 Well, hello there, this is Nate Adams with energy smart home performance and today we're gonna talk about five myths of energy efficiency and Generally probably mess with your mind a little bit because learning all these things have certainly messed with ours. So first off Why should you care about what I think and what I say? Well, frankly, it doesn't really matter either way But I'll tell you a little bit I got into this business Working for one of the fiberglass insulation manufacturers and sold insulation to contractors and then became one myself during the housing crash Because my job evaporated along with the market And the more I dug into Insulation contracting the more I founds that I didn't know and got frustrated when things weren't working So about a year ago, I stopped contracting and energy smart changed its focus to Consulting and really delivering results for people. So actually solving problems As a contractor though, we got a lot of stuff done Although looking back on it the results the energy savings results were not that great from the few projects that we got to see But there were a couple of projects that that worked pretty well But they were when we went further into a house So it started confirming what we were thinking. So here's a couple action shots of me working doing some energy auditing and Wedging myself into some crazy places like on the right there. So anyway That's a little bit of where I've come from and where energy smart is so Let's just get rolling I found this quote by JFK and like him or not, this is a great quote. So You guys can all read what I'm going to read in anyway The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie deliberate contrived and dishonest but the myth persistent persuasive and unrealistic This definitely is true in energy efficiency because I've learned all kinds of things the hard way and It can really mess with your mind. So this is the first part of the quote. You usually see here's the second part Now I'm not going to read this one, but basically it says it's really easy to get stuck on what we think and to have opinion without really stepping back and thinking your way through it And suffering the the unpleasant consequences of that while you learn And that's a lot of what energy smart has done through its whole history. So Today, I'm going to share a lot of things that we've learned So diving right in here's the first myth Insulation is always the best way to save energy Lots of people are going to think this and maybe maybe always is a little bit too strong of a word But pretty typically this is the first thing that people think of. So let's talk a little bit about that one For starters, we need to do a definition. So our value Is a measure of resistance to heat And how quickly it transfers higher is better and it's good to think of it like sunscreen So if you're wearing spf 8, you're probably not going to get fried. Some sun will get through You'll probably get a little bit of a tan, but if you go to a 50 almost nothing is going to get through It's the same way For our value It's a really good way to look at it and Department of Energy recommends r49 up to r60 in attics in colder regions Like energy smart is in Cleveland, which is a climate zone five There's eight climate zones in the u.s. And by the way, r60 is a lot of insulation That's a foot and a half to two feet of insulation. So that's not three or six inches That's a lot of insulation and that's the recommendation So from what you see from the doe at the Department of Energy, you would guess that more is better, right? Let's take a look at A couple of things so for starters, uh, for folks that live in cold climates to get snow They are very familiar with icicles. This is one of the big reasons that we get phone calls to come fix things And it's really simple icicles show heat loss If you have icicles on your house, there is heat getting out And most of the time that heat is coming from inside the house So the heat gets into the attic space it melts the snow on the roof and then it refreezes in the gutter because it's cold out there Now the other piece of the puzzle here is the sun is going to melt some snow and uh, we can't stop that It is what it is But a great deal of icicles can be reduced if you can reduce the heat loss So let's take a look at an actual project. This is uh from a friend of mine This is inside the attic of a very big house is a 7000 square foot house And uh, it's a brick mansion built in the 20s So pretty cool joint And what you're looking at here, this is spray foam in the underside of the roof This is only about three inches of spray foam. So this is about an r20 give or take so a half or third of Uh what the department of energy recommends so by looking at that you would think that's not going to be Enough to stop the ice on this. It's not going to be enough to stop the heat. But let's take a look This is that house on the outside after a big snow storm and after a little bit of time So there was some time for the snow to melt now if you're like me you're pretty skeptical about this kind of thing And uh, you think oh, maybe this is taking just after the snow falls because it never melts immediately It takes at least a couple hours before things get going. So, uh, let's take a look at the next door neighbor They have an icicle or two Now those icicles can leak all kinds of water into the house screw all kinds of things up They rip off the gutters they can screw up the top pointing on the brick. There's all kinds of things that can happen for these so, uh There's three things that kill houses water water and water. Um, those are the three biggest and uh The icicles are definitely one of the things that hurt them. So this house could use some love Meanwhile, this house already got length, but it doesn't have that much r value So what's going on here