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Home Energy Checklist

Today

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• Turn down the temperature of your water heater to the warm setting (120-degrees Fahrenheit). You’ll not only save energy, you’ll avoid scalding your hands.
• Start using energy-saving settings on refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, and clothes dryers.
• Survey your incandescent lights for opportunities to replace them with compact fluorescents or LEDs. These new lamps can save three-quarters of the electricity used by incandescents. The best targets are 60-100W bulbs used several hours a day. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and LEDs will fit in most standard fixtures.
• Check the age and condition of your major appliances, especially the refrigerator. You may want to replace it with a more energy-efficient model before it dies.
• Clean or replace furnace, air-conditioner, and heat-pump filters.
• If you have one of those “silent-guzzlers”, a waterbed, make your bed today. The covers will insulate it, and save up to one-third of the energy it uses.

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This Week

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• Visit the hardware store. Buy a water-heater blanket, low-flow shower heads, faucet aerators, and compact fluorescent CFLs or LEDs, as needed. CFLs and LEDs are now sold at most drug stores and grocery stores.
• If your water heater is old enough that its insulation is fiberglass instead of foam, it clearly will benefit from a water heater blanket form the local hardware store or home supplies store.
• Rope caulk very leaky windows.
• Assess your heating and cooling systems. Determine if replacements are justified, or whether you should retrofit them to make them work more efficiently—to provide the same comfort (or better) for less energy.
• Purchase a power use monitor to learn how you use energy in your home and identify opportunities for saving.

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This Month

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• Collect your utility bills. Seperate electricity and fuel bills. Target the biggest bill for energy conservation remedies.
• Crawl into your attic or crawlspace and inspect for insulation. Is there any? How much?
• Insulate hot water pipes and ducts whenever they run through unheated areas.
• Seal up the largest air leaks in your house—the ones that whistle on windy days, or feel drafty. The worst culprits are usually not windows and doors, but utility cut-throughs for pipes (“plumbing penetrations”), gaps around chimneys and recessed lights in insulated ceilings, and unfinished spaces behind cupboards and closets, Better yet, hire an energy auditor with a blower door to point put where the worst cracks are. All the time, invisible cracks and holes may add up to as much as an open window or door, without your ever knowing!
• At night and whenever you leave your home, adjust your thermostat to save heating energy in the winter and cooling energy in the summer. Some people find it easier to install a programmable thermostat.
• Schedule a home energy assessment (ask your utility company or state energy office) for more expert advice on your home as a whole.

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This year

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• Insulate. If your walls aren’t insulated, have an insulation contractor blow cellulose into the walls. Bring your attic insulation level up to snuff.
• Replace aging, inefficient appliances. Even if the appliance has a few useful years left, replacing it with a top-efficiency model is generally a good investment.
• Upgrade leaky windows. It may be time to replace them with energy-efficient models or to boost their efficiency with weather-stripping and storm windows.
• Reduce your air conditioning costs by planting shade trees and shrubs around your house — especially on the west side.
• Know that you are making a difference!

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Best,

The post Home Energy Checklist appeared first on Michael Menn Ltd. Architecture-Construction-Excellence.

Before I go off and pontificate about Green Design, I do not like using the word Green, but prefer sustainable. I will use it interchangeably throughout this blog.

Whole Building Design Approach for Residential Design

The Whole Building Design Approach encourages integration and optimization among all building measures. It is important to note that many sustainable building programs also help foster this balance by requiring mandatory attention to all principles, not just one area. These concepts serve as the underlying basis for the Whole Building Design Guide which is discussed in more detail below.

Architects and builders interested in using the whole building approach should consider the following eight design objectives in order to create a high-performance home: accessibility, aesthetics, cost effectiveness, functionality, productivity and health, history, safety/security, and sustainability. Unlike the more traditional approach in which design decisions are made one after the other, the whole building approach relies on careful consideration and integration of all key design objectives during every phase of the design project.

This approach works particularly well when applied to a single family home. Although it may not be obvious at first glance, green strategies such as conserving energy and water, selecting the right materials, focusing on durability, or ensuring great acoustical comfort, all affect which other attributes are incorporated and how successful they will be.

The eight design objectives that contribute to building a high-performance residential building are as follows.

Accessibility
This design objective considers accommodating persons who are permanently disabled or temporarily disabled due to an injury. The concepts of visitability and aging in place are becoming more popular as the percentage of our aging population grows. The visitability movement advocates for constructed homes to consider aspects such as the location of stairs and the width of interior doors. The goal is to ensure equal use of the home for all.

