It was 1911 when The Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles had installed air conditioning truly bringing the concept of keeping comfortably cool to the masses. Ten years earlier Willis Carrier had started work in Buffalo, New York, a city not too far from our Greenhomes America office in Syracuse. His trial and error over the years focused on dehumidification and it was in 1907 that the Carrier Air conditioning company was established.
What did folks do before that? Looking back at a late 1800’s trade journal “Ice and Refrigeration” reveals a lot. The journal is packed with beautiful advertising for coils and pumps and innovative patents for cooling systems ads for insulation like cork and mineral wool and insulating paper whatever that may be. It also holds reports of what industry in need of cooling relied on every year: Ice Harvests.
The Hudson River crop in 1890 was around “4,000,000 tons of which New York, Brooklyn and Jersey City will use 1,200000 tons or more if the summer proves a hot one”. Ice harvest happened in many places, a number of rivers in Maine were used and the ice was then stored near shipyards to be distributed later.
There’s a connection to today we might not think of: The size of our air conditioners. From the beginning these cooling machines capacities were described by an equivalent amount of ice that would melt in a day. A window unit might be less than a 1 ton system where central air can range from 2 to 5 tons.
How much do you need? Think of keeping food in a cooler for a long trip to the beach or a weekend camping. As that block of ice melts it keeps things cool in there. The more we open it up the more we lose that cooling. The less insulated or efficient the cooler is the faster it melts. Same goes for our houses. We don’t think of running out of ice anymore because we’ve found a way for air conditioner to provide endless cooling, as long as we pay the bill.
The GreenHomes Partners I visited recently really know cooling. Just as important they understand how to keep the cool in your home as well with air-sealing and insulation so you can get by starting out with a smaller block of ice!
There’s been a Heat wave across parts of the country, wild fires blazing and the season has just begun! So I thought it would be good to build on the tips Mike mentioned last week. Here are a few things you can look at to keep your cool as we head into summer:
Keep the heat out! During the day, if it’s cooler inside than outside, keep windows shut. And keep window shades down to block out direct sunlight. Open the windows at night if it’s cooler outside than in. Solar shades can help.
Ceiling fans (and other fans) help you stay comfortable—but only while you’re in the room. The fan motors actually generate heat, so turn them off when you’re not there.
Use a bath fan vented to the outside to remove the heat and moisture created by showering. If you don’t have a bath fan, have one installed its useful for many reasons.
Mike recently talked about keeping cool in the kitchen; use an exhaust fan to remove heat and moisture created by cooking. This has the added benefit of removing pollutants, especially if you cook with gas.
Use efficient lighting and appliances. Incandescent and halogen lights actually use most of their energy creating heat instead of light. Not only does this means you’re overpaying for lighting, but in the summer you’re creating a lot of unwanted heat in the rooms you’re trying to keep cool. Compact florescent light bulbs are good LED’s are even better.
Do you have a forced air heating or cooling system? If so, make sure to seal and insulate the ductwork in attics and crawl spaces. As much as 30% of the air you cool can escape outside through leaky ducts.
Insulate and air-seal your attic. In the summer, temperatures in the attic often climb to more than 140o. Proper insulation can keep this heat from conducting down into your home, but first… Remember that your insulation only works if air isn’t moving through it. Seal around chimneys, flues, plumbing penetrations, and recessed lighting, for example. See our earlier post Insulate to Stay Cool .
As we mentioned recently with a central air-conditioner it’s important to keep it tuned up—EPA and DOE recommending maintenance every year. If it’s more than 10 years old, consider replacing with a high-efficiency unit, one that at least qualifies for ENERGY STAR. If you buying a window air-conditioner or dehumidifier, look for the ENERGY STAR, too.
Planting deciduous trees on the south and west sides of a house can help keep your home cool in the summer. In many parts of the country, maples, oaks, and birches are good trees to consider. Because they drop their leaves in the fall, they let sunlight through to help warm your house in the winter. Landscaping is about more than looks!
New low-e windows with a low “solar heat gain coefficient” (SHGC) can block the heat from the sun but may be a costly measure if that’s the only reason you’re replacing them.
To really find the trouble spots in your home, and to be sure that they’re addressed properly, get a comprehensive home assessment. GreenHomes America can provide this, and GreenHomes trained and certified crews can even install your improvements.
And remember that after a home is tightened up, combustion equipment like furnaces and water heaters should be tested to make sure they’re running safely and efficiently. GreenHomes does this testing on every project it completes.
If we ask the question what will the price of heating oil or natural gas be in the next 5 or 10 years or electricity if we start using more electric cars, we get a sense of what we need Design and Construction in our homes to be. If we don’t change how we look at what is important in housing we may not be able to afford them for the long term.
As a Home Performance contractor, we find the same problems in new homes you might expect to see only in older ones. Air leakage, lack of or poor insulation, comfort issues, inefficient heating systems with poor distribution are all common in the newest of construction.