exactly the best way to think of How to stop heat is to think about a loose knit sweater versus a windbreaker So picture it's 30 degrees outside. The wind's blowing really hard. You've got a 30 mile an hour wind It just cuts right through you Would you rather be wearing if you only had the choice of one? Um, a loose knit sweater that you could see through or a windbreaker Now obviously you'd prefer to have both But you only get one So if it were me, I'd take the windbreaker every time Because it's at least going to reduce how badly The the the wind is cutting through me where the loose knit sweater even if it's thick the wind is just going to go right through me And it's going to be very unpleasant. So the difference here the loose knit sweater is like insulation particularly like a fiberglass Or a other type of loose insulation Where the windbreaker is like air sealing. So that's finding a way to stop the the air from coming into the house in the first place And this ultimately is what matters a great deal So, uh, like I mentioned about air leakage air leakage is ultimately the key to pretty much everything If your house is leaky that is more than likely the leading cause behind comfort problems If your energy bills are high air leakage is typically the biggest issue behind that And if it is a vapor moisture problem, which typically are the ones that are going to cause Bold mildew other various nasty things like that the odds are very good that water vapor is through is behind that and Air leakage is oftentimes what's allowing that moisture to move around because the moisture moves on air to a large extent Now if it's bulk water and you've got you know, it's water coming into your basement that's our story, but uh air leakage is a huge piece of the puzzle And surprisingly it is 30 to 70 percent of the heating and cooling bill that you pay on your house Uh, it's going to be on the high side if your house is leaky is going to be on the low side if the house isn't leaky um, but it is a critical thing so Um, the the next thing we need to know is if if air leakage is such a big deal How do you measure it and it's measured with a tool called a blower door? Here's what one looks like. Uh, in fact, this is me in the pink bunny suit. I lost a bet a couple of years ago And uh, so here I am But uh, this is the blower door in my own front door In my kitchen and you can see it's a big fan That's in a red shroud and what this can do is measure how much your house leaks And it measures it pretty accurately. Uh, it bounces around a little bit with the wind outside, but uh It's going to be likely within a couple percent of where the leakage is on your house And this is going to tell us if air leakage is a massive problem in your house Or just somewhat of a problem and in most houses it's a pretty big problem, especially if your house is holding So, uh, let's talk about another project here Now this is an 1800 square foot house. Uh, it's actually basically a double wide and it's on a crawl space Now the wild thing is this house saw a 40 percent reduction in energy use But the insulation wasn't touched So the obvious question would be what changed You know one of them because we've just been talking about at the air leakage This house had a blower door number of 3 000 the units don't only matter But it got dropped to about 2 000 so about a third of the air leakage was knocked out of the house And then the furnace was downsized substantially to the smallest one on the market So it it can't use that much energy ever because it's small It's like having a 50 horsepower engine, you know, like a big lawnmower engine Uh versus having a viper which one when the throttle is forward is going to use more power or use more Uh fuel it's obviously going to be the the bigger engine So when you can put a smaller engine in a house to power it things get good along with the air leakage So what that brings us to is that energy savings is not Just about insulation and our value in fact, it's almost more about and generally is more about air leakage And then also being very efficient with how you heat and cool the house So, uh, there's one myth debunked All right number two A bigger furnace and air conditioner is better now. We just touched on this a little bit But uh, this is a really typical thing that I hear from people Uh, boy the the contractor came out and uh, he said my house dated 100 000 btu furnace But he sold me 120 000 btu furnace for the same price. What a nice guy um It's actually really bad for you when that happens, um But uh to understand why you have to take a step back and think about the incentive of the contractor What he really doesn't want is he doesn't want to call on a day when it's really cold out The last winter we saw some crazy low temperatures. Um The design temperature in Cleveland is right about five degrees, which means 99 percent of the time We are above five degrees. So three days a year. Maybe we dip below well last year We saw two uh spells that were 12 below so pushing 20 degrees below Uh design temperature. That's a very rare event This guy doesn't want to get a phone call when the house won't heat Now the other thing is he doesn't know how much your house leaks because he never runs a blower door test to find out So he doesn't know what half of the load on your house is so, uh, uh, a great way to think about this is Uh, if you were going to a dealer and you want to tell the guy, hey, I'm gonna tow a trailer and if it doesn't tow the trailer Uh, I'm gonna come back and you're gonna have to buy this thing back for me and I'm gonna be really mad at you So, uh, if you don't know how big the trailer is and how much it's gonna weigh What's the guy gonna sell you? Well, you're gonna sell you the biggest diesel pickup truck you can find that can tow 20,000 pounds Well, the odds are the trailer only weighs 