Aesthetics
What qualifies as beautiful is open to personal interpretation and varies with client, climate, context, construction and culture. Aesthetics applies not just to the outside architecture, but to the interior design, the surrounding landscape, the neighboring buildings and your community at large.

Cost Effectiveness
There is no one specific measure for true cost effectiveness, but some considerations are noted here. Do you want the lowest initial construction cost or the lowest everyday living costs?

Functionality
Understanding how your home will feel, means defining the size and proximity of the different spaces needed for activities and equipment. Consider your future needs, such as potential spatial changes from remodeling, and provide proper clearances for replacing or expanding building systems and equipment. Anticipate changing information technology (IT) and other building systems equipment.

Productivity and Health
The indoor environment of your home can have a strong effect on your health and productivity, particularly if you have young children or aging parents, whose auto-immune systems are more susceptible to toxic materials and off-gassing fumes living with you. Excessive noise, glare, drafts, heat, humidity or cold can be potentially damaging or dangerous. Architects and builders must design the building enclosure, building systems, equipment, and appliances to work together as a unified system to achieve a truly healthy home.

Historic Preservation
Some practical and/or intangible benefits of historic preservation include: retaining history and authenticity; commemorating the past; increasing value when homes feature materials and ornaments that are not affordable or readily available any longer; and reducing the need for new materials.

Safety and Security
Designing and constructing safe, secure homes and communities is a primary goal. Architects and builders must consider different issues, such as improved indoor air quality, electrical safety, ergonomics, and accident prevention. Resisting natural hazards requires protection from hurricanes, wildfires, floods, earthquakes, tornados and blizzards. Gated and/or guarded communities are becoming more and more popular and may often require special maintenance and equipment.

Sustainibility
The construction, use, and demolition of existing homes have many direct impacts on the environment. To ensure the sustainability of a home, consider the following principles:

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• Optimizing Site Potential. This principle covers such aspects as proper site selection, consideration of any existing buildings or infrastructure, orientation of streets and homes for passive and active solar features, location of access roads, parking, potential hazards, and any high-priority resources that should be conserved such as, trees, waterways, snags, and animal habitats.
• Minimizing Energy Use and Use Renewable Energy Strategies. This principle covers aspects such as the importance of dramatically reducing the overall energy loads (through insulation, efficient equipment and lighting, and careful detailing of the entire enclosure), limiting the amount of fossil fuels required, incorporating renewable energy systems such as photovoltaics, geothermal heat pumps, and solar water heating whenever feasible, and purchasing green power in order to minimize the creation of greenhouse gasses.
• Conserving and Protecting Water. This principle covers aspects such as reducing, controlling or treating site runoff; designing and constructing the home to conserve water used inside and outside; and minimizing leaks by ensuring proper inspections during construction.
• Using Environmentally Preferable Products. This principle covers such aspects as specifying products that are salvaged, made with recycled content, are easily disassembled for reuse or recycling, conserve natural resources, reduce overall material use, are exceptionally durable or low maintenance, naturally or minimally processed, save energy and/or water, and/or reduce pollution or waste from operations.
• Enhance Indoor Environmental Quality. This principle covers strategies to provide excellent acoustical, thermal, and visual qualities which have a significant impact on health, comfort, and productivity. Other attributes to be considered: maximize daylight, appropriate ventilation, and moisture control, and the use of low- or no-VOC products.
• Optimizing Operations and Maintenance Practices. This principle covers materials and systems that simplify and reduce operational requirements, require less water, energy, and toxic chemicals and cleaners to maintain, are cost-effective and reduce life-cycle costs.
• Flexible Design. Also called “loose fit, long life,” this design principle anticipates and allows for future adaptations needed to extend a building’s useful life.
• Design for End of Life. This principle encourages design for the disassembly, reuse, and/or recycling of building components and materials at the end of their useful life.

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I would like to thank WBDG (World Building Design Guide) for reinforcing and re-educating me on sustainable (green) design. For thise of you who know me, my CGP (Certified Green Professional) designation is very important to me, because currently have only ONE planet to live on!

The post Sustainable (Green) Design appeared first on Michael Menn Ltd. Architecture-Construction-Excellence.

We all want to make our lives less dependent on chemical cleaners, making things greener in the process. If you can make your home energy-efficient, then you will lower your carbon footprint while at the same time making your monthly expenses smaller as well. The trick is making sure you evaluate the home beforehand, making sure you know its weaknesses and what you can do to address them and make them better. Many of these tests can be done by yourself, and often in less than an hour. While they will not really tell you everything you need to know, you will at least be able to understand what can be done to improve things. Here are some of the strategies you can use for yourself and information on what you can do with the help of a specialist.

