beausoleil

Free money for Energy Upgrades for San Francisco Homes!

We just found out about a terrific program through SFEnvironment for energy upgrades to single family homes.  They have cobbled together grants from a federal stimulus bill, PG&E and other rebate sources to help put contractors to work and help homeowners improve their home’s performance. The catch is that the money has to be spent before June of 2012, and they are behind in getting the word out about the program.

The basic process is as follows:  You have your home audited for energy use by one of their approved contractors.  They will look at things such as your insulation, furnace, water heater, etc., do a blower door test to measure your air flow changes per hour as is (to see how leaky your house is now) and give you a list of suggested improvements.  The fees for this audit are partially paid by the program – you should be out of pocket no more than $100-200.   You then decide on the upgrades you want to do based on expected performance improvement as a percentage.  The contractor coordinates the paperwork with the city and based on the amount of energy use reduced, you can earn from $5500 for 15% reduction, up to $8000 for 40% reduction (typical in San Francisco is about 35%).  If you earn less than 120% of San Francisco’s median income, ($121,900 for a family of 4) then you can qualify for an additional $3000.  In the end many families who have participated have only been out of pocket a few hundred dollars.  They not only reduce their gas and electric bills, but also greatly improve the comfort of their homes.

Here is the website with more information. www.sfenvironment.org/SFHIP

We will embark on the process for our own home with David and Scott of Building Efficiency  performing our audit this Friday and we would be happy to share our experience as the project progresses.  Keep an eye on our blog for more information!

It's hard work to create a Passive House

One of the projects currently on Beausoleil’s drafting boards (i.e., on our computer screens) is a modest remodel of and addition to a typical 1950’s ranch house in San Carlos.  Besides creation of a master suite, a guest suite and a better relationship to the back yard, the owners desired to go well beyond normal practice in remodeling the building envelope. They wanted to approach, and possibly meet, the rigorous requirements of the Passive House Institute and reduce the building’s energy use by as much as 90%.

‘Passive House’ (Passiv Haus in German) is an idea that was formalized in recent years in Germany, though the basic concepts have been around at least since the 1973 energy crisis started people thinking about curbing energy use in buildings.  ‘Passive House’ is related to the broader concept of passive design in architecture, where the environmental comfort within buildings relies on local environmental forces, rather than utilizing complicated mechanical and electrical systems. In classic passive design, a building is designed to allow windows to admit solar heat in the winter, and to be shaded in the summer; occupants open windows for ventilation and cooling; heat is regulated through good insulation and air sealing; daily temperature cycling is smoothed by providing thermal mass within the building envelope. Space heating is minimized and people are expected to live with a bit of minor discomfort – putting on a sweater when the temperature swings a bit low, wearing shorts when its hot, getting up off the couch to adjust shades and windows – instead of cranking the thermostat.

The Passive House Institute standards require very heavy duty insulation (typically double to triple the insulation value most homes have), triple glazing on the windows, very tight air sealing, and (not so passive) ventilation using a heat recovery exchanger to retain the heat in air being exhausted. Very good detailing and supervision of construction is necessary to make these houses meet the standards, as it is very easy for air and heat to escape through a poorly conceived, or a poorly made, building shell. With excellent insulation and air control, most of the heat for the house can come from the building occupants and their electrical appliances. The need for air conditioning is eliminated.  With good natural lighting and photovoltaic panels on the roof generating power, very little energy input from outside is required.

Getting back to the project on our drafting board, the owners hired Allen Gilliland of OneSkyHomes, a Passive House Institute certified consultant and builder, to analyze the design of the house using the Passive House Planning Package and make recommendations. The PHPP is a software tool that comprehensively models the energy use of a building, including its skin, insulation, windows and doors, air sealing, ventilation, and mechanical systems.  Allen thought he had an easy task ahead of him, but it turns out that modifying an existing ranch house is a tougher challenge than designing a new house. 
The ranch house in question has typical 2x4 stud walls, and their thickness didn’t provide enough space even if high performance sprayed foam insulation was used.  Luckily, the owner wanted to remove the existing stucco wall finish and replace it, so amending the wall thickness was conceivable. 
Likewise the roof is framed with 2x4 rafters, and even though the attic provides a large space for insulation, the edges where the roof comes down to meet the walls are inconveniently slender. And, as it happened, the house’s roof had been replaced recently so the owners were naturally disinclined to rip the roofing off to add more insulation on top.

The other inconvenience is that the existing house is oriented to face east and west, just the opposite of ideal north-south orientation.  East and west glazing is hard to shade for summer cooling, and doesn’t face the warming sun of winter, so the project had a strike against it from the start. 

Triple glazing in our mild climate seemed silly to me (and to the window suppliers who laughed at the owner when he asked for triple glazed windows to be priced), but Allen explained that it wasn’t just energy control, it was comfort.  Triple glazing ensures that the interior surface of the glass stays within a comfortable temperature range – one doesn’t feel cold radiating out and therefore feels more comfortable.

Allen’s creative powers were challenged but he came up with several good alternative packages for balancing insulation value, cost, and constructablity.  We are looking at combinations of spray foam and densely packed cellulose insulation within framing spaces, extra layers of polystyrene foam on the outside of the shell, and taped plywood sheathing for air control. We are now awaiting pricing of these options before completing our construction drawings.  The owner is prepared for a certain amount of sticker shock (these improvements may not pay for themselves in a strictly economic sense for a long time), so we may end up with a very good but not certifiable Passive House design.

