 This is Think Tech Hawai'i, Community Matters here. Good afternoon, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech Hawai'i. My esteemed guest this afternoon is Peter Stone, CEO of Green Building Hawai'i. And we're going to talk about making homes and commercial buildings like a thermos. Why would you want to make anything a structure like a thermos? Think about it. When you put hot coffee or whatever into a thermos or iced tea, you want it to stay hot or stay cool. When you cool down a building in Hawai'i, you would like it to stay cool instead of blasting coal there in all the time. That's very uncomfortable. It's very noisy, and it's going to cost you a heck of a lot of money. And from my standpoint as a state energy office official, you are not getting us to 100% clean energy this way. And while I remember, let me do a disclaimer. Peter and I are going to be talking a lot of individual products, and we do not. I do not, and Think Tech Hawai'i does not, in any way, shape or form, endorse these products. This is a technical presentation. So all of that said, welcome, Peter. So glad to have you here. Glad to be here. One quick correction, not CEO, I'm COO, Chief Operations Officer. Oh, my goodness gracious, thanks a lot. Otherwise, my esteemed partner, John, will be very upset. Okay, so, Peter, why don't we, oh, let me start with a little background here. This beloved book is the 2015 International Energy Conservation Code, and the state of Hawai'i has adopted it now. Governor Rige signed it in the law a few months ago, and any state government project including public schools must comply with that new code, and then the counties are not far behind. They will be adopting it in the next few months. And one provision in here that is not in the previous code that was on the books is the need for tight buildings. When you air condition a building, be it commercial or residential, we want it designed so that the cold air stays in there instead of escaping all over the place. And if you don't do that, your energy loss, I believe, Peter, can be as high as 10%, 15% of the air conditioning energy. Yep, that's correct. So why don't we, do you have any introductory remarks or should we launch right into the first slide? I have a couple brief introductory remarks. What Howard is referring to with the new code is there are a lot of provisions in it, and it is, as you can see, a fairly thick book. But what we are attempting to do is sort of narrow in on this one section that seems to have gotten many people worried or concerned, and maybe for just cause. And I wanted to try to dive into the weeds a little bit, if you would allow me, to show what I have learned over the last couple of years doing this work out in the field, where the air leaks out of buildings, and I'm particularly talking about residential, which is most of my experience, but the same does apply for a commercial building or any building that's put together in a certain way. So we're basically talking about chapter four, the residential chapter, and this mandatory requirement of air leakage is represented in air changes per hour, and out of specific pressure. Why don't you briefly explain air changes per hour? What does that mean? So if you think of a space, a cube, how many times is the air inside that cube, the volume of air replaced over an hour? So if it's three, is it five, is it seven, and all buildings are going to have that naturally by just small leakage points that's going to occur throughout, and you've got pressures by wind and trade winds blowing on them, it's going to force air in and out through those little holes, so we're trying to reduce that number. This might not be a fair question, but what if you blow up a balloon and then exhaust the balloon, how many air changes have you had? Is that 100 air changes for whatever time? Well, it's 100% air change. We want air change, though. Okay, okay. And air change is just the whole volume changed out, is replaced by, you know, like breathing in and out. That's an air change. Okay. Okay, so why don't we go to our first slide, and we can launch right in. We've got quite a few, so. This was just to introduce, you know, the section of the code that we're talking about, and there you have our homes must be tested and verified as having five ACHs, air changes per hour, when tested at a pressure differential, of 0.2 inches of water or 50 Pascal, depending on whether you're an engineer or a raider like I am. And we're not going to go into- No, we won't go into all that. But the little graphic there, we'll show you what we're talking about. We're finding what's called the envelope. So just like when you mail a letter and you've got to put something in an envelope and you seal it up, we are trying to seal the envelope of the house. So any part that is a barrier between the interior of the house that is air conditioned and the outside. And it seems to go, it's defined by the green line. What's happening up on the second floor there? That is not the attic, that is actual living space up there. Well they're calling it an attic in this graphic and they're saying that that is a space that for whatever reason in this particular house is it designed to storage or it could be whatever, it is not necessarily air conditioned, it's not part of the house, it might be, it might be a balcony there, I can't quite tell. But normally an attic would not be, I mean you'd have sealing between the living space and the attic. Well I'm glad you asked that, we'll get to a slide where I will differentiate that a little bit. We're going to move to the next one, I wanted to just briefly talk about how do we measure these numbers that we're talking about and so we put this big red door in the main entrance to the house and use that big fan and something called a manometer which is just nothing more than a pressure differential measurement device and we turn the fan on and get that pressure to a difference of .1 inches of water or 50 Pascal depending on how you look at things. So that's just