A Very Fine House - Episode 2

00:20 Pete Hello there. Welcome to A Very Fine House, brought to you by The Energy Pros. This is the show where we help you keep your home safe, comfortable, and efficient. My name is Pete.

00:31 Marty And I'm Marty. We're The Home Energy Pros, and we're going to talk to you about everything you need to know about heating. And cooling. Your insulation. Your drafty attic. Your windows. Your doors. And everything else you need to know to keep your home safe, comfortable, and efficient.

00:46 Pete On today's episode, we're going over a deep dive on insulation. So no better time to talk about insulation in Northeast Ohio than spring, where it's a snowstorm. And look, to start, a lot of people's homes, and like I said on the first episode, our home was built in the 50s. And we had the insulation done years ago. But what do you do if you have a cold, drafty home, your insulation So your heating costs are high. Where do you even start?

01:27 Marty The first thing I would mention is insulating your home is a year-round phenomenon, not just for the winter. But we'll talk about that in a moment. As I said in our first episode, we've talked to thousands of customers over the last decade or so about those very issues. Drafty homes, second floors has a large temperature gradient from the first floor. There's drafts, heating bills are high. So the first thing we do, as we mentioned last time, is listen to the customers and find out what their issues are. They're usually calling us with a problem. So we listen and then take that into consideration before, you know, moving on and doing a more comprehensive look at the house.

02:09 Pete So you're not going to necessarily just go in and start putting holes in the wall and insulating. There's some diagnostics. Talk to me, what do you usually look for? What are some of the telltale…

02:22 Marty Sure. Well, you know, your house is a system. It consists of, you know, four walls or multiple walls, ceilings, attics, and windows. And even if you're having a localized problem in one area, that could be caused by something that's happening in another area of the house. So we start with a diagnostic approach, which involves visual observation of the level of insulation. Infrared cameras can be used to look inside the walls. You've probably seen commercials where they're showing an infrared camera. It's like a heat gun. You've probably seen it on some cop shows, too. And through that, you can determine the level of insulation if there are cold spots in the winter or hot spots in the summer. And also, there's a test we can run called a pressure test, or called a blower door, where we can put a large fan on the house, suck the air out of the house, put the house under negative pressure, so to speak. I know we're getting a little technical for a liberal arts major. And then we can actually, with very simple technology, Pete, measure and quantify the leakage in your structure.

03:29 Pete Reminds me, I was in the Carrier Dome about 20 years ago, and the doors were all, I think they had negative pressure when you walked in and out to keep the dome fully.

03:39 Marty That's correct. That's correct. All of our houses are pressurized. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Well, if you have a house that has a four-stair furnace, which probably 80% of the homes in the Midwest have four-stair furnaces, a big fan that pushes heat through the house, through the ductwork, or air conditioning through the ductwork, and that pressurizes the house. And when the house is pressurized, it's kind of like you're living inside a basketball. If there's a leak to the outside or an under-insulated area, the air and the conditioned air in the house that you're already paying for wants to force its way out, much like puncturing a hole in a basketball. So this diagnostic test, we don't have to get too deep into that, but we can get a baseline in cubic feet per minute of how leaky a house is. That in conjunction with a visual observation and an infrared camera can allow us to prepare a prescription of what needs to be done.

04:35 Pete So another common question I'm guessing, going back to when we had it on in our houses, Am I going to be living in a construction zone for months, or what's the typical process look like after you've done the initial diagnostics and the customer, the homeowner says, yeah, I want to go ahead and get insulation done?

04:54 Marty Well, most people may be under the impression that they can't do a lot without major disruption to their house or major renovation or tearing walls down. That's really not the case. And in the preparation of our prescription for the house, we try to prioritize things that make economic sense and that can be achieved without doing what you're saying, tearing up the house. So in a typical house like yours, I'm generally familiar with your house, you have certainly the walls of the house, the attics, and then kind of the overall leakage. So there's three principles that one should look at when they're talking about improving the efficiency of their house and insulating it, and that is air sealing the house, increasing the level of insulation in the house, and then ventilating the house.

05:41 Pete We've got air sealing, increasing the level of insulation, and then ventilation.

05:46 Marty Right. And we hope that out of this segment of the podcast, if folks leave with nothing else, that the three pillars of improving the efficiency and comfort of your home is air sealing, insulating, and ventilating.