5,000 so realistically you need a minivan to drag the thing The same exact thing is going on here the uh, the furnace guy Doesn't know exactly how much power it's going to take to keep the house So he gives you something way bigger than what you need And that leads to all sorts of different problems So it goes back to the incentive. He doesn't want to get that phone call when it's cold out that the house isn't heating So here's how it ends up working. I love this cartoon Um, it's a guy because the cartoon's a little bit tricky to see It's a guy standing in a huge rumpled suit and he says and they sold me the next larger size for only 10% more And this is exactly the sort of thing that happens When it comes to furnaces and air conditioners in your house, you don't want something too big You want to fit if you wear a 42 suit you want a 42 suit if you wear size six pants you want size six pants You don't want it to be too big. You just want it to fit So it's not a good deal To get something that's too big, but almost nobody takes the time to actually size furnaces and air conditioners If they do the ask them to see the paper So Uh, let's step back from this a little bit. What is the ultimate goal of a furnace or air conditioner? It's to keep the house comfortable and typically to keep it at a pretty steady temperature So let's just use 70 degrees all all year long. Uh, heating and cooling. It's just easy There's necessarily what what's best, but uh, it's makes the math simple to think about in the mind So what I'd like to do next let's compare a viper and a Prius going 70 miles an hour So, uh, uh, there's a big catch here We're only going to be holding 70 miles an hour. We're not going faster. We're not going slower If at all possible, we're going to be going up hills and down hills just like the temperature outside goes up and down So this is 70 miles an hour being like 70 degrees But there's a huge catch on this You don't have a throttle. You don't have a gas pedal. All you have is an on off switch Most furnaces are single stage. They're either on or they're off air conditioners are the same way so, uh Step back and let's think about this So here's a viper beautiful car You know capable of the obscene speeds these things actually do 50 miles an hour in reverse Or at least the first generation did These are some crazy crazy cars, but if you have an on off switch only picture going down the road, so You try to keep the thing going 70 it dips down a little bit you're going say 68 67 when you catch it And you floor it because that's your only option. It's on off Your head snaps back It bounces against the headrest Your whole body is pressed into the the seat hard because these things are so wildly fast. It's just got tons and tons of horsepower Before you know it you look down and you're doing almost 80 miles an hour because it only took the fraction of a second to do that Maybe you you catch it it's 75 miles an hour But either way you overshoot and you accelerate extremely quickly And then the temperature drops or the the speed drops when you let off the throttle And it drops down until you're below 70 again And then you romp the throttle to do it all over again Is that a comfortable way to drive? Would you want to ride with somebody who's driving a car like that on off on off flooring it letting off flooring it letting off? Of course not. It's not a comfortable thing So let's think about a Prius trying to do 70 miles an hour so With the Prius we get down to 68 and you romp on the throttle because that's the only option you have And because it doesn't have a huge amount of horsepower. It doesn't accelerate super quickly So by the time you catch it you let off the throttle and you're doing say 72 miles an hour So you're going just a little bit faster. This is just how a furnace would work in a house And a right-size furnace is going to take a little bit of time to get it up to temperature and it's going to catch The the temperature in time to let off before it way overshoots And it's also going to move more slowly, which is good Our bodies really don't notice temperature changes that are less than about two degrees or so So if you can keep the temperature of a house within a couple degrees You probably aren't going to notice it getting hotter and colder Where if the temperature is jumping up and down really quickly you're going to notice it and it makes you uncomfortable And uncomfortable people do crazy things in the house that end up burning a lot more energy So That kind of gives you an idea of why Bigger and smaller furnaces are Are different. So when you back up and you also think about it Which one between the viper and Prius keeps you going 70 miles an hour more efficiently? Well, it'll be the Prius of course because it doesn't have as much power And it's also going to be much more comfortable to do because the temperature or the speed depending which way you're looking at this Is not going up and down nearly as quickly So that's one Reason why oversized furnaces air air conditioners are bad, but here's another thing Short cycles happen Like when you picture that viper and you romp on it, you don't need to have the gas pedal on For very long before it gets up to speed and then you let off. So that would be called a short cycle If you pay attention to your furnace, it may not be running for very long time. That's a bad thing. It's very hard on equipment They're oftentimes rated in cycles for how long they last but also when The furnace short cycles it's going to leave a lot of heat inside the heat exchanger Which can rust them out early and it can take a lot of time off their lives Also, the big equipment oftentimes has a blower that's far bigger than what the ductwork can actually move in the house So the fan is basically trying to push on Like it's like breathing from the straw. You just you can't