to show you what it looks like, very kind of techy but it's really just inducing a pressure and some people might say well that's not really real life is it because you're putting this false pressure on things, you're making things happen but if you think about our trade winds roughly at 15 to 20 miles an hour most of the year that is a pretty fair equivalent to the kinds of pressures that are induced upon a normal house in everyday Evo Beach or wherever it might be. So if we can move to the next slide we'll get to your question on that conditioned space in that attic. Now I'm talking specifically here about residences and homes. There are two ways to do it that are very common these days. On the left you'll see what's called a seal attic. So the insulation is stuck up underneath the roof at the rafters either by tying it in with twine like a bat insulation or a blowing spray foam in there. So now your envelope is extended to the very top there so that is going to be part of the volume that you're measuring for the air changes that we're talking about. Versus the one on the right where we have a vented attic so you have open eaves there on the sides allowing the air to blow up in there and then if we're lucky that we've also designed a ridge vent or a place on the top where air can escape. And that is in the code by the way. It's not what I see everyday out there but it's in the code. And why in the world would you want to condition an attic? Well there are many reasons. One is if you have air conditioning most people will put the equipment for the air conditioner up in the attic. And so you wonder well it's just the equipment why do you want to keep that cool but if you think about it the cooler that equipment is kept number one the longer it will last and number two the amount of cooling that it needs to do because it isn't gaining heat by sitting in this 120 degree attic and then trying to make air coming back from the house cool again by having to cool kind of its space around it I guess is the best way to say it. I've seen poorly insulated attics get up to 140 degrees. That's a heck of a lot. I've been in a few of them and they are really hot. So besides putting insulation there as you well know there are products on their market with cool roofs and reflective capabilities to help to bring that temperature down in there. So that's the main reason. And the reason that I have the circles on the edges there one of them got offset a little bit is to demonstrate these are areas of concern when trying to seal the house up. So those are the areas that I run into the most or most of the issues occur which we can talk about. Okay. Let's move on to the next slide then. Yeah. So now we're going to get into the weeds and I apologize to people that may not be as familiar but if the biggest issue that I've seen if you had a sealed attic so the one where the insulation is at the top there would be right underneath those beams. At every point where those red arrows are we have two buys stacked on it looks like two by sixes are stacked on top of each other. If those are just left as is which I have seen in a few projects that entire line there is going to leak air you know because remember I'm pulling air in to test do my test for that whole space up there because it is a quote unquote sealed attic. So if we don't use some product in some way to seal that space between there that's an issue and then on the graphic on the lower right each time those rafters are penetrating from the gable end which is that triangle section there out into the overhang space each one of those little spaces there is also a potential point for air to come in and it seems really small you think well jeez that's not very big what's the problem there it is a problem it doesn't meet the requirement if I'm testing that that you have to think about that runs the entire length of that beam there and each one of those penetrations they all add up basically is what I'm saying. Yep makes make sense so that is that is one one big area that is the issue my point in all of this is just to demonstrate some areas you know whether or not they should be sealed as a whole another discussion and whether people are going to do it but if they want to attempt a sealed attic these are the areas that I have seen in my experience that are need to be paid attention to. And let's move on to the next side then yeah so these are some super detailed shots of just the same idea where it looks like from the outside hey everything's all nice and sealed up but when I get in there and I'm in that attic space if I can see daylight through there we have too much air coming in so we would need to take some measure to seal it and that comes in a later slide what are the what are the solutions to this but these are some of the issues in places where air would be coming in and the one on the right of the two by fours are stacked this is from an actual project that I worked on and they're stacked on the short side to provide the height needed and and nobody just thought they had it sealed all the way up to that soffit but not beyond so the next slide if we can put that up that's the outside of basically the same house that we just looked at and they had tieback very well done they had sheathing on the outside all the way up to that lower spot but the material that was covering that space which will which will show you in a minute wasn't airtight so all of the air that was coming in was coming in up through that eve and then through those two by fours and every single rafter that penetrates through there was all leaking in air mm-hmm so the next slide is the finished product and it looks like it might be all sealed up but that is just a vinyl covering there with all kinds of holes in it is not an air barrier by any means so each time those little V's happen that's just air going in there mm-hmm so that's another that's just that's a very there's a three photos of a very detailed shot of what what we're looking at yeah one very common area okay then