A few words from a happy client of Henry Bush/ Redlands Plumbing, Heating, Air Conditioning and Home Energy Solutions. We did an energy retrofit at his home and home office and he has seen dramatic results.
A Review of Henry Bush/ Redlands Plumbing, Heating, and Air Conditioning
Posted Under: Testimonials
energy efficient homes, EUC, Reviews, Testimonial
Even New Homes Can Have Energy Problems
Over the winter we received a call from a home owner that was having heating and cooling issues in a 5 year old home in the Beaumont area. He complained that the house did not heat nor cool evenly and it was costing him close to $200 per month in the summer to air condition his home. He had already replaced the compressor on his unit and was at his wits end.
So, I tested his system and discovered that his system had some ducting issues that was causing it to perform well below its capacity of 4 tons of cooling ( on a house that is 2200 square feet). We came to an agreement that we would change out his ducting to fix the problems.
Back to the office I went with a drawing of the house in hand. We put it into our engineering software and found out that the house only required 2.5 tons of cooling. Now my dilemma was that if we fixed the ducting he would be oversized and the system would short-cycle, leading to higher bills and less comfort.
So I headed back to the homeowner to tell him of this problem without trying to sound like I am switch pitching or upselling him. Thankfully, he trusted me and we embarked on a course of swapping out the entire heating and cooling system and replacing it with a new 2.5 ton system. We also eliminated a number of duct runs in the attic that were completely unnecessary. Many of the rooms had 2-3 registers in them with the registers being placed all the way out along the wall and over the windows. This means the air is spending a longer time in ducts that are in a super hot attic. The Energy Star.gov website has suggestions to shorten duct runs for this very purpose. We were able to properly size the necessary ducts and eliminate the unnecessary ones to provide enough air to cool each room.
Everything seemed to be going great with our new design until I received a call from him that his master bedroom just wasn’t cooling as well as the rest of the house, which was “perfect”.
It was upon this visit to the house that I found this badge attached to a wall in the garage 
I’ve intentionally blocked out the builder’s name on this, because this post is really an indictment on them for allowing poor building practices to take place in their development.
I jumped into the attic and started poking around at insulation. I had my suspicions when I was up there earlier in the season about how poorly the insulation was installed, but at first glance it looked like many of the attics I am in. The comfort issues the homeowner was having lead me to inspect further. When I did I discover that although the insulation looked level throughout, the house is full of drop ceilings and interstitial spaces (huge cavities in the wall) that weren’t properly insulated. If they were, I would have noticed differing levels in the attic. Here are some pictures.
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- Before Photo- When we started the retrofit, we found a 1′ drop ceiling under this insulation. None of the insulation was in contact with the ceiling here.
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- Before Photo- Insulation was often not in contact with the ceiling or sides of the bays
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- Before Picture- This “tunnel” was not insulated. It had insulation stuffed at each end and insulation stuffed into the joist on top to create the tunnel.
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- Air Sealed and backed by a foil wrapped R-7 insulation blanket, this knee wall will perform as it should
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- After Retrofit- Another example of air sealing and insulation that was properly cut to fin into the bays.
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- After retrofit- all pluming and electrical insertion points were air sealed then existing insulation was cut to fit properly
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- After retrofit-retaining wall put in place for insulation that would be blown in the next day
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- After retrofit-Non-Insulation Contact Rated Can Lights were outfitted so that we could blow insulation around them
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- After retrofit-Air sealing around all insertion points into the home.
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- After retrofit-Existing insulation was cut to properly fit the area and retaining wall put in place for the blown in insulation that would be installed later
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- This knee wall was air sealed then wrapped in foil backed R-7 insulation
The most alarming thing about all of this mess, was that this homeowner thought he bought a home that was energy efficient. We found more than what is shown here but much of it didn’t photograph well enough to document.
Bear in mind, with the HVAC retrofit that we had done in the winter, the homeowner had already seen a reduction in electricity bills. He said his most recent one was $90 verses $190 last year. So he was happy about the current energy savings. We just set out to address his comfort issue in the bedroom.
After I reported to him what I found in the attic, he asked us to come back and air seal, retrofit what he had currently so that it was done right and add more insulation. We did so. We air sealed everywhere in the attic. We made sure that all of the existing rolled batt insulation was cut to size and touched 5 sides of the bays. We retrofitted the knee walls so that they would perform correctly and our final step was to blow in 6 more inches of blown in cellulose insulation over everything (an additional R-19+ to the existing). The attic now is performing at R-38+ and the house is much more comfortable. The homeowners bills will come down even more and, as importantly, he will be comfortable in all rooms of his home.
People often tell me that they have huge electric bills in newer homes. It shouldn’t be that way but because of poor building practices in homes that are much larger than homes in the past with many more architectural features built throughout, it is more often true, than not. So don’t accept high bills as a necessary part of living in a larger, newer home. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Posted Under: Energy Efficiency, Heating & Air
air conditioning, Air Sealing, attic, Cooling, Electricity, energy efficient homes, Energy Star, Energy Upgrade California, EUC, Green Building, heating, high electricity bills, Home Energy, home performance, Inland Empire, Insulation, problems, Quality Instalation, Rebates, SCE, Southern California Edison
Infrared Photos From Yesterday’s Energy Audit
Yesterday we ran down the road to Mission Viejo to do an energy audit. It was a beautiful spring day in Orange County, which meant that there wasn’t a great deal of difference between the outdoor temperature and the indoor temperature of this couple’s beautiful home. We were a little concerned that the thermal imaging camera that we use would not get the best pictures because of this small temperature differential. Thankfully, that worry was all for naught. We got some very good photos of problems in this house. These are fairly typical in the houses that we see.