get enough air in and out And it wears them out early. So I've seen furnaces with fans that fail within two three four years When the equipment should last 15 or 20 because the equipment's oversized And that equipment is short cycling at the same time as well So here's another problem and this is oftentimes what people are calling me to solve Uh are calling energy smart to solve It's rooms that don't heat or cool well now it could partly be and oftentimes it it's uh Building enclosure problem where the air sealing and insulation is not up to snuff But also if you have a big furnace think about how far that air has to go to the room that's furthest from it So say you've got a two-story house and you've got a bedroom with the far corner away from the furnace So the furnace kicks on and it starts to warm up the ductwork. It starts blowing the air through It heads off to all the easy places that are close to The furnace itself and then gradually that air makes it down to the end of the the basement and then heads up to that bedroom It's up the far point So by the time that ductwork is all up to temperature. So the air going through it is up to temperature Uh, the furnace is about to shut off So that room never gets that much heat and oftentimes that room also has more outside walls than what uh Other rooms in the house do so it never got up to temperature Anyway, it's it's losing temperature too fast and it's not getting heated well So these sorts of things are causing problems and if you have an oversized furnace It just doesn't run long enough to heat that room where if you have a right size furnace It's going to run long enough and consistently enough to have a much higher likelihood of heating that room well Although again the building enclosure has to be in good shape And then the other side of that if coin is of course, uh, it's not going to cool well out there either So, uh, typically it's the same rooms that don't heat the cool wall So let's take a look at what this looks like This is a chart from an ecobee thermostat Which is something that we really like to work with because it's the only one that does data logging on the market So we can actually see what's going on inside your house Which is a very very good thing for us to have It's a we end up being able to read this like neo in the matrix Just being able to see ones and zeros so we can see problems in your house just from looking at this so Let's talk about what these various lines are so this green line here This is temperature inside the house The red dashed line This is the set point Down here this black line, this is the outside temperature so you can see it going up and down So when this report was run it was between Basically 30 and 55 degrees somewhere in that range it was running up and down The little gray line you can barely see here. This is indoor humidity And then this is a really important one down here these red spikes This is when the furnace turned on so short cycles look just like this It's a spike So you can tell from these little spikes that this furnace is oversized because it barely has to run to keep the house Now the other thing you have to keep in mind is it's not crazy cold outside So the furnace is going to tend to be oversized Um, it's like having that viper if you want to go 20 miles an hour You you don't have to hit the gas very often at all because it's going to take very little power to to keep it going that speed Same thing happens in a house But uh this green line. This is really the critical thing here. So Take a look at how quickly it goes up. You see each each time the furnace kicks on The temperature jumps really quickly. So this is showing you the furnace is oversized and that the temperature is moving around really quick Now on the flip side see where the the lines are coming down really quickly as well. Now. This is a weird anomaly It's another issue going on entirely but where you see it going down quickly That means that the house sucks as we say, uh, it's a leaky house It's not well insulated the temperature is dropping off the cliff very quickly When the furnace turns off. So, uh, does this look like driving that viper? It's up down up down up down up down This is not a comfortable way to live our bodies have a lot of temperature sensors We've got some more in the ballpark of 10,000 temperature sensors in our body Where our houses have one the thermostat and it's typically in the warmish room in the house In fact, that's what was happening here of the The room where this thermostat is is a sunny room So the sun shines and it warms that room up But the rest of the house meanwhile has fallen off the cliff temperature wise and getting much less comfortable So there's a lot of different factors going on in this graph So this is what a house that's in bad shape looks like Now this is much more what it should look like This house has a pretty right-sized furnace. It's actually been changed since this so there's some New graphs out that are pretty wild and the the equipment runs pretty much all the time, which is amazing But uh, take a look at this green line here You can see it's just barely moving and particularly in this period here. I mean look it's cold outside It's down to 10 degrees right here and it's still under 20 until right here So this house is not moving very quickly. This is actually the the big brick house with the foam That you saw earlier. Look how long the run cycles are here This is just an amazing thing to see And then right here these uh bright lines. This is when it kicks into high stage So uh When that happens well, actually you can see this one's the thermostat got turned up And that's what kicked it into high stage But otherwise it's running in low stage to heat this house This is a very small furnace. This is only an 80 000 BTU furnace Which typically should serve a house