Tiny Homes
Laura Klement
How to Buy a Tiny House
How to Buy a Tiny House
Zero Energy Homes
Laura Klement
Zero Energy Homes Overview
Zero Energy Homes Overview
DIY Workshops
Laura Klement
Fall 2019 Women's Woodworking Wrap-Up
Fall 2019 Women's Woodworking Wrap-Up
DIY Workshops
Laura Klement
October DIY
October DIY
DIY Workshops
Laura Klement
June DIY Classes
June DIY Classes

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.

  1. Floor: plumbing, gas and electrical penetrations

  2. Walls: plumbing penetrations under sinks, outlets and switches, windows and doors

  3. 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.

  1. PM = Particulate Matter = fine particles floating in the air such as pollen, dander, dust and smoke

  2. VOCs = volatile organic compounds such as paints, carpets, particle board and air fresheners

  3. MVOCs = Microbial VOCs for example mold

  4. CO = carbon monoxide from combustion appliances such as gas ranges, furnaces, water heaters and fireplaces

  5. CO2 = carbon dioxide we produce from breathing

  6. 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.

  1. HEPA - use a filter to capture 99.97% of particles larger than 0.3 microns, often used during a renovation project with lead paint

  2. Activated Carbon Charcoal - often paired with HEPA filters since they can trap odors, gases and VOCs from things like paint and carpet

  3. Air Sanitizers - use UV light to reduce and eliminate bacteria, spores and viruses

  4. 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

Zero Energy Homes - Walls

First of all, if you don’t want to read about advanced wall systems and their benefits, watch the video!

Second, here is a written overview of what we discussed in the video.

  1. Current code minimum in Oregon is 2x6 wall framing with R-21 insulation

  2. Zero energy homes require higher R-value walls that are well air sealed

  3. Some states are starting to require 1” R-5 exterior insulation known as a thermal break shear wall

  4. There are cost effective sheathing materials that integrate insulation and the weather resistive barrier (WRB) into one product that require less labor to install

  5. Advanced wall systems include exterior insulation, double stud walls and ICF (insulating concrete forms).

  6. Advanced framing includes 2 stud corners, stacked framing at 24” o.c., insulated headers, ladder blocking, raised heel trusses, and plumbing and electrical runs in interior walls.

Contact us to figure out which of these solutions is best for your project!

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.