say, "Oh, you don't have enough insulation," we add R value. Well, R value is like wearing a, a, a knitted sweater outside. When the wind blows, it's gonna go right through it, and that's where that air sealing comes into play.

And, and really one of the big principles of building science is the air barrier and the insulation barrier need to be in alignment. And that's, that's, it's... I say that a lot and I'll say that in my office, but the air barrier and the insulation barrier need to be in alignment. Okay. So what happens is- That- that's a little mystifying, so explain that. Yeah. It is. It is. And there's actually more to it too. We want the, uh, the vapor barrier, uh, the pressure barrier and the vapor barrier to be in alignment too. But the air barrier, um... So we lay out our insulation in our attic, but any of those penetrations that go through, if air goes through it, then it's, it's, the air is not in alignment. Another good example of that is, um, a soffit. So you might see a kitchen soffit, um, a drop soffit over a bathroom, um, um, vanity. And so the drywall comes down and makes a, a six or eight-inch drop and then comes over, and what happens is the insulation is on the top, and it's not in line with that drywall. So inside that air, it's, it's, it's warm and cold, and it gets convective loops, kinda... I like it when you, when you have that summer day and you can kinda either see the heat kinda rising off a car, and you can see that swirling motion. That's really convection, uh, taking place.

You'll see that in your home, uh, sometimes when the sun's glistening, you can see kind of these air movements. In, in those drop soffits, that air is constantly cycling, so the R-value that is rated is not performing anywhere near what it is supposed to be, and the air is bypassing right through that insulation. And soffits have gotta be kind of a, a, a trouble area because that's a place where, uh, I don't know, it just instinctively suggests to me that it, uh, it's at cross purposes. You want, you want the release of moisture, right? I mean, out of that space. Well, you do, uh- I mean, you don't, you don't want it, uh, accumulating, I guess- So our- ... is a better way of putting it ...

so our industry has a lot of, uh, uh, misnomers and bad terminology. So there's a couple different soffits. There's the soffit, um, that we call over, outside over the overhang. With the eaves. Right. And so I think that might be what you're referring to, and we generally wanna keep those well-ventilated, um, with a, with a few caveats. Uh, if you were to foam the roof deck, you would not wanna ventilate that. And, and it all goes back to design.

Um, uh, but if you were looking for a ventilated attic where your insulation is on the floor, you want the air to come up, and then you need a proper baffle, uh, that would actually help wind wash. So you want the wind to go under the baffle, you want it to go over, and that gets rid of any excess moisture in the attic, so. Okay. Yeah. Uh, moisture was what I was trying to get to there. Yeah. But wasn't, uh, wasn't describing it very accurately. But it, it's a very sophisticated thing. It's, it's not just size equals warmth. It really, it really is. There's a lot of, you know... And I'm, I'm, I'm a data geek. You know? We, uh...

One of my reps yesterday was, uh, in a home, um, and it wasn't that old, old of an home, maybe '70s built, um, ornate, a lot of cantilever. The architect out-thought himself.

Um, but, uh, budget-wise, the customer didn't really wanna do anything with the cantilevers, and my project manager said You should really look at your attic because... And we show all the pictures, but the delamination of the roof deck, the moisture, uh, condensing on the roof nails, uh, he got some great pictures of how the moisture will just condense on that cold surface on the metal until the point in, in the air, and then it'll, it'll condense and become a, a, kind of a raindrop.

And he, uh, used our moisture meter and stuck it right into the roof deck, uh, and it was a few different varying numbers, but 52% moisture load in the wood. Holy moly, and that's inside that plywood. So the plywood's rotting out. So i- in theory, I don't know his budget, but he doesn't, you know...

I- I- if... When we say we can't afford the attic insulation, you better budget for your new roof because this plywood's coming off when you go to do your new roof. And plywood is not cheap anymore. Mm-hmm. It wasn't cheap before the little plandemic, uh, but the, uh,

... I stole that from Bob, actually. Uh, but, uh- I can't take credit for it ... it wasn't, uh, it wasn't, uh, cheap before then, and, it, and it's certainly not cheap afterwards. But th- it's... Once it's delaminating, the roofer's gonna walk across it and say it's gotta come off.

Um, and that'll just keep continuing to the point where, um, the roof will leak. So y- can you, can you afford not to do it, really is the question. Yeah, exactly. So it's air sealing, and that is... You know, I don't... We didn't get into his humidifier, uh, usage. He had one on his furnace. But, uh, humid- humidity might too, be too high in the living space, and the air barrier is not in line with the thermal barrier, and that air is carrying up to the attic, condensing on the roof deck, and, uh, creating rain basically in the attic. Wow, that's a sad story. Hope he, uh, goes to Wise Home Energy eventually and follows your advice and, and gets that roof situation straightened out because that'll just... You know, he can pull all that off and do a tear-off, and it's just gonna start over. We had a gentleman some years ago who declined our offer, did the tear-off, and two years later he had the same problem. Two years. And he instantly was like,

"It's time to fix my attic." Holy moly. So- All right. Well, we got about a minute left here in the program, Jeff Flaherty. Let's, uh, let's talk about Wise Home Energy a little bit, who you are and what you do. Sure. Wise Home Energy, we've been in business since, uh, 2010, um, really just focusing on fixing people's homes. We- we're not here to sell you equipment. We're not here to sell you insulation.

If you'd like to fix your home, if you've got ice dams, if you have uncomfortable rooms, uh, give us a call. It's, uh, it's a no pressure, low pressure, here's the facts.

Would you like to fix it? 585... 270-5836. Don't be cold in your home. Pick up the phone. Call Wise Home Energy. This program a, uh, paid advertisement by Wise

Home Energy, and we thank you very much for listening. If you missed the program, it's available anytime you want at your convenience on the WYSL podcasts, uh, at wysl1040.com.

Just navigate to podcasts, grab that podcast. See you next time.