more like 3000 square feet something along those lines In fact, I've seen 80 000 BTU furnaces in houses that are only like 12 or 1300 square feet This house is 7 000 So it's amazing that this was capable of heating this house But uh when you just look at how slowly it moves up and down this is a quite comfortable home And we know this from the client So uh This is more of what the house should look like when it's fixed And this is what happens when you have right sized furnaces and air conditioners So here's the truth Smaller equipment is better Long runtimes are good and also multiple stages are good. I didn't touch on that much, but uh You can get a two-stage furnace or what's called a modulating furnace, which has more stages than two Oftentimes they're infinitely modulating And air conditioners can be bought the same way This is like giving you a throttle So instead of only having the on-off you at least have a 50 percent Uh throttle and then 100 throttle. So that's what's going on here. This is 50 throttle. This is 100 throttle So that's a more expensive piece of equipment, but it leads to better comfort And that's ultimately what we're going for but when you downsize the equipment You also downsize the cost a bit as well Uh Because uh the larger equipment costs more so oftentimes you can come out kind of close to even Or maybe just a little premium for doing that sort of thing And that is all part of our design process. So when we go through one of our comprehensive planning processes, which includes an energy audit You're going to come out with a plan that's going to tell you just what equipment to use All right, third myth start with the low hanging fruit This is one that we hear all the time and frankly it drives us balkers So change light bulbs wrap your water tank Wrap your water lines. Just do the attic just insulate and air seal the attic. That's it. That's that's going to get you a long way And it's it's really not a good way to look at things when we dig into the numbers. So Uh, I like analogies. You should probably figure that out already Think of fixing a house like losing weight. So if you're going to lose weight I'm recording this january 2nd. So I'm on a diet You need to do a combination of diet and exercise and you need to be Really deliberate about it. You can't just take a pill. They don't work. We've all tried stuff like that Um, uh, if if you don't really commit and dig in you're not going to see results So you'll step on the scale after a week of dieting and find out you lost You know half a pound maybe a pound or maybe a gained weight And it's really frustrating So, uh, that is really similar to what it takes to fix a house Diet is like the building enclosure. So that's uh, uh, where The outside of the house meets the outdoors that's insulation and air sealing the air sealing is really important as we just found out The exercise part of it is really like the hvac. So, uh, when you fix building enclosure, it's like losing weight when you Right size the equipment. It's like getting in really good shape And when those two things happen in our bodies amazing things happen When they don't happen We feel, you know, fat and a little tired out of energy So the danger of doing Not enough of just going for low-hanging fruit. I mean once the last time you heard about low-hanging fruit in a diet plan I'm sure you can cut out sugar. But if you just cut sugar out, do you think you're going to lose 10 pounds a week? No It's not going to show you a substantial difference And so if you step on that scale after a week and you see very little difference What are you going to do? You're going to fall off the wagon. Ah, it's a heck with it. Let's go get a burger and milkshake Um, and the same thing happens with energy efficiency If you don't see results feel results, you're not going to be likely to continue Um, and that's really a bummer because amazing things can happen to your home You can make it far more comfortable. It can be healthier and safer. The air can be far better inside The thing will last longer because a lot of moisture problems are mitigated And it will be much more efficient. We routinely see Energy savings in the 30 to 70 percent range. So all those things can be yours If you go far enough, but otherwise you fall off the wagon and if you want an example of this Take a look at our blog from not too long ago November 26th called a tale of two houses. This compares two houses with pretty similar jobs, frankly And very similar air leakage results But one house only saved nine percent in energy and the other house saved 47 percent in energy So almost a five to one difference or right around a five to one difference That is an amazing difference. And that's what happens When you don't go far enough you get these minimal energy savings and you may get some comfort benefits that client got some comfort benefits But he was really hoping to save energy That was taking the low hanging fruit path and it did not work So you have to be really careful about doing that sort of thing Now here's what can happen I'm I'm going to show you a couple of my other failures of energy smarts other failures from how we used to do things So call this unintended consequences or failure to get results So let's talk about the first one. These are friends of mine. Cory and Jen are their names They live in Cleveland and they have a 1920s two-story house So they don't have a third story or a walk-up attic or anything like that And they called me because they had big icicles. They were icicles that were scaring them They were worried about them falling off the house and landing on one of their cars and having an insurance claim or Ripping the gutters off, you know, lots of different worries that go behind icicles Their house was also cold Especially the first story, but also the second story And then they have