05:59 Pete Break it down a little bit about each one of those. I mean, air sealing, if I hear you right, it's making sure the home structurally doesn't have a lot of leaks.

06:08 Marty That's correct. And as we talked last time, if you go into many houses in the winter, there might be a sock at the front door to keep giraffes out. People typically will put plastic over their windows.

06:21 Pete That was my job as a kid. My mom, she'll listen to this. We would have a hair dryer that we'd be sealing with this plastic.

06:29 Marty Yes. You're keeping out wind from entering the house, the wind under pressure. So that's air sealing, simply closing up any gaps, cracks or holes from the outside of the house to the in. That could be a door weather strip. It could be a window that's not sealed. There are typically a lot of air leakage points in a basement. Someone put a new furnace in or they put up a water line outside and they drilled a four inch hole for a one inch pipe. And there's gaps from the house to the attic, light fixtures, hatches, fans. Cumulatively, all these air leaks particularly in a house under pressure, pushes conditioned air out of the house.

07:09 Pete We were just over at your office prior to this, preparing for today's podcast, and one of your co-workers, Paul, I think he gave me a stat that was really interesting. He said that only 13% of the home's leakage would come from insulation. Do I have that right?

07:29 Marty Yes, and now we'll get into a little physics, but the house is a structure and your house is a system. And your house, my house, your house, everyone's house is affected. To keep your house at a comfortable level, we most of us want to be 68 to 72 degrees. To be comfortable, the house is affected by three things. Conductive heat transfer, hot to cold, cold to hot. convective heat transfer, wind pushing cold air into the house during the winter, hot air in the summer. And then third is ventilation to cool attics and to improve indoor air quality. So insulation, which is the business we're in, reduces the thermal transfer of heat. Kind of like putting a cold beer inside of a Yeti cooler. You've done that before, right? So what's that doing? Ice in a cooler with beer or your favorite soft drink is keeping the beverage cold and keeping the heat from outside out. Or in a thermos with coffee or something the other way around. If you bring in wind or convective transfer into that equation, you're now pushing heat through the structure. Much like, not to get too technical here, but if you've ever got out of a pool on a 75 degree day, sometimes you're cold because the wind is pulling the heat away from your body. If you're standing in a windless day at 75 degrees, you could be comfortable. 75 degrees on a windy day, you're less comfortable because of convective heat transfer. Now, what does all that mean? It means that your house, as a system, has to address air leakage, which stops convective transfer of heat, and thermal insulation, which keeps heat, the Yeti example. Keeps your beer cold, okay? Keep it simple. Speaking some terms we can understand here, okay? But it's those three elements that are in a typical proposal for a house.

09:24 Pete The home is essentially the Yeti cooler. That's correct. And there's layers of insulation within that Yeti cooler, and you want to seal tight on it. Yeah. And it's a great analogy.

09:33 Marty Now, the difference with the Yeti cooler is there's only one source of air transfer, convective transfer, that's that big fat seal around the top. A house, you have many. The typical house has 20 to 25 percent of its surface area are windows with all that perimeter cracks. Doors, Add a catch. So there are more opportunities for air leakage in a house. So to get back to our point here, when we go to talk to someone about a problem they have with their house or how to improve it, we try to address those three elements in conjunction. Sometimes people say, oh, the second floor room is the only one I really want to deal with. The rest of the house is OK. Well, probably not the case because maybe that's because the air is pouring into that room, mixing with the rest of the room. So you have to treat your house as a system.

10:21 Pete Okay, so I have a good sense, I think, for the air leakage and thank you for the Yeti example. This next step of adding more insulation, you know, this is what I want to get into a little bit more is, you know, I've heard the term R-value. I think that has to do with maybe the strength of insulation, but talk to us about how you know where you need more insulation and then how much is enough and what this mysterious R-value is.

