Why Water Matters

This terrific article is posted in Salon.com. Here are a few excepts:

“For Americans, flushing the toilet is the main way we use water. We use more water flushing toilets than bathing or cooking or washing our hands, our dishes, or our clothes. When we think about the big ways we use water, flushing the toilet doesn’t typically leap to mind. It’s one of those unnoticed parts of our daily water use — our daily water-mark — that turns out to be both startling and significant.

The largest single consumer of water in the United States, in fact, is virtually invisible. Every day, the nation’s power plants use 201 billion gallons of water in the course of generating electricity. That isn’t water used by hydroelectric plants — it’s the water used by coal, gas, and nuclear power plants for cooling and to make steam.

Sixteen percent of the water disappears from the pipes before it makes it to a home or business or factory. Every six days, U.S. water utilities lose an entire day’s water. And that 16 percent U.S. loss rate isn’t too bad — British utilities lose 19 percent of the water they pump; the French lose 26 percent. There is perhaps no better symbol of the golden age of water, of the carefree, almost cavalier, attitude that our abundance has fostered. We go to the trouble and expense to find city-size quantities of water, build dams, reservoirs, and tanks to store it and plants to treat it, then we pump it out to customers, only to let it dribble away before anyone can use it.

One of the hallmarks of the twentieth century, at least in the developed world, is that we have gradually been able to stop thinking about water. We use more of it than ever, we rely on it for purposes we not only never see but can hardly imagine, and we think about it not at all. It is a striking achievement. We used to build monuments — even temples — to water. The aqueducts of the Roman Empire are marvels of engineering and soaringly elegant design. They were plumbing presented as civic achievement and as a tribute to the water itself. Today, water has drifted so far from civic celebration that many people visit the Roman aqueducts without any sense at all that they moved water, or how.”

It’s been awhile

We’ve been busy. So here’s a quick update, and I promise we’ll fill in more details later.

We’ve moved into the basement. That means our mini-splits are hooked up, the flooring is installed, trim is done, kitchen cabinets and appliances are installed. Everything is good to go in the basement, except we don’t have a kitchen countertop, our Panasonic ERV has a blown fuse so we need to switch it out, and we need to install doors.

Upstairs, the hardwood flooring is installed, and painters are there right now, you know, painting. Trim should get installed next week, and kitchen cabinets the week after. The powder room bathroom is done. I had a rough few weeks, so I’m tired of doing the work myself. Andrea’s dad, the owner of Pusey and Raffensburger in Lititz, PA is essentially finishing the project for us. Thank God!

What still needs to be done.

Hook up the AC air handler, install trim and doors, tile the guest and master bathrooms and install the sinks/toilets. Stain/coat the hardwood flooring. Install kitchen tile and cork flooring in the sun room. Order and install front windows – speaking of which, we decided to give up on installing aluminum clad wood windows, it’s not worth the battle with DC historic, so we’ll just do all wood. Painting them every few years is less work than trying to get an exception to their silly rule. What else, install the skylight, fix the porch roof, install the back deck. Decide on how to clad the fireplace, and then do that. Install the kitchen, finish electrical. Get working cable. So, what I’m trying to say is we’re almost done.

Best way to ventilate

One of the most frequent questions we are asked from people in the know is: what are you doing for ventilation?

Before I answer, let me quickly explain why ventilation is important. Ventilation brings in fresh air, and exhausts stale or polluted air. They are necessary in every house. In green buildings, which should be air tight, they are especially important. The mantra of most green builders is “build tight, ventilate right.” For LEED, we are required to meet ASHRAE 62.2 standards, which basically says to have a vent fan in each bathroom and kitchen, and to have a whole-house ventilation strategy.

A quick side note: When I’m talking about ventilation, I’m not referring to an attic ventilation fan, like a solar powered attic fan. Those tend to do far more damage than good. If you really think you want one, I have two pieces of advice. First, don’t do it. Second, if you really, really want to install one, get a home energy audit first and see what that professional tells you (it’ll probably be don’t install one, or at least air seal the attic floor first).

Ok, now we can continue.

What we are doing (Upstairs)

We have installed  a Broan energy recovery ventilator. An energy recovery ventilator mixes incoming air with exhaust air, and is able to recover much of the heat and moisture of the outgoing air to keep it inside the house - in this unit’s case, 69% recovery efficiency.  It also filters the air with a HEPA filter for improved indoor air quality. In our opinion, ERVs are the ideal ventilation solution for DC’s mixed-humid climate.

We have primarily seen ERVs installed onto the return side of the central heating/cooling duct system. This is fine, when done properly, but most HVAC installers don’t properly damper the system, and can’t handle the more sophisticated controls. In addition, any time the ERV is on, the air handler fan must also be on, which significantly lowers the recovery efficiency do to the increased electric load.

For those reasons, we separately ducted our ERV. There are 4 supplies – one in each upstairs bedroom, one on the main floor – with returns in each of the 3 bathrooms. The ERV actually replaces our need for bathroom exhaust fans, enabling us to recover a large portion of the energy that would normally have exhausted from them. We also have fewer penetrations in the building envelope (than having an exhaust vent for each bathroom), which saves even more energy.

Because this ERV only needs to be on for about 12 hours a day, per ASHRAE 62.2 standards, anytime we need to use it for bathroom ventilation, we flip a switch and a boost turns on the ERV if it happens to be off. We’re using the American Aldes Zone Register Terminal as the boost in each bathroom.

In short, what we are doing is the most foolproof and high end mechanical ventilation strategy.