a little sunroom That was also very cold where they put their dogs at night. So we were called in to fix these things And we insulated the attic air sealed the attic Saw very little difference in the air leakage of the house Because we weren't going far enough air leak is kind of like If you've ever had a bump underneath a rug and you Try to step on it Flatten it out. Oftentimes it just moves somewhere else The same thing happens there leakage if you don't reduce things enough Just doesn't make much of a difference. The air just starts leaking somewhere else That is more than likely what was going on here. We also Did some air sealing work in the crawl space underneath that little sunroom area where they keep their dogs Neither thing made really any difference at all And we went back twice more to go adjust minor things But now that we understand what we understand We we know that we just didn't go far enough in his house Now another kicker is he just bought a new furnace and he got a too big furnace So it's really a shame that we just didn't end up fixing things here And we we know a couple of other things that really could stand to get done But this picture here even though it's kind of lousy This is a picture of the icicles that were still falling off the house after the job And my belief here is that there's too much heat coming through the walls and getting stuck underneath the eaves of the roof and Then melted the icicles. It's called heat plumbing So there's just more work that needs to get done to his house to accomplish what he wants to accomplish So Cory fell off the wagon and he's frustrated. He doesn't think this this works Thankfully, we're still friends, but That did not show results. That was a failure Here's another failure This is a fellow named matt and he's got a 1960s two-story house And it's got an addition in the back. So if you look at the picture on the right You can see the addition sticking out the back of the house This is the family room and it's really cold and that is what we got called for Now we were working with the rebate program at the time So we did what we could get the good rebates for so this just sounded familiar from the last one. We insulated there's There's two attics. So there's a big attic that's up here And then there's an attic here And then this is the garage although I believe this might have been the bathroom on the first floor as well But there were two attics in here and then there's actually another little front space that's behind this As well. So all those got insulated and then there's a crawl space under here And then if you see this little door here, there's a there's a little bit more living space in here And there's a little crawl into there. So we insulated an air sealed that The the curses their family room is still cold and you can read about this I've blogged about it back in april 2014 Um Where this just didn't work now one of the big things behind this is more than likely he has an oversized furnace And particularly now that we insulated an air sealed a good deal in the house We reduced how big of a furnace he needs So it's like taking a pickup truck that weighs 5 000 pounds and making it weigh 3 000 pounds That engine if you have only an odd off switch is now going to make that thing accelerate a lot more It's going to be much faster And more than likely the ductwork that was put in for this addition was just hacked into the system and wasn't planned at all There's no design behind it so This ends up being the far point from the furnace and it just doesn't heat or cool well Plus if you think about how exposed it is this has five sides that are effectively to the outdoors So underneath the three sides going around the sides and then the top of the only part that is Facing the indoors is this wall right here where it goes to the house So it has a lot of forces working against it and it really needs some more planning and design If you're actually going to see results on that so I got a phone call from matt. He's understanding. He's actually in a similar world and uh Unfortunately, his wife wasn't willing to spend the penny more to solve things So this is just going to go unresolved and that's really kind of a shame But that's the sort of thing that happens They fell off the wagon. They got frustrated and that's really a shame because they're That there's very good results to be had here So I could go on and on you can probably tell touched on three different failures Radical transparency is our policy. We really just try to show here's what worked here's what didn't work There's some that didn't work So does this begin to give you an inkling that low-hanging fruit just doesn't solve problems It it just doesn't work the way that we think it should so this is something you will see on all kinds of energy tip things Another blog entry we wrote recently that actually got picked up by several different media outlets was called uh Why energy saving tips suck? And they do it's worth looking that one up to It just doesn't get you to where you're going to begin to either feel the results or see any results in your energy bills All right, uh myth four a house has to breathe. This is one you hear all the time I've been hearing this for years. I believed it for years But uh, here's the truth of matter a house doesn't have to breathe people have to breathe and then your furnace The water heater anything else that burns fuel has to breathe But when you think about a house being able to breathe Where does that air come from? This is a really critical question the air is going to come from places that really aren't that nice It's going to come from your attic. It's going to come from the basement. Um, there's nothing bad down there Is there it's not musty or nasty or full of critters or anything like that or Or ship crawl spaces, especially if you have