They will move their lives from a two-bedroom apartment to a four-bedroom house.
But the new owners, Leigh Anna and Jared Buck, want to make sure the house is safe, healthy and frugal.
Enter the Green Home Team and a few hours for a home-performance diagnostic test.
Performance was once a word that evoked red, flashy sports cars with quick acceleration or marathon runners.
Now it can measure the pull of air into a house and the efficiency of appliances and insulation.
This house was tested for its energy performance.
Daniele Loffreda, who helped create the industry standard LEED — leadership in energy and design — certification for green-built buildings, and Christian Moreau, a Realtor who is eyeing the future of the market, along with Moraeu’s wife and business partner Martitza Carrera, created Green Home Team to go beyond a simple sale on a basic home leaking heated and cooled air.
Green, they say, saves money and resources.
Moreau and Loffreda pull up at the curb. Loffreda is already in the zone.
“Those rooms above the garage are probably full of leaks,” he said. “Every time you have an extrusion, an opening in the home’s insulation envelope, you have a place for air to get in or out.”
Leaks into rooms above a garage can be dangerous, he said,
When you mow the yard and put the lawnmower back in the garage, it emits fumes for a while, he said. And many people remote start their cars in winter so engines run under the rooms.
“Even if the garage door is open, the carbon monoxide builds up to dangerous levels,” Loffreda said.
He walks to the backyard gate and looks at the window wells, checking on basement windows.
As the men walk into the home, descending to the unfinished area of the basement, they carry a couple of black cases and a laptop computer. They end in the farthest corner with a water heater and furnace.
Loffreda takes out a carbon monoxide monitor and a device to measure natural gas.
He walks around the basement looking at the depth and placement of insulation. All of it is below standard, about 3 inches in 8-inch deep joists and many gaps appear between batts and the studs in the wall and next to the ceiling.
All correctable, and all going into a report for the homeowner that will fill a three-ring binder. The information is given in technical form with tables and narrative form.
“We looked at different ways people learn and used the main ways in the reports,” Moreau said.
Loffreda checks for carbon monoxide and natural gas leaks on the water heater and the furnace. He inspects the duct work for areas that are unsealed or inadequately sealed. He finds many, but solving them is easy with the proper aluminum tape, mastic or puke — pronounced “poo-key.”
“Not the silver duct tape, air can go through that,” Loffreda said. “We pay good money to condition the air. If a return is not sealed, you have 60 percent chance of leakage there.”
As Loffreda ran tests, Moreau entered numbers into a laptop. He recorded the specifications from the appliances and Loffreda’s readings.
For the Bucks, the news was better than hoped. No gas or carbon monoxide was building up in the basement.
“Wow, I’m glad to hear that,” Leigh Anna Buck said.
Soon she was recruited to work.
Loffreda and Moreau sealed a basement window around a hose to the outside.
They then turned on every fan in the house and measured the pressure.
The fans were turned off and a slow process of checking all three floors for air leaks began.
On the top floor, starting in one of the rooms above the garage, Loffreda lit a chemical smoke stick and slowly drew it along the window. the smoke blew back into the room, evidence of air leaks. The same happened around electrical outlets and telephone jacks along the outside walls.
Every spot with a leak, Buck marked with a piece of blue painter’s tape.
The worst offenders were recessed can lights.
In each room, Loffreda and Moreau pushed on the windows.
“I’ve seen people spend so much money on triple pane windows and then skimp on the installation,” Loffreda said. “The windows were loose in their frames, letting heated or cooled air out all around.”
The windows in Buck’s house were well-installed, with only a few leaks near water damage on wooden frames.
Leaks not only mean money flowing out of a house, but can also contribute to dangerous conditions near furnaces.
Air close to the furnace and water heater can be 150 degrees.
“When a house is in a depressured condition, the return will pull air from anywhere it leaks,” Loffreda said.
Sometimes that superheated air will create a roll out of flame from under a furnace.
If the residents of the house store anything nearby, it could catch fire.
The pressure in the house fluctuated from minus 0.8 pascals to minus 2.2 pascals.
A pascal is the pressure needed to draw liquids up 1 inch into a drinking straw.
Usually countries using nonmetric measurements use pounds per square inch to measure pressure.
What Loffreda wanted to see was an average of minus 1 pascal.
“To me, this house may have some issues,” Loffreda said.
After those tests came the Minnesota door.
Moreau fitted an aluminum frame into the home’s front door, a red vinyl tarp — like door with a hole for a fan attached to the frame with hook-and-loop closures.
The fan was turned on and more pressure readings were taken.
This pressurization caused the fireplace doors to open and soot fly into the room.
Within 20 minutes Moreau and Loffreda were explaining their finding to Buck, adding that she would get a full printed report.
Overall the house was in good shape but needed a bit of caulk and insulation.
The Buck’s lender offered the test, but usually real estate agents can arrange the test.
For more information, contact the Green Home Team at christian@TheGreenHomeTeam.com.
303-566-4107 |
rlydick@ccnewspapers.com