10:50 Marty Yes, well, the typical house you're looking at ceiling or attic insulation, that's one element. Sidewall insulation, that's the four sides of the house or sometimes there's more. And then the air ceiling. So let's take the attic, for example, because most houses have a conventional attic that's unconditioned. And if you go up in the attic, you might see, you know, two inches of insulation, four inches, five inches. People always ask, well, how much do I need? How much is enough? In attic situations where there's an open-framed attic, like in your house you have an open-framed attic, most houses do, the building code today is 14 inches. And that equates to an R-value of 49. An R-value, as we mentioned in our first episode, is a measure of the thermal conductivity of any material. Okay, so fiberglass has a certain R-value. Wood has an R-value. Glass has an R-value. So if you go up in an attic and you want R-49, the depth and the amount of insulation is a function of what material you put in. So if you're putting in fiberglass, 14 inches would equal R-49. If you go into Home Depot and walk up and down the aisles, you'll see Pink Panther insulation in rolls that say R-19. On your walls, because R-value is a function of the thickness of the material, you're limited by the thickness of the walls. So most walls are either 2x4, 4 inches thick in most houses, or sometimes 6 inches, and you might be able to get an R-13 in the walls. So if you go up in your attic and there's only two or three inches of insulation, to keep it simple, if that house, your house or my house, were built in 2023, the building code would require 14 inches. And the attic is one of the easiest places to attack because, as you mentioned earlier, we're not disrupting the house. It's not invasive, typically. It's easy to get to. And many, many very, very fine houses, even that were built in the late 90s, early 2000s, they might have an R value or a thickness of insulation in their attic of four to six inches, which at the time was right in line with the code. Well, we sometimes can triple that amount of insulation or quadruple the amount of insulation at a relatively low cost. So that would have a dramatic impact on the house. How much in the attic? At least up to the building code. How much in the walls? Something. If you have none, you can add it in your sidewalls without tearing up your house.

13:15 Pete Building on that, when you're looking at a sidewall, you mentioned there might be limited area. So, spraying it in there? Are we putting holes in the wall? Are you blowing it in from the outside? How do you get it in there?

13:27 Marty It can appear daunting and doesn't look great, looks like we're tearing apart your house, but if you have wood siding or vinyl siding or aluminum siding, you can simply remove one ring of siding from the exterior at each level and pump insulation into every wall cavity and then replace it. Now, it's kind of like seeing sauces made. It looks like, oh my gosh, my house is never going to be the same, but we can do it and other folks can do it if they know what they're doing fairly effortlessly with minimal disruption. If you have a brick house, which I believe your house is a brick house, you can drill from the interior. Drill through the plaster, drill through the sheet rock, which is slightly more invasive, but when you're done, if it was done properly, you would hardly know you're there. So in that case, if you have zero insulation in a four-inch sidewall cavity and your house has 2,000 square feet of sidewalls, and you can take the R-value from effectively zero to R-13, that's quite an improvement. So attic insulation, sidewall insulation, and along the way sealing up gaps, cracks, whether it's door weather strips, gaps and cracks in the attic, and then we'll get to the basements I think a little bit later, talk about basements which are problematic.

14:40 Pete That's a great segue. We're gonna take a minute here to get a Lake Erie highball, hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back, thank you. And we're back. So, Marty, we were just talking about attics and, you know, you were explaining quite well how the R value, you know, factors in and where, you know, code has maybe changed over the years. Let's talk a little bit more about the actual materials that you're using. I know there's fiberglass, spray foam. What do you typically use? What do you see? You know, and what are the pros and cons of

15:26 Marty Yes, there are a number of insulating materials you can use in this application, at least a retrofit of an existing home. I think the best way to approach that always is to fit the material for the application, taking into account accessibility, costs, and kind of where you're starting from. Okay, there's really not a one size fits all. But the typical materials used in residential homes in the United States is fiberglass. I don't know the exact percentages, but at least for new construction over the last 30 to 40 years, fiberglass has been the predominant material used in sidewalls and attics, primarily because there are some large manufacturers like Owens Corning, the Pink Panther, you've heard of that, Johns Mansfield, CertainTeed, and others that mass produce it at a very low cost. It's easy to install in new homes and does a good job. It's a good material. You can also use cellulose, which is, in our view, slightly better because it's a heavier, more dense material. It's a recycled product made out of wood and paper.

16:29 Pete Yeah, I've seen, it looks almost like old, old newspaper.

16:33 Marty Yes. Originally it was made out of old newspaper. Had a bad start in the seventies and eighties with some problems with its fire retardant properties, but those have all been addressed and all the materials of course meet proper fire and safety codes. And then foam.

16:49 Pete Yeah, spray foam.