a dirt crawl space. Those are just nightmares Um from a health and safety perspective Um, or the other place you come from is inside the walls So what could possibly go wrong when you've got all that nice fresh outside air that you're thinking of coming from there? Well, here's one actual example. This is from some friends down in Nashville Um, this right here That is a dead possum that doesn't have much left of it. So it's down to the old Fern bones routine if you've seen that on the side of the road. This right here is one of the the cold air Returns for the house that broke and fell off right there. Isn't that the kind of air that you would like to have? This is an extreme example, but the odds are good that uh If you are thinking you're getting fresh air in your house, you probably aren't When your house leaks the air is coming through places that you really don't want it to come from So sealing the house up is a good idea and then you Can put in other systems that Bring air in where you know where it's coming from where you know you can filter it where you know it's fresh and what that Is Called in the industry. This is our little phrase. We say build tight and ventilate right So you want to make the house airtight and then make sure that you are very deliberate about where you bring in fresh air ventilation And when you do some design and some thinking on that, uh, some really amazing things can happen All right last myth we're going to talk about today This is another one you're going to hear all the time programmable thermostats always save money. Um By a nest That's I mentioned an echo bee. They're going to save you tons of energy That the curse in my world is Nobody or almost nobody actually goes back and measures Results actually sees what really happens in the house And when you do you start seeing different things. So this is what we learned If you're going to get energy savings, uh, they come from when the temperature drops. So Picture that a house earlier and i'll be showing the graph here in a second Where it drops quickly and then comes back up drops quickly and comes back up drops quickly and comes back up every time It drops if there there is a chance to save energy there and when a house is leaky the The temperature and it falls quickly Now if you have a fairly efficient home a newer home The temperature inside of them doesn't drop that quickly So there's not a lot of chance to save energy before you kick the furnace back on typically in the high stage And uh bring the temperature back up Also, if you have a brick home like that, uh, 7 000 square foot house They have a lot of thermal mass. They move slowly. It's like a 400 pound football player or something like that You got to hit them pretty hard to get them to move Once he gets moving you keep moving The brick homes will work that way now if your house is leaky or poorly inflated. Yes, the temperature is going to drop Typically quite quickly and you you may have opportunity for savings. So This is going to look familiar to same graph from earlier. This is that 7 000 square foot brick house built in the 20s That's not that airtight. It's not bad, but it's not that great And you can see it's just moving really slowly So if if you shut the the furnace off, what are you really going to save here because it's just not going to come down So this house is not likely to see much Now on the flip side, there's the other house where it's going up down up down up down So if you set the temperature down, it's going to fall really quickly And where the savings are is when the temperature stays low Let's say you are going to set it where this line is so you set it back to 60 degrees You may see savings from this now if you have a theme boiler Not going to be the case That can actually end up costing you more There's there's a lot of intricacies here. So Just making a blanket statement that thermostat save money Is a very very dangerous thing to do and it ends up leading people down bad paths And once again, you end up thinking that everybody in the efficiency industry is a charlotte Now all of us are some of us are just as in any any industry but Energy smart works very hard to actually see what's going on in a house and try and understand what's going on So that we can make better predictions of what will actually make a difference And that is one of the big things that sets us apart All right, so let's take a look at a real world example of thermostat setback It's actually just running a house at a different temperature entirely Now this is one of the few projects that we did when we were contracting that was truly comprehensive So we did the whole house. We did the attic. We did the walls. We air sealed the basements We air sealed the whole house And we actually have energy bills on them Uh, customer's name is paul and he saw about 50 energy savings from doing this The house is built in the 1920s and it's a two and a half story house So it has a semi finished attic, which just is the wall of it right here So this is a knee wall that's insulated and then this is the flat in the knee wall attic So these are a little triangular attics if you have a cape cod Or a house that has uh, we call them a half story Um, but a house that has like say there's slope ceilings right above here That's what this is and these are difficult houses to do well. They're just tricky So this is a really good example Because this house is not perfect now. It's just pretty good So uh, here's some other things that make this a great test case The second year after the retrofit paul went back to keeping the house at 62 degrees. So this is a steam house. So it's a A little bit different from some other things But uh the year before He had kept it at 70 very unfortunate circumstances. His sister was terminally ill and She passed away, but she wanted to keep the house