Kelly’s Wells
Chugrin Falls, Ohio (AP) — The majority of US greenhouse gas emissions come from heating, cooling and turning on the device, according to EPA estimates. So, if you want to reduce your carbon footprint, a home is an effective place.
There are a huge number of factors in household energy consumption, such as whether there is gas or electrical heat, how to use kitchen appliances, washing machines, and dryers. Understanding where to start is often overwhelming.
Therefore, experts recommend a home energy assessment conducted by an expert. Room-by-room testing helps homeowners decide to use energy, discover inefficiencies, and develop plans to reduce both. In addition to supporting the environment, you can save money in the long term by increasing efficiency.
The ratings usually last for several hours and cost between $100 and $1,000 or more. Until the end of the year, the Inflation Reduction Act, the US’s leading climate law passed in 2022, will help cover costs. Congress recently abolished many of these interests and phased them out.
I’m a climate reporter, so I’ve written about responsible energy use a few times more. However, in May, after years of living in an apartment, I moved to the first home I’d ever owned.
So I signed up for the home energy rating.
My home outside of Cleveland is over 100 years old. When you blow up the air conditioner it’s still hot and humid. No matter how hard you close the windows, you can still hear the birds ringing outside. And in my basement there is a huge pipe held together with duct tape and prayers.
My ratings brought some pretty bad news. But there was a lot of room for improvement. Here’s how the day unfolds:
HVAC Test
Tim Portman, owner of Portman Mechanical, HVAC company in northeast Ohio, started with an hour-long interview about my goal of having a more comfortable and climate-friendly home. He then headed to the basement and tested my furnace, air conditioner and water heater.
The water heater pressure was normal, so Portman said there was no major risk of the water bursting. However, the pressure on both the furnace and the air conditioner was too high.
This reveals my first problem: they are too big for duct work. It is inefficient and worn on equipment. Worse, Portman noticed an unnecessary bundle of turns in the duct.
He equated it with applying a large water pressure to a twisted garden hose.
“If you don’t twist from that garden hose, you’ll never have a good experience,” he said.
The highlight of my basement anguish was the huge pipes that supplied heating and cooling to the rest of the house. It was just… not connected. It was packed together like two straws without junctions. It bothered him to the point where he paused to fix it.
And who will stop him?
Blower door
After the basement, Portman assembled a gimmick called a Browarda. He stuffed a lot of airtight plastic into my front door, shoved a big fan into the middle, and turned it on so that it blows air out of my house.
“It literally sets a vacuum in the house, so where there are leaks, you can see where those leaks are,” he said.
A few seconds later, my house was hot and musty as the fan tugs through all the leaky seams. Portman quickly speculated on the major culprit. I followed him upstairs and felt like a sauna near the attic opening.
“You literally have hot, moist air – and your attic is warmer than the outside – just pouring upstairs,” Portman said.
The blower door measures the cubic feet of airflow per minute. In a well-crowded house, numbers must be less than or equal to the area. In my 1,500 square feet (139 square meters) house, the blower door number was 4,500. Three times more likely to leak.
Portman called it the worst case scenario.
“It’s like driving with AC turned on and rolling the window,” he said.
Thermal Camera
Portman then grabbed the thermal camera. The goal was to see if the leak would appear as a hot spot on the camera, as it was outside 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius).
There were a lot. On the screen, yellow revealed the hot spot. The coolest space was dark blue. The leaky door frame around the attic was lit up in a bright yellow.
“Do you think that’s a problem?” Portman joked.
“Oh, oh,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Oh, that’s the right answer.”
There have been some surprising discoveries, including leaky bathroom fans and gaps around the windows of a 100 year old. Downstairs, a large gap was found in the exposed beams in the living room.
The thermal images proved Portman’s theory that my walls were not insulated. That’s because my home still has some knob and tube wiring, a system of ceramic support, and wires wrapped in porcelain, a relic of the early 20th century. Only certain insulation can be used, because of how it gets hot. It can also be very expensive to remove.
In the basement, the camera revealed a large gap next to the pipe, as well as several other fair holes. Random hole. They were hollow spots in places where the wires were once, or old wooden framing. But the air penetration became so strong that it made the cobweb flutter desperately, as if to reflect my discovery of my fear.
verdict
After his review, Portman’s first recommendation was to call the electrician about the old wiring.
“When you get the knobs and tubes from the house, the door opens for insulation to enter the wall,” he said.
Once that’s addressed, Portman said that he would need to upgrade his electrical panels to support the switch to a heat pump and electric water heater in the end, but these appliances don’t fit my budget this year.
One of the electricians I spoke to estimated it would cost $30,000 to remove the old wiring. But another said that unless he inspected the wiring and found no dangerous changes, I could leave it and replace the panel for about $3,000.
I went with the second man.
Until the end of 2025, federal tax credits will help subsidize weather resistant upgrades for insulation, windows, doors, electrical panels, and more.
In the meantime, my husband and I have another homework: using a caulking gun and spray foam to block holes found on a thermal camera.
It’s not just for the planet to seal homes in the Cleveland area between the heat of July and the cold snaps of January. That’s a good investment.
“We could cut our bills in half, potentially even more,” he said.
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