16:50 Marty This is a newer product. Newer, it's very sexy, it's very in vogue, and there's different types of spray foam. Not all foams are created equal. The two biggest categories are open cell foam and closed cell foam. Open cell is, as you can imagine, open strands, long strands. It's a less dense material, has slightly lower R values than closed cell. And while it's a great application, it doesn't have the air sealing qualities of closed cell foam. Closed cell foam is a premium product. It's very dense, has a higher R-value per inch, and is a superior air barrier. It could make a house almost airtight. So we look at the house, what we're trying to do, budgets, all those things, and try to fit the material to the application. Each of them have pros and cons, cost-wise as well as applications.

17:45 Pete Is there safety issues that are, is one safer than the other? Like, you know, I remember as a kid, you go into the crawl space or, you know. Don't let the pink stuff get on you because you'll itch.

17:58 Marty Sure, everyone has their stories about fiberglass because it's glass. Fiberglass is spun glass blown into strands and gives it some density and its thermal properties. But older fiberglass back in the day is very itchy if you've ever touched it. It's even touching it for a few moments, you can get nothing hazardous, but just an irritant to the skin. That's improved dramatically in most of the fiberglass sold today. You could rub it on your arm and wouldn't really feel much effect. I may not recommend that, but it's not nearly as much of an irritant as it was. Secondly, not too long ago, probably seven or eight years ago, maybe 10, fiberglass had formaldehyde in it. which is the known carcinogen. And today, you know, people ask all the time, you know, is it safe? Well, there are no fiberglass products for the building trade produced that have formaldehyde. So that's been removed. Cellulose is a recycled material. It's very inert. All of, both fiberglass, cellulose, and foam have fire safety smoke properties that are equivalent to other building materials. So there's no concern there. Foam is a little trickier, the premium, very expensive product. And it's very highly advertised. People will call us and say, I just want this back bedroom foamed. But the rest of the house may be uninsulated or under-insulated. And those sort of applications don't make a lot of sense, going back to the thought of your house as a system. And the analogy I use with folks is like, well, you don't put leather seats in the back seat of your car. You either have leather seats or you don't. Even though it's a great product and has great uses in certain applications, foam is a polymer. And when foam is manufactured and when it's put in the house, it is a VOC, a volatile organic compound, that off-gasses. It's improved greatly over the last number of years. So there are people that are concerned about foam in the house because of its off-gassing properties. a polymer product is installed and sprayed on over time releases volatile organic compounds into the house, much like a human. Well, a VOC is the best example would be your house after it's been painted. Okay, and you have that paint smell or you've been in your house after carpets been laid or a new floor that's been glued down. What you're smelling in the house is the release of organic compounds into the air. Now, today, they're much safer. They release their off-gassing, is what it's called, after a certain number of hours or minutes. But people have a natural fear of that. There's some people that don't want anything to do with foam. So it's something you just have to consider. And there are people that we've run across that are just extremely sensitive to volatile organic chemicals.

20:44 Pete Or you have to eat that triple bean chili.

20:47 Marty Yes, that's going to be described as that, yes. So, it's been improved dramatically, but it's something to be concerned about if someone in your home has sensitivity to those sorts of chemicals. Again, 2023 is a lot different than even 1990 or 2000. When it sounds like the code is… Yes. Like, for example, paint. You can hardly buy a gallon of paint that has anything other than low VOC. That means very low emission of volatile organic compounds. So, back to the installation question, because I'm getting it over my head on that subject, but fiberglass, cellulose, and foam products It's also a fourth product, mineral fiber, which is very popular in Canada. That's a very dense material. That's a great insulator. So in most of our applications, we're using cellulose and fiberglass and foam because of its air sealing properties. So fit the material to the solution and the cost.

21:46 Pete You said earlier air leakage spots that a lot of homes have is basements and crawl spaces. So, you know, are these places that are easily fixed from an air leakage or from an insulation standpoint?

22:00 Marty Basements are a typical problem when it comes to air infiltration and indoor air quality, the ventilation discussion, which we haven't talked a lot about. Because most of your basement is under the ground, insulation is less of an issue. Why is that? Again, we're getting into some physics here, Pete, but once you get 20 or 24 to 30 inches below ground, the ground is warm. It's 23 degrees out today. The ground after three feet down below the surface might be 50 degrees. So you don't really need to insulate your basement. You need to air seal it to keep the cold air from coming in. and also from water vapor from the ground diffusing into the house and giving it that musky smell, high humidity. Dealing with basements is more about air sealing and controlling indoor air quality and humidity.

22:48 Pete And that probably ties into most people's crawl spaces. Same thing with the air, both quality and leakage.

