Imagine: you are sheltering in place in your grid connected home and it shuts down for days due to an ice storm or wildfire. You have no backup power to stay comfortable, keep food cold and communication devices charged. Now imagine the same scenario but your home has been weatherized so it remains more comfortable for longer and you have a solar energy system with a battery backup that powers your critical loads: refrigeration, lights and communication devices. Through our energy consulting services, we can help discuss and prioritize upgrades that will make your home ready for the future! Click here to learn more about limited time opportunities in the Columbia River Gorge to make your home more resilient.
Healthy Homes & Home Performance - Insulation
Check out this video to learn more about the different types of insulation, how to check what type and how much your home has, and how to choose and install new insulation. If your home is insulated, it will most likely have fiberglass batt or blown in insulation as it is the most common and cost effective.
Did you know? If your walls don’t have insulation, you can insulate with blown-in! This will make your home more comfortable and also dampen sound.
Guess what? Our favorite insulation is mineral wool!
Why?
Fire resistant
Insect resistant
Mold resistant
Sound dampening
Easy to self install
Healthy Homes & Home Performance - Air Sealing
Air sealing is important to help you be more comfortable in your home and improve home health and durability. It’s especially important to do BEFORE you insulate your home. You can use a combination of caulk, foam, gaskets and rigid materials to do air sealing. Watch the video below for a more detailed description of how you can tackle air sealing in your home.
Here are the things to seal around in these 3 areas of your home.
Floor: plumbing, gas and electrical penetrations
Walls: plumbing penetrations under sinks, outlets and switches, windows and doors
Roof: plumbing and electrical penetrations, top plate to drywall, open soffits, any hollow wall cavities
How Not to Waste Your Money with Energy Saving Solutions
Our friend Janine Ehrentraut, with eXp Realty, wrote a blog post about how to not waste your money by implementing energy saving solutions that can also make your home healthier and more comfortable. Check it out here. Also, if you are looking to buy a home and work with Janine, she offers you one of our home assessments for FREE!!!
Healthy Homes & Home Performance - Air Quality Monitors & Purifiers
As we spend more time in our homes, ensuring we have good indoor air quality (IAQ) is critical to our health. In addition to the ventilation strategies we have discussed, changing your furnace filter regularly, and cleaning your home often by vacuuming, dusting and wiping down surfaces with soap and water, you may want to consider an air quality monitor and/or air purifier system.
Air Quality Monitors
Air quality monitors measure different types of pollutants in your home’s air. Before selecting a monitor, consider the things you are interested in monitoring then read product specs and reviews to ensure it is the best fit for you. The following are some types of pollutants that air quality monitors measure.
PM = Particulate Matter = fine particles floating in the air such as pollen, dander, dust and smoke
VOCs = volatile organic compounds such as paints, carpets, particle board and air fresheners
MVOCs = Microbial VOCs for example mold
CO = carbon monoxide from combustion appliances such as gas ranges, furnaces, water heaters and fireplaces
CO2 = carbon dioxide we produce from breathing
Radon gas from the ground under your home
Air Purifiers
Air purifiers clear the air by using different techniques to draw particles out of the air. Look for the clean air delivery rate (CADR) number which measures how much air it filters in cubic feet per minute at the highest setting. The following are some of the different types of air purifiers.
HEPA - use a filter to capture 99.97% of particles larger than 0.3 microns, often used during a renovation project with lead paint
Activated Carbon Charcoal - often paired with HEPA filters since they can trap odors, gases and VOCs from things like paint and carpet
Air Sanitizers - use UV light to reduce and eliminate bacteria, spores and viruses
Ionizers - do not require filters but instead use an electrostatic charge to draw particles out of the air to a collection plate or by making the particles heavy to be more easily picked up by your vacuum, these can produce small amounts of ozone so do your research
Healthy Homes & Home Performance - Ventilation
Ventilation is the V of HVAC that often gets forgotten. It is important for every home to have a ventilation strategy to ensure occupants have clean, fresh air in the home. In older existing homes, by default this is air leaks through the building enclosure i.e. walls, floors and ceilings. That air is not filtered or conditioned so it can create health issues in the home like asthma. This is why new construction takes on the motto, “build tight, ventilate right.” Controlling where the air comes from helps create a cleaner, healthier indoor air environment. A balanced ventilation system is the best solution because it minimizes uncomfortable pressure imbalances by bringing in fresh outdoor air and exhausting stale indoor air. through a heat exchanger core in a heat recovery ventilator aka HRV or through a separate supply in the heating system and exhaust fan. The benefit of the HRV over the two part system is that the heat exchanger core transfers the heat of outgoing air in wintertime to incoming air so the furnace doesn’t have to work as hard.
***One other really important thing you can do is check that every bathroom, especially those with a shower, have a bath fan that is directly sealed to the outside through the wall or via ducting through the attic. Too often, during a home assessment we have seen fan ductwork laying amidst insulation in an attic creating mold issues on the sheathing.
Healthy Homes & Home Performance - Water Heaters
Do you heat your home’s water with gas or electric heat? Chances are you have a 50 or 65 gallon tank water heater installed in your home. Let’s say that tank is 70% efficient. So for every dollar you put into water heating, 30 cents is wasted! New water heaters waste much less and are something to consider if your water heater is 10 or more years old. If you have a gas water heater, you could replace it with a 97% efficient gas tankless water heater. Then only 3 cents to every dollar is wasted. If you have an electric water heater, you could replace it with a heat pump water heater aka HPWH which is over 300% efficient! But how can that be? Well they use the heat pump technology like your fridge except instead of expelling warm air to keep your beer cold, they take in surrounding warm air to heat the water and expel cold air. Pretty cool right? Most of them have multiple modes for heating including heat pump, hybrid and vacation. Hybrid is a great option during times of higher water heating demand because it combines the heat pump action with the traditional electric resistance elements in the tank. They are also starting to include smart technology so you can monitor and control them remotely from your device!
Healthy Homes & Home Performance - Heating and Cooling Systems
Here are the top 5 things to know about your heating and cooling system.
Replace your filter regularly, about every 3 months depending on use
Get it serviced about once a year to ensure it is operating efficiently
Make sure any ductwork is sealed and insulated
Ensure vegetation isn’t overgrown around outside unit
Consider replacing after 15-20 years (or sooner to take advantage of newer efficient systems!)
Watch the video for more information!
Healthy Homes & Home Performance Overview
How do healthy homes and home performance intersect? In this series of posts and videos, we will cover topics including indoor air quality, ventilation, space heating and cooling systems, water heating, air sealing, insulation and appliances. You will learn what things you might want to DIY and when it might be best to hire a contractor.