comfortable for her while she was there But we know that all winter long it was kept at 70 degrees as opposed to the usual 62 This is a big difference. Typically this is going to show a major difference in energy use So, uh, that's a great thing there We got a big leakage reduction out of this house We dropped 55 out of the air leakage in this house from doing all of the work that we did Could we have done better? Sure But it wasn't that expensive of a job So, uh, that is a remarkable result so remarkable actually the energy auditor from the the gas company rebate program Didn't believe that we could knock the air leakage number down that much And he went out and got another gauge and moved the blower door to another door because he thought it was wrong So that is a big reduction, but uh, bigger reductions are possible if you're paying attention and Designing things and as we know from earlier air leakages really critical So all these things make this house really a good test case Now i'm going to flash some data at you. Don't try and take all this in I just want to show you that there's actual data that We're working off here So What we just showed you briefly We did a little bit of analysis on the energy bills It's using basically the same amount of energy for both the 62 and 70 degrees There really isn't the discernible difference between them another way is you can correct it for weather and Comes out right about the same Amount of usage. So yes, this is jargon But just showing you some of the numbers behind it. There's really just not a big difference So I would have expected a substantial difference in energy use between these two if anything it appears that Keeping the house at 62 degrees might have used a fractionally more energy um Probably because the the steam system is actually like warmer temperatures Quite often So, uh, anyway, there's really no difference in usage and this is an old house that's been fixed kind of well It's not amazing. It's pretty good But uh, you would expect from what you hear about setback And changing the temperature that there would be a difference Between the energy usage of these two. So this house is in an okay shape and there's really no difference So here's another thing about what that means if you have a newer house and you're uncomfortable this happened to some friends of mine from church actually My friend's wife, uh, complaints that the house is too cold. Well, they have the house set 66 which is cold Um Measure the the leakage on the house. It's Really quite low one of the lowest results that I've I've seen And so I told him just turn your thermostat up a couple degrees. See if that makes you comfortable See if it changes your bills. It may not move them that much Their real problem is a hugely oversized furnace that's about triple the size of what they actually need to heat the house Um And so they're they have a room above the garage the bonus room that just doesn't heat well and it's not going to change until that changes So it's but when we go look at a house, we get an idea of it is the solution Going to be more building enclosure based or is it going to be furnace and air conditioning based? That's part of our initial consultations so but the The great reagan line freezing in the dark Was what he joked about jimmy carter folks doing With an efficient home. You don't have to You just make the house efficient to begin with and then you live comfortably. In fact, that is really what we aim at We aim at your comfort if you are comfortable Truly comfortable the house is not going to use very much energy So Speaking of jimmy carter Remember this house these clients were big jimmy carter fans and they really bought into when uh jimmy said that You like if you're a good american you don't set your thermostat above 68 degrees So they didn't although my partner who was working on his house Uh That he actually changed their thermostat. So when it read 68 it actually meant 70 So the set point got bumped two degrees, which can be a pretty substantial two degrees for energy use But they still realized 40 energy savings From that and remember this was only changing out the furnace an air conditioner and Air sealing the house. Those are the only changes. There's no insulation changes in this house So when you come right down to it Programmable thermostats are only likely to even begin to save you money if your house stinks If it's very leaky What you're going to do is just suffer wouldn't it be better to actually fix the house So, all right, that's it. There's five energy efficiency myths debunked Installation is not the best way to save energy air sealing is bigger furnaces and air conditioners are not better Right-sized ones that are multiple stage are Focusing on low-hanging fruit does not save a lot of energy going deeper does And a house does not have to breathe the people do So you want to just provide for fresh air coming from nice places not ugly places And programmable thermostats do not always save money So, uh, uh, there's five different Myths debunked So do you get the sense that there's really more to this home performance thing that you then you might have first thought Yeah, we we do too. Uh, it took a lot of time to learn it well enough to be able to teach this Uh, so there's a lot going on underneath the surface and you really have to think your way through So, uh, thank you for watching spend some more time on the website. Um, and If you would like to start the process it all begins with an initial consultation where we ask you a bunch of questions About what you're trying to fix And then we run a blower door test to find out how much your your house leaks wonder of wonders It's a really key thing we need to know and then we uh, tell you about the process from there So spend some time on there. Thank you for watching and have yourself a lovely day