22:55 Marty I have three crawl spaces in my house when we moved in. All of them had dirt floors and you could hardly go down the basement without this awful smell of high humidity and just dampness. And that's because with that exposed dirt in the basement, the groundwater evaporates into the basement, raises the humidity and gives it that Yeah, that funky smell. So that can be addressed by installing a vapor barrier, a piece of plastic, to keep it simple, over the dirt, not to insulate, but to stop the air diffusion from the ground into the house. So insulating the walls to stop air vapor diffusion from dirt and from cinder blocks or sandstone or whatever the case might be. can help with your comfort and efficiency and the ventilation portion that we've talked about. So, basements are a different animal because in basements you're dealing with air infiltration and vapor diffusion and that can affect the comfort and efficiency of your house a great deal. So, in my example, When we install some vapor barriers in the basement and address some air leakage, the basement became much more livable, much more functional, and became part of the living space. I mean, in many cases, it's 25% of the square footage of a house.

24:13 Pete All right. These are a lot of topics we've covered today. As a homeowner, how does this affect my utility bill? What's my return on the investment of addressing insulation? How do you typically think of that?

24:26 Marty Well, in retrofit applications, like we're discussing today, it's about priorities. I mean, you can't fix everything, but you can make a big impact on your house by doing the easiest, most cost-effective things. And that starts with air ceilings always, typically, shouldn't say always, the most cost-efficient as the highest payback. The follow by attic insulation, primarily because it's easy to access, you can get up in your attic, and because this idea of pressure and the heat rises sort of thing, even though that's not quite the phenomena. But when people ask all the time, well, gosh, what's the payback? And typically, and it depends on where you start, the financial payback, Pete, would be anywhere from three to five years, sometimes six years, depending on where you start and what your utility costs are. But the return on investment is, you know, 20%, 25%, could be 30%. Why? Installation has a life that's as long as your house. It's not going to degradate. It's not going to fall out. And every month you're saving on your utility bills, month after month, year after year.

25:32 Pete And if you ever go to sell the home, I'm sure you see the impact on resale value. I'm sure you see all the time homes that have little to no insulation that are selling or

25:41 Marty Yes, point-of-sale inspections typically call out under-insulated homes, and I think more and more today people are cognizant of that and are factoring that in. I'd say it's changing a little bit. Most people are enamored by the house, not by the, gosh, how much insulation do they have in the attic, you know? As I said in our earlier episode, nobody wants to insulate their house. They want to do much more fun things. It's probably one of the best financial investments you could make in your house in terms of its payback. It's one of the only products you can install in your house that pays you.

26:15 Pete Right. Yeah, it's crazy.

26:17 Marty How's that for a tagline? Maybe we should use that. That was pretty good. It pays you. Yeah, it does. Because you're reducing your bills. Now, how much does it affect your energy bills? Again, it depends on where you start. But going back to this diagnostic approach, we typically do the pressure test before and after. We can measure, very specifically, the improvement in air leakage in the home. 20%, 30%, 40%. That correlates very closely to your energy requirements and your energy costs. So 20, 30% reduction in energy costs over a 30-year period, and you can do the numbers, you're the finance guy, that's a significant ROI.

26:54 Pete This is something that pays you. I like that.

26:57 Marty We didn't talk a lot about ventilation. Maybe we'll catch that in another episode because the ventilation is another component that affects your overall house comfort and efficiency and safety. But I think we had a lot of good topics today. Yeah, totally.

27:11 Pete Marty, very informative as always, and we appreciate all your insights into the installation process. And we do look forward to everyone tuning in next time to A Very Fine House. I'm Pete Carroll. I'm Marty Berry. This has been a very fine house with the energy pros sponsored by Barry insulation. I can find Barry insulation at Twitter with the handle Berry insulation or on our email [email protected]

27:46 Marty That's Berry like strawberry with an E with an E.

27:51 Pete Got a question that you think we can answer? Hit us up. We'll answer it on the show. Learn about berry insulation on the website or in the description on the podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, a five-star rating, of course, would go a long way. We appreciate it. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

28:07 Marty Our sound designer, audio engineer, and producer is Noah Foutz, recorded at Evergreen Podcasts. Executive producers, Michael Dealoia and David Allen Moss.

28:16 Pete We'll see you next episode. And if you only remember one thing from this podcast, it's this.

28:22 Marty Air seal, insulate, and ventilate.

28:24 Pete Thank you very much. Have a great day.