There has been change in design and construction towards efficiency, comfort and conscientious building. We are finally coming to a point where outside pressures such as limited building resources, illness indoor air quality issues, as well as the instability of the price of heating our homes may force us to reconsider what is important.
I hope design and construction will take a turn for the better for our health, safety, comfort as well as our wallets when he heat and cool these homes, it needs to happen. Put the fancy counter-tops and other luxuries in later. What we need are homes with good insulation and air barriers, deal with moisture well, have efficient heating and cooling equipment sized to accommodate the reduced demand because of an exceptional building envelope. This is our goal when we fix existing homes and can really only be achieved when we take a house as a system approach to building.
I do not wish for the construction of homes to continue in the ‘just adequate’ fashion that potentially creates un-healthy and inefficient buildings. Building to code is the bare minimum standard. It might be seen as good for business for GreenHomes America to carry on in the usual fashion since each home built this way is one that we could fix in the next 5 to 10 years, but the fact is there is plenty of work already for many years to come. The future holds comfort, health and safety wrapped up in efficiency. Homes as they should be: a safe haven new or old.
The cold and snowy winter in Central New York was a dream for fans of icicles, but a nightmare for many homeowners. However pretty, those giant icicles can form devastating ice dams on the edges of your roof, backing up water under your roofing and into the walls. Leaks and structural damage are the symptoms of a bad ice-damming problem, but are only part of a much worse, underlying problem. Ice dams are largely due to inadequate insulation and air sealing in your attic and roof. The precious heat you pump into your home escapes through the roof, melting the snow that rests on top. When the snow reaches the cold edges and eves of the roof, it refreezes into blocks of ice, sometimes weighing hundreds of pounds!
Our 2nd Annual Biggest, Baddest Icicles Contest brought in an impressive display of ice from across Central New York (Facebook album). From giant ice curtains to compact-car-sized heaps, the entries were as varied as they were scary. But we could only pick one home to receive a free comprehensive home energy assessment and $1,000 worth of attic insulation and air sealing to help prevent future instances of ice damming and keep one family warmer, safer and more comfortable, plus put some money back into their pockets!
The Winner of GreenHomes America's 2011 Biggest, Baddest Icicles Contest
And the winner is… Priscilla Thibault’s Victorian home! Like Priscilla says, “this 1858 Victorian house may have charm, but the icicles can be destructive and potentially deadly.” Not only do the icicles present a major safety hazard, but are also tell-tale signs that Pricillas’ valuable heating dollars aren’t all contributing to her family’s comfort – many of them are feeding the monster on her roof! Our crew from Syracuse will be heading out to Priscilla’s home to begin reclaiming her roof, her home’s comfort and her energy bills. Stay tuned for updates!
Thanks to everyone who entered our 2nd Annual Biggest, Baddest Icicles Contest!
This week, Jason raised an important—and very unfortunate—point about many newly constructed homes and how they just don’t perform the way they should (See “Why does my new home have such high energy bills?”). I know he’ll be diving into this topic more deeply, but let me point out a situation we run into recently in some newer housing developments. Even though these were high-end homes, the builder used inferior windows—simple dual pane, and didn’t pay as much attention to air-sealing as we’d have liked while the house was under construction and it was easy to address. In the tightly packed neighborhood, this results in a lot of noise from outside making its way inside.
While there are solutions to this that involve interior storm windows, we’ve found most people don’t like the aesthetics or the need to open and shut (and clean) two sets of windows. And to enjoy peace and quiet, we’ve had several customers invest in brand new replacements windows. This isn’t a cheap fix—but it delivers great results. We take out the inferior windows, frame and all, back to the studs. And rebuild with high quality windows that not only do a great job reducing sound transmission, but also improve comfort (you don’t bake sitting next to the windows in the summer nor freeze next to them in the winter), add UV resistance to protect your furniture, and save energy. During the installation, we also improve the air-sealing around the window frame for further noise, comfort, and energy benefits. (BTW—we see very similar impacts when retrofits walls with improved insulation and air-sealing—quiet, comfortable, and lower energy bills.)
Our customers love it! The sad thing is, this could have easily been accomplished while the home was being built. But at least there’s a way out. If you’re thinking about buying a new home, follow Jason’s musings over the coming weeks.
And if you’re dealing with a noisy home, we likely have a fix for you.
Have I mentioned ice dams at all this year? They’ve certainly been a huge problem throughout the Midwest and Northeast this year. Well, let’s hit it again. But rather than repeat myself, I’ll point to you some resources.
First, do check out the fact sheet and an FAQ on the causes of and solutions for icicles and ice dam problems on the GreenHomes America website. A lot of great information, there.
Of course, you can also search this blog for a lot of previous posts and pictures describing the problems of icicles and ice damming.