You can see where the insulation has been compromised around this switch plate. The house was negatively pressurized for this photo allowing you to see air move from the wall to the room. Read More
Posted Under: Energy Efficiency, Heating & Air, Henry Bush
AC Qualiy Instalation, air conditioning, attic, california, Condenser, Contractors, Cooling, Electricity, energy efficient homes, Energy Star, Energy Upgrade California, EUC, henry bush, high electricity bills, High Energy Bills, Home Energy, home performance, Inland Empire, Insulation, problems, Quality Instalation, Rebates, SCE, Southern California Edison, Windows
Smart Meters- What are they and How Will They Effect Me?
Back in October I installed a new heating and A/C system at my house. It was HOT on the final day of the install and I had a houseful of people heading my way that evening. We flipped on the air conditioner and it successfully cooled the house before everyone arrived. I was excited to see how much less electricity that the new system was using, so I ran out to my electric meter hoping to watch the little wheel spin ever so slowly. I was shocked and a bit disappointed to find that someone had switched out my old, trusty meter for one of the new Smart Grid digital meters. Read More
Why Would Google Be Making A LED Light Bulb?
A few years ago I fell in love with the Google Android platform when I switched from my Blackberry to a Google Droid phone. I loved all of the apps that were being written for the phone because of the fact that Google is such a champion of open source. So when I saw a post, this morning, on Google teaming up with Lighting Science Group to come out with a LED light bulb with a built in chip allowing it to be controlled from my Android powered phone or my Android powered tablet or my Android Powered Google TV (did I mention that I am a fan of Android), I was totally intrigued.
What may seem like overkill at first, could open up some amazing possibilities. Out of the box you will be able to turn this light off and on, as well as dim it, from your Android powered device. It will screw right into your existing socket from which you just took out an incandescent light bulb and it will sip energy by comparison that that heat producing beast that was in there before.
So, you could turn off the light that you accidentally left on when you left for work, from your desk. You could flip on the light for security purposes if you are coming home late. And you could dim it when it comes time for some romantic ambiance. Those are all basics, and it might be hard to justify the price that these bulbs will demand ( at first) when they come out in December. Yep, they’ll be cool, but will they be worth it, goes the argument.
I would suggest, that these could open up a whole other realm of possibilities though. How long will it be before some enterprising person writes an app that allows me to create banks of lighting that are all controlled as one? So, I might be able to create a bank of can lighting in the living room that changes for entertaining, verses mood lighting, reading, or security. High end lighting systems exist for this already, but they are controlled by systems that cost thousands and are usually cost prohibitive in retrofit applications. Could Google lighting make those systems obsolete? Could I have random lights come on at random times all around the house to make it look like someone is home when I am in Hawaii? Could I turn off my kitchen light from my couch with my Google TV remote? Is there an app that some one will write that finally gets my kids to shut off the lights in their room when they are not in it (I’ve tried motion detector switches with limited success so far). What else could they do that I haven’t even though of yet?
It is interesting to me that Google is getting into the energy business. What other appliances will I be able to control with my Droid phone. Like I said, I am an unabashed fan of the Android platform and technology in general. But, when you combine them with energy savings, I just get get giddie. Below are some more details on the announcement. What do you think about all this? Feel free to comment.
By Andrew Nusca | May 10, 2011, 11:39 AM PDT Internet giant Google and LED manufacturer Lighting Science Group on Tuesday revealed that they have partnered to develop an LED light bulb that can be controlled from an Android-powered smartphone. The Florida-based lighting firm calls it “intelligent LED lighting,” and announced it with Google during the company’s keynote presentation at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco. The first product, a 60-watt equivalent bulb, is a combination of Lighting Science’s knowledge of light geometry and Google’s connected software know-how. An Internet-connected LED bulb? Yes, and here’s why: with a little help from your home’s Wi-Fi network, you can dim or turn off lights remotely — or to program them to do so. Better still, the LED bulbs can leverage your smartphone’s GPS and proximity sensors, turning on lights when you walk into a room with the phone in your pocket. Google has always occupied the home area network space, but this is the first time it has addressed a specific appliance in the home. (If you’re an avid reader of SmartPlanet, you’ll know that the “Internet of Things” — from cars to water heaters to toasters to yes, light bulbs — is just around the corner.) It’s not just a consumer play, but a commercial one, too. Networked lighting companies such as Adura, Lumenergi, Redwood Systems and others — Google rival Microsoft’s focus on commercial building management comes to mind — deal primarily with office buildings and datacenters; this announcement hints at similar applications. The companies say the product will arrive in retail stores this fall.
Posted Under: Energy Efficiency
Electricity, energy efficient homes, Energy Star, Energy Upgrade California, EUC, Gadgets, Green Building, high electricity bills, High Energy Bills, Home Energy, home performance, Inland Empire, LED Lighting, Lighting, Rancho Cucamonga, SCE, Southern California Edison, Technology
