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House Frames

Our Services

Preparation

To be prepared for your home's audit please begin compiling information for Green Power Associate’s Profile of your home including:

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  • The size of your home (overall square footage, # of bedrooms, etc.) and age of your home

  • Construction changes that you or recent previous owners made (for example large additions, new windows, additional insulation, etc.)

  • Areas of concern in your home (i.e. high heating bills, high electric bills, drafts, colds spots, hot spots, etc.)

  • How your home is heated. Do you supplement heat with non-standard fuels?

  • Recent utility and heating fuel bills. Ideally, we would like to see bills for at least the last 12 months.

Blower Door Tests

Professional energy auditors use blower door tests to help determine a home's airtightness. These are some reasons for establishing the proper building tightness:

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  • Reducing energy consumption due to air leakage

  • Avoiding moisture condensation problems.

  • Avoiding uncomfortable drafts caused by cold air leaking in from the outdoors

  • Making sure that the home's air quality is not too contaminated by indoor air pollution.

How They Work

A blower door is a powerful fan that mounts into the frame of an exterior door. The fan pulls air out of the house, lowering the air pressure inside. The higher outside air pressure then flows in through all unsealed cracks and openings. The auditors may use a smoke pencil to detect air leaks. These tests determine the air infiltration rate of a building. Blower doors consist of a frame and flexible panel that fit in a doorway, a variable-speed fan, a pressure gauge to measure the pressure differences inside and outside the home, and an airflow manometer and hoses for measuring airflow.​

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Preparing for a Blower Door Test

Take the following steps to prepare your home for a blower door test:

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  • Close windows and open interior doors

  • Turn down the thermostats on heaters and water heaters

  • Turn off all appliances, except for refrigerators and freezers.

  • Shut fireplace dampers, fireplace doors, and wood stove air intakes

Insulation and Air Sealing

You can reduce your home's heating and cooling costs through proper insulation and air-sealing techniques. These techniques will also make your home more comfortable. Any air sealing efforts will complement your insulation efforts, and vice versa. Proper moisture control and ventilation strategies will improve the effectiveness of air sealing and insulation and vice versa. Therefore, a home's energy efficiency depends on a balance between all of these elements:

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  • Air sealing

  • Insulation

  • Moisture control

  • Ventilation

 

A proper balance between all of these elements will also result in a more comfortable, healthier home environment.

Air Sealing

Air leakage, or infiltration, occurs when outside air enters a house uncontrollably through cracks and openings. Properly air-sealing such cracks and openings in your home can significantly reduce heating and cooling costs, improve building durability, and create a healthier indoor environment. It is unwise to rely on air leakage for ventilation because it can't be controlled. During cold or windy weather, too much air may enter the house. When it's warmer and less windy, not enough air may enter. Air infiltration also can contribute to problems with moisture control. Moldy and dusty air can enter a leaky house through such areas as attics or foundations. This air in the house could cause health problems. The recommended strategy in both new and old homes is to reduce air leakage as much as possible and to provide controlled ventilation as needed. Note that air sealing alone can't replace the need for proper insulation throughout your home, which is needed to reduce heat flow.

Insulation

Properly insulating your home will not only help reduce your heating and cooling costs but also make your home more comfortable. Here you'll find the following information:

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How Insulation Works

You need insulation in your home to provide resistance to heat flow. The more heat flow resistance your insulation provides, the lower your heating and cooling costs.

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Heat flows naturally from a warmer to a cooler space. In the winter, this heat flow moves directly from all heated living spaces to adjacent unheated attics, garages, basements, and even to the outdoors. Heat flow can also move indirectly through interior ceilings, walls, and floors— wherever there is a difference in temperature. During the cooling season, heat flows from the outdoors to the interior of a house.

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To maintain comfort, the heat lost in the winter must be replaced by your heating system and the heat gained in the summer must be removed by your cooling system. Properly insulating your home will decrease this heat flow by providing an effective resistance to the flow of heat.

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An insulation's resistance to heat flow is measured or rated in terms of its thermal resistance or R-value.

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Adding Insulation to an Existing Home

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Unless your home was specially constructed for energy efficiency, you can usually reduce your energy bills by adding more insulation. Many older homes have less insulation than homes built today, but adding insulation to a newer home may also pay for itself within a few years. To determine whether you should add insulation, you first need to find out how much insulation you already have in your home and where. A qualified home energy auditor will include an insulation check as a routine part of a whole-house energy assessment. An energy assessment, also known as a home energy audit, will also help identify areas of your home that are in need of air sealing. (Before you insulate, you should make sure that your home is properly air-sealed.) If you don't want an energy assessment, you need to find out the following:

  • Where your home is, isn't, and/or should be insulated

  • What type of insulation you have

  • The R-value and the thickness or depth (inches) of the insulation you have.

 

If you live in a newer house, you can probably find out this information from the builder. If you live in an older house, you'll need to inspect the insulation yourself if you don't want an energy assessment.

Moisture Control

Properly controlling moisture in your home will improve the effectiveness of your air sealing and insulation efforts, and vice versa. Thus, moisture control contributes to a home's overall energy efficiency. The best strategy for controlling moisture in your home depends on your climate and how your home is constructed. Before deciding on a moisture control strategy for your home, you may first want to understand how moisture moves through a home. Moisture control strategies typically include the following areas of a home:

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  • Attics

  • Foundation

  • Basement

  • Crawl space

  • Slab-on-grade floors

  • Walls

 

In most U.S. climates, you can use vapor diffusion retarders in these areas of your home to control moisture. Proper ventilation should also be part of a moisture control strategy.

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How Moisture Moves through a Home

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To help understand the principles of moisture control, you need to understand the basics of how moisture can move through your home. Moisture or water vapor moves in and out of a home in three ways:

  • With air currents

  • By diffusion through materials

  • By heat transfer

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Of these three, air movement accounts for more than 98% of all water vapor movement in building cavities. Air naturally moves from a high-pressure area to a lower one by the easiest path possible—generally through any available hole or crack in the building envelope. Moisture transfer by air currents is very fast (in the range of several hundred cubic feet of air per minute). Thus, you need to carefully and permanently air seal any unintended paths to control air movement. The other two driving forces—diffusion through materials and heat transfer—are much slower processes. Most common building materials slow moisture diffusion to a large degree, although they never stop it completely. Insulation also helps reduce heat transfer or flow.

Ventilation

When creating an energy-efficient, airtight home through air sealing techniques, it's very important to consider ventilation. Unless properly ventilated, an airtight home can seal in indoor air pollutants. Ventilation also helps control moisture—another important consideration for a healthy, energy-efficient home.

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Purpose of Ventilation

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Your home needs ventilation—the exchange of indoor air with outdoor air—to reduce indoor pollutants, moisture, and odors. Contaminants such as formaldehyde, volatile organic compounds, and radon can accumulate in poorly ventilated homes, causing health problems. Excess moisture in a home can generate high humidity levels. High humidity levels can lead to mold growth and structural damage to your home.

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To ensure adequate ventilation, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air- Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) says that a home's living area should be ventilated at a rate of 0.35 air changes per hour or 15 cubic feet per person per minute, whichever is greater.

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Ventilation Strategies

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There are three basic ventilation strategies:

  • Natural ventilation
    Uncontrolled air movement into a home through cracks, small holes, and vents, such as windows and doors. Not recommended for tightly sealed homes.

  • Whole-house ventilation
    Controlled air movement using one or more fans and duct systems.

  • Spot ventilation
    Controlled air movement using localized exhaust fans to quickly remove pollutants and moisture at their source. Typically used in conjunction with one of the other strategies

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