Last week I mentioned a WSJ article on this by Wendy Bounds. Well, she took that story to the airwaves in both radio appearances and on Good Morning America earlier this week. I think there is too much emphasis on the temporary quick fix, but kudos to Ms. Bounds for pointing out that insulation and air-sealing are “the best cure”. And how! An ounce of prevention–and you save money and make your home more comfortable at the same time!
It’s a bit like Groundhog Day, that charming movie starring Bill Murray. (And incidentally, Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow today, and thus we’re due for an early spring—hard to believe given the weather over the last two days.) Just like BM’s character reliving Groundhog Day again and again, we keep seeing homes with icicle and ice damming problems over and over. And we keep seeing some short-sighted “solutions”.
We’ll likely see a lot of problems over the next week or so with all the snow that’s been dumped across the Midwest and Northeast in the last couple of days.
Reporter Gwendolyn Bounds points to some of the risks to your home from ice damage and leaks. (And the danger from falling ice or falling off your roof if you’re foolish enough to climb up threre to try to shovel it. Don’t get up on your snow covered roof—it’s very dangerous, and you could get seriously injured or die.)
It was interesting to see some of the solutions offered:
Pay someone to remove ice from your roof. Cost $200-$300 per hour! Perhaps $1,000 per instance. And keep losing heat from your home. And next big snow storm, do it again. And so on, and so on. I guess that’s OK, if you’ve got money to burn.
Pay to install electric ice melting cables. Hmmm, send a lot of money to the utility to heat your home, create an ice problem on your roof, and then pay somebody to install electric cables so that you can send more money to the utility. Sounds like a good idea…for the utility. (BTW, don’t forget to turn the cables off and not let them run all summer.)
Or, fix the underlying problem so that you don’t get the ice build-up to begin with. And save energy and lower your utility bills permanently. And make your home more comfortable, cozy, with few drafts.
OK, I’m biased. But there really only seems like one solution that makes any sense in the long term. It’s too late for this storm. So keep your fingers crossed that the ice doesn’t hurt anyone or lead to a roof leak. But learn more about the real causes of big icicles and ice damming, and take the steps to have a good home energy assessment and air-seal and insulate your attic properly to avoid the problem—and save a lot of money that you currently pay the utility—in the future.
Following yesterday’s post touching on the wisdom of addressing energy-efficiency before tackling renewables, here’s another example of what appears to be a backwards approach. (And again, thankfully this is not one of our customers!)
In this photo, buried under the snow, is an even bigger solar thermal array than the one shown yesterday. And on the roof we see not only some snow melt problems which suggest a heat loss problem, but also the makes of an ice dam problem. Looks like someone missed insulating a couple of bays. We sure would like to see the basic integrity of the house addressed before installing what was likely a pricy solar system. When there are weakness with the home’s air-leakage and insulation, the savings from efficiency generally make more sense than trying to solve the problem with renewables. Plus, the more efficient the home is, the smaller the solar system you need. Again, it pays to think “efficiency first”.
If you’re thinking solar, it’s wise to start with a good home energy audit and tackling many of the energy savings opportunities before investing in solar.
OK, I succumb and pass this along. And it is funny. Thankfully it doesn’t appear the guy was hurt. But it could have ended very differently. A fall from 10 feet can cause serious injury or death. And your chance of falling off snowy, icy, or wet roofs shoots up astronomically. (It’s just plain stupid to be on a wet, snowy, sloped, metal roof without fall protection. Period.) You might also be able to clear a blocked lawn mower without getting hurt. But it’s not worth trying. The Darwin award isn’t very prestigious–they’re laughing at you, not with you.
I understand the temptation. Snow and ice on roofs can be problematic. But, please, don’t climb up and try to remove if unless you’ve taken the proper safety precautions (and I’m not about to attempt to decribe that!).
Normally snowy Syracuse was hammered with snow over the past week. And there’s more snow on the way. The weather service has issued a lake effect watch, and estimates are as high as 2 feet of new snow by Thursday.
With the snow, comes the potential for big ice problems, icicles and ice damming. And it’s started already, as evidenced by the pictures from Syracuse Advisor Ed Nedell.
We’ve discussed earlier about how poor air-sealing and insulation can lead to ice problems. And we’ll renew that conversation. Bottom line: While nothing can totally prevent ice and icicles on your roof under these conditions, good insulation and air-sealing details can drastically reduce the problem.
If you’re in Syracuse or central New York, and you’re experiencing this, you’ve got a clear sign that your home isn’t performing like it should, and the energy problems may lead to structural problems from ice damage. Give us a call (315-474-6549) and we’ll get an Advisor out as soon as possible to help determine help to prevent this in the future.
It was 1911 when The Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles had installed air conditioning truly bringing the concept of keeping comfortably cool to the masses. Ten years earlier Willis Carrier had started work in Buffalo, New York, a city not too far from our Greenhomes America office in Syracuse. His trial and error over the years focused on dehumidification and it was in 1907 that the Carrier Air conditioning company was established.