another one now we're going to switch gears and we're talking about a vented attic so this is again now our insulation would be down at the ceiling level so down laying on top of the dry wall that's right above the living space mm-hmm and so the attic would have its vented and everything else but now we need to be concerned about each one of the wires that comes up through what's called the top plate which doesn't look like a plate but it's a piece of wood but it's the top piece of wood that's the top framing member for the wall that now is going to be a potential area for air to come into the wall system and then potentially out anywhere in the house and then the lower right you can see there's a plumbing vent that needs to be sealed up and so what you'll see in here they've got foam which is a very common cans of spray foam that you use and you seal up each one of these edges along there to to keep the air from entering the hot attic space down into the home therefore making the air conditioner work harder cost you more money and and it decreases the comfort to nobody wants to be blasted with a whole bunch of cold air all the time yes it does and on that cheery note we need to take a break hold green sink take away back in a moment hello everyone I'm DeSoto Brown the co-host of human humane architecture which is seen on think tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. and with the show's host Martin Despeng we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live but other aspects of our life not only here in Hawaii but internationally as well so join us for human humane architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on think tech Hawaii I'm going to the game and it's gonna be great early arriving for a little tailgate I usually drink but we'll be drinking today because I'm the designated driver and that's okay it's nice to be the guy that keeps his friends in line keeps him from drinking too much so we can have a great time a little responsibility can go a long way because it's all about having fun on game day good afternoon again Howard Wigg code green think tech Hawaii my esteemed guest is Peter Stone COO of green building Hawaii and he is one of the key people who keeps homes energy efficient and comfortable and I might add healthy because what you even if you're sealing up a building you want an adequate amount of fresh air coming in and I think all of us who've been in airplanes and gotten sick thinking of all those hundreds of people in that little tube and somebody's coughing and sneezing somewhere the air is getting that those germs are getting recycled to us hopefully filtered yes so the same type of thing there's a whole bunch of considerations for maintaining good healthy indoor air in addition to comfort and in addition to yeah so why don't we take off where we left off and look at the next slide here okay so again here we're talking about a vented attic and another area that has been of concern more not so much in the recent past but more in the distant past we had was very common with these the recess can lights they're very popular people like to put them all over their ceiling and light their home up and and they're they're nice they look great they also unfortunately are a huge source of air leakage and keep gain into space not only because the lights used to be very warm but now gone mostly to LED has helped not only keep the coolness of the light down but also LEDs tend to be more sealed but these are older looking can lights that we're seeing here and so just to mention that you can see on the the picture on the left is an infrared camera shot and every single light is showing very warm compared to the rest of the ceiling and that's where all those pieces of all those holes are really producing some extra heat in the house again that's gonna the same old thing it's gonna make the air conditioner work harder has more work I heard a cool off now you're referring to 78.3 is that the ambient temperature in the no that's generally reading if you see where the pointer is on that image that is you know give or take a few it's not an exact number is the temperature basically of the ceiling now if I were to move that over to underneath that light where it's orange it would probably jump up to oh say you know 92 93 maybe even more mm-hmm and the just to explain the purple is the the deep purple or bluish is the coolest area and then the pink is a little bit warmer yeah getting to the oranges and the yellows are hotter now it kind of looks like it's on fire and it's a little misleading but it's very pretty these pictures but doesn't it doesn't necessarily mean that it's you know running at 100 degrees it's just showing you that there's a big temperature difference there could be three or four degrees yeah so that's just another area to think about with can lights mm-hmm thank you so the last area for air leakage in buildings you know that I've run into is what's called a frame floor so what I'm talking about here is anything that juts out like you see in these pictures even though it's that very small one juts out over what we call unconditioned area ambient space if we don't take pains to seal that area up that is going to be another area where warm air will enter basically the wall system and the floor system and then seep up into through heat transfer through the flooring into the space so that's called a frame floor it's called a frame floor in the industry there's a number of names for it but generally anything that sticks out so that's a second floor there's a little section that sticks out over below it could even be over a balcony down below for example that's very common here or a covered lanai for example so those need to be very carefully looked out when it's a covered lanai it's a little bit usually it's it's more sealed but something like this is often overlooked by people it's very small so people just kind of in this case they were gonna throw the same material they put on the softened up top on this one and I had to