Dry Climate Home Performance

Flexibility is one of the benefits of working on your own projects so we’re flexing and changing the plan for this Tuesday’s Webinar. I made a last minute decision to attend the Forum On Dry Climate Home Performance in Irvine this week.  The focus of this year’s event is working toward Net Zero Energy homes. What is working? How well does it work?  How difficult is it?

The organizers have been very specific. We want to hear real data from real projects as opposed to modeling and projections from Manual J, EnergyPro, or any other instrument. This theme of the conference matches so exactly what we believe here at GreenEarthEquities I decided I just shouldn’t miss it.

So I’m in an airplane, somewhere over New Mexico as I write this and I’ll broadcast live from the Forum on Tuesday. I’ll interview some of the “Rock Stars” of Home Performance. At 6PM we’ll be winding down after the second day of gorging on hard core Home Performance data. Hopefully everyone will be relaxed and excited at the same time. This is the kind of stuff worth getting up early and staying up late for!

You may be wondering just what does a Home Performance Rock Star do on a Saturday afternoon?  I called Rick Chitwood to let him know I was coming. He was in the middle of a duct blaster test.  And I had just completed our (almost) final Blower Door test on our Virginia Lab House.  “Normal” people just wouldn’t understand.

Whereas a Fender guitar and a microphone are the tools of the trade of a Pop Culture Rock Star, the Home Performance Rock Stars use the Blower Door, Duct Blaster, InfraRed Camera, and a few more.   The key is to really use them and interpret the data into a Home Performance Plan that really delivers the desired results: Low Utility Bills, approaching zero, along with Comfort and Safety. That’s what this forum is about and what we’ll talk about on the Tuesday Webinar. Click on and help me interview the Rock Stars!

Click here to watch a streaming version of this webinar.

To download this Webex presentation click here.  To watch this audio/video presentation you’ll need to install the FREE Webex .ARF Player for either Windows or Mac.

cfm50 Readings & ASHRAE 62.2

That’s the challenge I gave the crew at the beginning of the project.   On 13 Cedar, you may remember, we started out at 8000 cfm50 on that leaky old balloon framed farm house.   Kevin and Dave at IBACOS would like 422 cfm50… the same goal we had on the Homsy house in Fresno.  We exceeded that goal with some heroic shell sealing by Rogelio and the California Crew… but that was a stucco house on a slab… so a lot easier to reach the numbers.

I told the Virginia Crew that we absolutely must reach 1000cfm50 on the 1700 foot two story home,  but that we really want 422 or as close as we can get to it. A couple of days ago we had already met our 1000 goal.  I’m going over to the house right now to test again.  I’ll have the results for you tonight. And we’ll discuss what the ingredients are to getting those results.  And of course there is always the question of where do you stop from an economic perspective? Some savings may just be  too expensive to get.

Fortunately, we are not locked in to a homeowners budget when we work on foreclosed homes that we own … so we usually go further than most Home Performance Contractors on the “Journey Toward Tightness” We always, for example, tighten to where we need “Ventilation on Purpose.”   Officially that is determined by ASHRAE 62.2. We’ll demonstrate that tonight, but also show our rule of thumb that will keep the canaries alive in the coal mine…

If you see insulation in my hair tonight, you’ll know it was from collecting fresh data!

See you tonight

Dave Robinson
(Lover of Cellulose Insulation, with a great new machine to maximize that Dense Pack)

Click here to watch a streaming version of this webinar.

To download this Webex presentation click here.  To watch this audio/video presentation you’ll need to install the FREE Webex .ARF Player for either Windows or Mac.

January 2011 Part 2

Join Dave Robinson and several energy wise house flipper enthusiasts on a Fresno Field Trip that includes 503 Scott Ave Clovis CA in the early stages of remodel.  Bryan Martin, one half of GEE’s favorite real estate agent team, shows the group a new property were Dave discusses the do’s and don’t of making an offer for a potential house flip.

Click here to view the embedded video.