What ARE we doing? (Basement)

Because we are planning on renting out the basement, we wanted to keep our systems separate, to minimize air and odor transfer, even though the Broan ERV is big enough to provide ventilation for our entire house.  

For the basement, we choose to use a Pansonic WhisperComfort. Since we installed it in our bathroom, this also provides spot ventilation along with the whole-unit ventilation. It’s a small ERV that provides between 36% and 66% energy recovery efficiency.

Because it operates at about 40 cfm, we’ll leave it on 24 hours a day. Panasonic recommends that this unit be used in a single open space – compared to the 3 rooms in the basement – so we’ll install a jumper duct between the bathroom and the bedroom to provide better air transfer.

Since we haven’t turned on this system yet, the verdict is still out on how effective it will be. Stay tuned for results.

Spray Foam Insulation!

Last month, Horizon Houseworks installed spray foam throughout the house. The difference before and after is incredible.

Now, it’s actually warm working inside, even in the 40 degree weather and without any heat working. Just our body heat and a few halogen bulbs warm up the space to a reasonable temperature.

Even with more air sealing required in numerous small spots that the spray foam wasn’t applied on (and the leaky bathroom skylight not yet replaced), our air leakage number dropped in half to 2,500 cfm50. That’s a savings of about $250 right there. We expect to halve this number once we’re done with all the air sealing.

We used closed cell (also called 2 pound or high density spray foam). This delivers higher r-value (insulation effectiveness) per inch than almost any other product.

Details, Details

• We foamed the perimeter of the ceiling on each floor, which minimizes airleaks to the outdoors, as well as serves as a firestop between the floors
• We installed 6″ of insulation in the attic roofline, which combined with the 1.5″ of polyiso on top of the roof, is a well insulated attic
• By leaving a 1″ air gap between the existing front brick walls and the 2×3 wall frame, there was space for 1″ of continuous foam, plus 2″ of cavity insulation. You don’t want to have more than 2″ or 3″ of closed cell cavity insulation on a brick wall, because it won’t allow enough moisture transfer from the brick through the insulation.
• We tried to fill the cavities as much as possible, while minimizing any overfill that had to be cut, which produces waste, takes time, and doesn’t seal in any voc’s as well as the original seal of the uncut spray foam.

Spray Foam Works!

As I’ve mentioned a few times, we are insulating our house with spray foam. We decided on a closed cell spray foam, because it provides more insulating value per inch than an open cell.

The insulation was installed about a month ago, and we could immediately feel that our house was warmer. In fact, it’s been cold for about a month (in the 20s at night) and until our heat was turned on a few days ago, we were able to completely heat our basement with this tiny space heater. That shows how effective the spray foam is at keeping us warm!

I was also impressed by how strong it is – if you punch it, it hurts your hand. Also, within 24 hours of it curing, you could not smell it. A lot of people are concerned of off-gasing of chemicals of spray foam, but with our closed-cell product, it really is not off-gasing hardly anything that we can tell. Conversely, a friend recently insulated with an open cell spray foam product, and even two weeks later the rooms still had an overwhelming smell.

Next Tour – Sunday the 3rd

That’s right, come check out the progress before drywall covers up all that we’ve done!

11am on Sunday the 3rd of December. You know where we live. If not, send us a comment and we’ll email you the address.

You can even stay after to help us install some Roxul batt insulation for sound-proofing and also for below the radiant heat.

The Best Ductwork Possible

Ducts are just about installed. No we didn’t install them ourselves, we had a fabulous crew from Minnicks do it. (We aren’t getting a dime for saying this, but they do terrific work.) Ductwork is simple if you do it right. Unfortunately, 95% of the time ducts aren’t installed properly.

A couple best practices that we are doing:

1. The duct system was designed using ACCA Manual D, which determines appropriate duct sizing. 
2. No flex duct. Only rigid metal ducts.
3. All ducts are fully airsealed with mastic putty.
4. Duct runs are as short as possible.
5. Returns in every space.
6. Multiple zones – one per floor.
7. All ducts are in conditioned space, and insulated.

Why did we do these things? We wanted to get the exact amount of air required into each room, no more and no less than needed. When there is too much or too little air, the system must be on longer to compensate, costing extra money to operated.

Let’s address each of the best practices mentioned above in greater detail.

We want to minimize the pressure in the duct system. Flex ducts, long duct runs, and ducts with many hard turns all slow down airflow, making it hard to get the appropriate amount of conditioned air in each room. We’re keeping duct runs as short as possible, and then using commercial diffusers (registers) to throw the air from one side of the room to another.

Any duct system not properly sealed with mastic is going to leak, either into attics, basements, or behind walls. This leads to numerous problems, such as uncomfortable rooms, high heating/cooling bills, pressure imbalances in the house that can cause doors to slam, and indoor air quality problems like excessive dust and moisture. Athough often more air tight when they are first installed than metal ducts, flex ducts can easily be punctured during construction once they are installed.

Having returns in every room helps to ensure proper air balancing. This minimizes hot/cold rooms, and again, slamming doors when the A/C kicks on.

Multiple zones. One upstairs, one downstairs. When we’re sleeping, we can only cool upstairs, and not the entire house. This saves money, and energy. What a concept! Adding an extra zone costs roughly $1500.

Without question, the most significant way to improve our indoor comfort is by keeping all of our ductwork inside the conditioned envelope. What this means is that by insulating our attic roofline, the ducts resting on the attic floor are in the heated/cooled part of the house. They won’t be sitting in a 150 degree plus attic, which exacerbates any imperfection in duct installation, be it air leaks or poor insulation.