Martin Holladay at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com kicked off another fabulous subject on their blog entitled: Energy Efficiency Retrofits: Insulation or Solar Power?

As a certified Passive House Consultant, I am partial to the insulation. However, Martin makes a good point when comparing the two approaches. As the discussion goes, many points about this subject are being addressed. This is my reply:

Other selling points
by Tim Eian, TE Studio

Our firm has been working to get a viable DER business off the ground for the last two years. We practice in an extremely cold climate (MN). After the first year, we found that there were not enough selling points to overcome the first-day cost—and even calculations favoring a DER approach in the long run may not entice owners enough to go into debt—let alone their banks who cannot begin to understand what DER actually is and why it would create value and equity.

Year two has been more successful for us, as we have been focusing on more immediately tangible advantages of indoor environmental quality and health, as well as comfort (a big thing in a cold climate) and survivability. In addition, we are trying to single out the DER measures as (more…)

I am lecturing twice today at the 20th annual Duluth Energy Design Conference and Expo.

Wednesday, 2/24/2010
Passive House: 10.30 am to 12 pm – French River room
DERR: 1.00 pm to 2.30 pm – Ballroom LM

Duluth Energy Design Conference & Expo

I’ll be talking about Passive House and Deep Energy Reduction Retrofit at the Duluth Energy Design Conference on Wednesday, 2/24/2010

The Passive House talk starts at 10.30, the Deep Energy Reduction Retrofit talk at 1.00 pm.

Duluth Energy Design Conference & Expo

Duluth Entertainment &  Convention Center
Click on this link to contact the organizers about attending the event.

I’ll be speaking about and taking questions regarding Passive House and Deep Energy Reduction Retrofit at this month’s Building Enclosure Council meeting.

The meeting will be held on Tuesday, 2/9/2010 from 4-6 pm.

For more info on the BEC, please visit their page: Building Enclosure Council – Minnesota Meeting

This is the venue:

AIA Minnesota
Board Room
International Market Square, Suite 54
275 Market Street
Minneapolis, MNMN 55405
Phone 612.338.6763

Thanks for attending my lecture at the Green by Design conference. It was a fabulous event and many great ideas were shared. In the spirit of the conference I am offering my slideshow for review at slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/timeian

Since most of my slideshows don’t have a lot of text or bullet points, you may want to look at the Living Green Expo slideshow, which was designed to run without my presentation and offers lots of frequently asked questions and answers.

This is what a blower-door looks like. It is being used as part of an energy-audit to determine the performance of a building. The blower-door itself is placed inside an exterior door frame. It pressurizes or depressurizes a building at 50 Pascals pressure, based on the testing method. A meter provides a read-out of the air-leakage of the building. This tells us how “leaky” the building envelope is. We can also search for these leaks while the blower is running. Tracer gas can be used, but a simple lighter will often do the trick as well, as its flame will start to move or even get blown out once near an air-leak. More obvious leaks can usually be felt, as they create significant drafts.

Knowledge is everything. It is the foundation of a good building performance upgrade.

Once problem spots are  identified with the help of a blower-door test for example, the actual problem can be addressed properly. Follow-up testing can show the success of any improvement measure at the end of a project. Consider it a quality-control measure.

While the blower-door is running, a thermal imaging camera can be used to identify thermal properties and imperfections of the building envelope. In this picture a cold spot along the edge of a wall-to-roof connection can be seen. The pressure difference that a blower-door creates will emphasize these issues in areas where air-leakage is a contributor to the temperature difference.

Energy Audits can be compared to a visit to the doctor. You know something is not quite right and you are looking for clarification and answers. The doctor’s visit is your first step to getting answers and coming up with a strategy for healing. With buildings, energy audits are the equivalent to a doctor’s visit. They tell architects and contractors what’s not quite right and where areas of improvement are. Knowledge is key to success. Once the issues are identified, they can be dealt with and solved most efficiently and effectively.

Energy Audits can typically be ordered from your utility company. They are heavily subsidized, so you on make a small copay. If you are considering working with an architect or contract, please invite her/him to the audit—there is nothing quite as powerful as first-hand knowledge transfer. At the very least, ask your auditor for a written report and photos of any problem spots she/he identifies.

Kare11 did a feature on energy audits. Make sure to order the extended audit. This one includes thermography.

Thanks to all that visited the TE Studio booth at the Living Green Expo! We had a great time and enjoyed talking with all of you about Passive House and Deep Energy Reduction Retrofit. We look forward to working with some of you to  maximize your investment and minimize its impact on the environment.

TE Studio at the Living Green Expo
May 2-3, 2009: Saturday: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. / Sunday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Minnesota State Fair Grounds (Saint Paul)
Booth J-6

We’ll be showcasing Passive House building energy standard and the Deep Energy Reduction Retrofit concept. We look forward to meeting with you.

I just read a passage in ACI‘s “Moving Homes Toward Carbon Neutrality” whitepaper that I find to be a wonderful summary of the paradigm shift the building industry needs to accomplish. In my opinion designers, contractors and homeowners alike need to consider the building as a system in order to understand how to make significant and truly valuable improvements—not just in regards to energy.

In housing we have discovered that moisture and mold problems, combustion spillage, and indoor air pollution can only be addressed by the systems approach, whereas the component by component approach of old did not work. With all of these problems, the interactions between components of the house were very important, but were not always obvious when we looked at one component or area at a time. For example, while the moisture problem may have seemed worse in the bedroom of a sick child, it often started either outside or in the basement/crawl space. Combustion spillage problems in the utility room were sometimes caused by the powerful new kitchen range hood. Changing a natural draft furnace to a high-efficiency one, without introducing controlled, low-rate ventilation, often resulted in the build-up of pollution indoors that was worse than the occasional spillage problem from that furnace. All these were system problems and they were much more easily identified when the systems approach was used.

I encourage anybody who is thinking about remodeling to look at ACI’s whitepaper and consider the opportunities it highlights. A building is like a set of dominoes: tip the first one over and a whole bunch of others will start to fall also. Each component has an impact on other components. Together, they work in concert—creating a wonderful symphony, or a ghastly amount of noise. It is therefore of utmost importance to carefully and decisively create a retrofit composition that enhances the features as well as the performance of a building, and returns the favor with a Whole that is greater than the sum of its parts (okay, I borrowed that one from the last Passive House conference).

Beauty, delight, performance, efficiency: those are some of the things that fascinate me with buildings. Hence the company slogan: beautiful, resource-efficient buildings. The systems approach is key to success on these fronts.