Checking on Windows and Doors

You can begin your efforts by checking up on all your windows and doors to see whether you have any drafts in it. The way to approach this is to close all the doors and windows of your home, then lock them up. Turn on the air conditioning or heating of your home, bathroom fans, hood fans and more. This will help you spot any leaks more efficiently. Light a stick of incense and hold it near your doors and windows and notice if the smoke will flow toward them and where. If you notice a behavior like that, then it means you most likely have a leak in that area.

Paying Attention to the Signs

Take a walk around your home, both on the outside and the inside and check for any signs that your home’s energy efficiency may not be up to par with what it needs to be. Some good examples of that can be worn weather stripping, sealing and caulking becoming deteriorated and so forth. A good thing to look for would be possible gaps in between your windows and the walls, door frames and similar problems you can spot. When you look at the windows, check for ice, frost or any form of condensation on the closed window sashes. If you spot any of the aforementioned, then you will need to keep that area in mind and know that it needs fixing as soon as possible, lest you allow it to grow as a problem and maybe develop moldy spots as a result.

Comparing Temperatures

You must check different ends of your rooms and the temperatures there with an electronic thermometer, as this will allow you to spot any problem areas with greater efficiency. In most rooms there should rarely be a difference of more than a degree or two, and anything more than that could be an indication of a problem that needs solving. Poor air circulation or seals around your windows and doors, as well as cracks in the walls, or corners could be the reason for it.

Hiring a Specialist

The most thorough way of doing that would be to evaluate the home energy efficiency via a design/build specialist who who has specific knowledge and skills about the design of your home and can help you diagnose problems with energy efficiency. While this will certainly be more expensive than what you’re doing, you will have a much easier time dealing with and locating issues that need attention. There are a number of tests they can perform with tools of their own that will prove more useful and effective overall. One of them would be to use an infrared camera to take photos of your home, locating problem areas and where leaks may have occurred. They can perform an air filtration analysis, as well as using a blower to test for leaks as well.

Remember I’m always eager to hear your comments. Contact me at Michael@michaelmenn.com or at 847.770.6303

Best,

The post Evaluating Your Home Energy Efficiency appeared first on Michael Menn Ltd. Architecture-Construction-Excellence.

While by no means official, the EPA has a definition that rang home with me:

[su_quote]“Sustainability is a simple principle. Everything we need for our daily survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which every human being and their surroundings can coexist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations.” [/su_quote]

It’s a high-level definition to be sure, but it reflects our need to make sure we have, and will continue to have, the water, materials and resources to protect human health and the environment around us. Closer to earth, I tend to measure sustainability with one of the many “green” or sustainable building rating systems in the marketplace. (I have the CGP designation — Certified Green Building Professional — of the National Association of Home Builders, so I’m no stranger to sustainability issues.)

To home building professionals, sustainable buildings are designed to be high performance, and through their siting, orientation, design, construction and operation are highly energy efficient, maintain lower operating costs, and are better for our environment in broad and specific terms.

So to combine these two views, I’m going to suggest this definition:

[su_quote]“A sustainable building is a building or living environment that can be maintained and is constructed utilizing sustainable methods that include using resources so that the resources used for construction are not depleted or permanently damaged.” [/su_quote]

Each one of us has our own understanding as to what makes our living environment sustainable. Some people may expand their answers and include items such as building performance, reduced utility costs and the promotion of the health for the occupants, while there are others who feel the definition of a sustainable building should also address accessibility, historic preservation and the future occupants of the building.

Whichever definition you choose, it really boils down to the wise use of our resources and the methods used to create our living and working environments so that they can be sustained over the years.

To put this into practice, I’ve made a number of cost-effective energy-saving retrofits in my own home. Some of these you can easily do yourself, and they are all well worth considering:

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• Replacing conventional thermostat with a new digital model that automatically adjusts settings.
• Installing flow-restriction aerators on sink faucets.
• Replacing water-wasting shower heads and toilets with low-flow models.
• Replacing storage-type water heater with a tankless water heater that generates hot water on demand.
• I tightened up my home by sealing rim joists and openings between floors, and sealing around HVAC ducts, light fixtures, electrical devices, utility chases, soffits, entry doors, windows, fireplace dampers and the attic access hatch.
• Adding additional insulation in attic and crawl space, walls and rim joists.
• Installing an energy-saving heat recovery ventilator that was compatible with my existing HVAC system.
• Installing an on-demand circulating pump on the water supply lines throughout the house.

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The good news is that I’ve enjoyed significant savings on my utility bills over the last few years. Now that’s a definition of sustainability everyone can appreciate.

Truly,
Michael

The post What Makes Your Home Sustainable? appeared first on Michael Menn Ltd. Architecture-Construction-Excellence.