tell them that wasn't gonna work so we had to put in some different material there some air barrier material interesting so yep next slide so we talk about all this problems what about solutions really for most applications there's just a couple of solutions you know obviously there's caulking for small areas and this in this picture on the left it's basically fire caulk and it's a fine product and what's nice about it is it meets fire code and the fire code officials are often looking for the same things that I am so we're in constant for it in most areas the one area that I caution with fire caulk is that the the product itself is designed that when heat hits it or fire hits it that what that whole thing will actually expand huge it'll just get big and block that whole that penetration there which is great for their purposes but not so much for mine so what happens is it tends to be put on in a very haphazard manner because the installers know very well what it's supposed to do for the fire and they're not worried if it's a little gap in there it's gonna get filled if that ever fire ever happens however when I come in and test hopefully there's no fire going on so I need that to be completely sealed and it isn't gonna compromise the product if it's overdone but it needs to be sealed up very strongly with you can't just put it in little leave little gaps because that'll be a problem on the right we see a typical typical spray foam application and spray foam is great because it can be an insulator as well as an air sealer assuming it is put on in the right thickness and it's the right type now that's that green gray rough material we're seeing yeah it's kind of a yellowish but yes it's that one that the very bottom there kind of below the silvery radiant barrier okay yeah so that's sealing up that that top area there where the air tends to come out in a you know supposedly seal attic you need to have that area so that's it for the air sealing of the homes yeah and just to get back to your point briefly on on the ventilation which is a whole nother show and a whole nother concept yeah because everyone's laughing at me saying well you want me to seal up this home and then you want me to ventilate it and I'm telling him yes I do because if you just are letting the air come in through these annual which way what kind of air is that not very good air not very clean air it's coming in through an attic with a bunch of junk in it and through wall spaces with everything else in it so the other part of the new code that is mandatory in certain cases and we won't go into the details and when it is but should duct testing be required this is the equipment we use and we take a fan and we hook it up to the return system and we cover every register in the house and then we blow half the amount in and that's that amount that amount of pressure that we're putting in there is about what most systems are designed to run at about point one little bit less point seven inches of water column now the outlet that you're referring to is that little vented thing that we see in the ceilings right so that's what blows the cool air in to the space and when we're testing the system for leakage well obviously we want that leak that's a good leak so we're testing the system we got to cover that up mm-hmm so there's a whole bunch of those in the house we got to cover them all up okay and yeah let me just say that in the meetings I have leaky ducts are come up time and time and time again yes yeah and I have run into many people are under the impression that well I've got flexible duct systems so flexible with those ones you see all over the place and therefore there's no leakage and I beg to differ because anytime that that sure along those duct runs there probably isn't much but every time it turns into it changes and it's going to blow it into the space so what we're looking at here is from the attic above mm-hmm that is the connection of the duct system to that register or that that whatever you call it that space where it blows the cool air into the space and in this particular case when I had done my inspection it turns out that the person who was putting the register on putting the grill onto the inside had pushed it up so hard that it had broken the seal that they had carefully made on the other side and didn't know it mm-hmm so it's a it's something that happens and so you know it's all about quality control really okay we've got about one minute left so how about the next slide so this is just another place where transitions happen and leakage can occur it's pretty self-explanatory there not much to really talk about we can we can blow right through that one yeah but that's where transitions from flexible to some box of some kind happen mm-hmm and I hear about massive massive weight waste of cold air that way right because you're you're blowing all that cool air and it's just going into an attic usually no and one more and there there we go there there's your contact information Peter mm-hmm and in the very brief time we had you mentioned people are concerned about this and I am the energy code manager and the energy efficiency manager and I am getting what's called pushback from builders this is going to add to the cost this is going to add to the cost and I say yes and it's going to save energy right so we have this constant push back and forth back and forth yes I'm well aware yes and I know that that's the case and I usually just I have to say that if if we are trying to achieve a certain goal here there will be some costs involved but I think sometimes they get a little bit scared by the extra costs once once installers and and the trades are brought up to speed on how it's done and what's done yeah there will be more costs but it won't be as much as they initially think okay okay and on that very very cheery note it was time to bid us on farewell Peter Stone COO Green Building Hawaii thank you so much for being Howard appreciate it Howard wait code green think tech Hawaii see you next time