 

Up on the Roof

Much of the curb appeal of a house is up at the roof level. While we live within the space of a house, and enjoy its environmental comfort, its furnishings and its security, how we feel about the appearance of our houses depends a lot on whether the roof design appeals to us.  Terra Cotta tile, wood shingles, copper gutters; the modern appearance of a horizontal cantilever, the ancient look of a steep slate roof with gabled dormers; these elements probably do more to establish the character of our houses than anything else. It’s clear from our own experience that a stucco box with antique clay tile roof has a whole different feel than the same house with cheap composition shingles.

Roofs are where the action is.  And for the last thousand years, they have also been where the latest high tech gadgets are on display.  In 1100, the average house had a fireplace – meaning a stone or brick lined area in the middle of the floor – under a smoke hole in the roof.  Lots of smoke everywhere, and lots of drafts taking away the heat.  Then some bright mason thought of creating a shaft to guide the smoke up to the roof. Supporting that shaft required backing up the fireplace with a wall, which to their delight, was found to absorb and re-radiate the heat of the fire. 

 

 

 

 

 There followed a few hundred years of experimentation, and the result was the ‘modern’ fireplace with its three sided firebox, smoke chamber above, and tall chimney.  Smoke and drafts were controlled, heating improved. Soon every lord and knight had a fireplace or two, the fancier the chimney the better.

 

Chimney design became so important that some French Chateaus seem like exercises in chimney design, with the building thrown in as an extra.

 

 

In the 1700’s, founding father Ben Franklin got us thinking about electricity. He invented the lightning rod and thus started another fad. As before, this functional element was soon refined by the wealthy into a decorative symbol of their importance.  Any house without half a dozen many fingered rods was not only unsafe but uncool.  Weathervanes also became au courant, and were often combined with lightning rods. You could tell when the storm was coming and know that you were protected. 

 

 

By the1950’s, chimneys began to lose their appeal as central heating became common.  What was the new status symbol?  The TV antennae, soon replicated on every roof in America. 

A few decades later, and it's satellite dishes.  Meanwhile, the chimney is starting to disappear as designers specify high-performance direct vent fireplaces or choose to eliminate the anachronism entirely. Traditional fireplaces are, quite literally, like burning money from an energy efficiency point of view.

 

So what’s next?  As energy costs rise, and as environmental awareness grows, I think we will see a lot more solar panels and wind turbines on roofs; green roofs too.  We’ve already seen how celebrities, like Jay Leno, and high tech companies, like Adobe, use wind turbines as a status symbol.

So, power up, be the first on your block to spin, absorb, or grow your roof into celebrity status.  And who knows, you might just save the planet.

 

 

 

 

Now, chill out with the lyrics from Up on the Roof by Gerry Goffin and Carol King. You probably know the tune:

 

When this old world starts getting me down

And people are just too much for me to face

I climb way up to the top of the stairs

And all my cares just drift right in to space

 

On the roof it's peaceful as can be

And there the world below can't bother me

 

Let me tell you now

When I come home feelin' tired and beat

I go up where the air is fresh and sweet

I get away from the hustling crowds

And all that rat race noise down in the street

 

On the roof's the only place I know

Where you just have to wish to make it so

Oh, let's go

up on the roof….

Demolition - the sad alternative to deconstruction

In stark contrast to the house deconstruction photos and blog posted earlier this month, this photo shows two nearby homes being demolished. 

Granted the materials will need to be recycled per the laws of the local municipality, but it seems so sad to see all that wonderful framing lumber shredded, when it could have been reused by artisans creating handmade furniture or people building new homes for the needy.  Was the price difference really analyzed, or was this route chosen just because it is the "normal" and expedient way to take down a house?  We don't know, but we encourage you to take the extra step to give John Morrow of the ReUse People a call to see if you too can't actually save money as well as reduce energy consumption through reuse by selecting deconstruction instead of demolition.

Sustainable Solutions: don’t demolish, deconstruct!

Construction has begun on a Beausoleil Architects designed residential remodel with a new second story in Los Altos, California.  The project will feature sustainable design in many aspects of the construction, but what is most interesting so far at this stage has been the deconstruction.

While most remodeling projects include materials to be taken out of a home; old cabinets, sinks, flooring, wood framing, etc. , and generally a portion of these items are recycled  (Los Altos is a prime example of an ecologically conscious municipality requiring 50% of materials to be recycled), many items still end up in landfill.  Deconstruction, on the other hand, involves the literal reversal of the construction process by carefully pulling the house into its’ component parts: fixtures, lumber, masonry, etc. for direct reuse.  It is not only ecological, but economical.

In this particular case, the existing house, built in 1953 was due for some major upgrades.  The plumbing, electrical and heating systems needed replacing; there were single pane windows and little or no insulation in the walls and roof.  The floor plan was cut up with a lot of small rooms, and did not suit the needs of a modern family with children.  A few years ago, the home would have been simply demolished to its’ foundations and over 35 tons of material would have been added to the landfill.  The owner opted to look into deconstruction as an alternative and found that it made sense from a financial perspective as well.

Working with the General Contractor, Gerry Jensen of Millenium Enterprises., we obtained quotes for both options, demolition and deconstruction. The deconstruction process obviously takes longer as materials need to be carefully removed, sorted and documented.  The beauty of deconstruction though is that instead of simply paying to have unwanted materials removed, the owner obtains a tax credit for donating them for charitable purposes.  Working with the Reuse People in Oakland, who are incredibly experienced with the process, the first step involves a preliminary inventory and dollar value provided by an independent appraiser. The cost of this appraisal is borne by the Owner upfront, but their fee is also tax deductible.  In the case of this project, the cost for demolition was bid at $12,000; the cost of deconstruction at $17,000 with the additional cost of the appraisal at $3,000.  The final appraised value of the goods donated was $83,678.  Assuming a tax bracket of 30%, this will leave the owner with a donation credit of $25,103!  According to John Morrow of the ReUse People, this amount can be carried over for up to four years, which in most cases ensures a full deduction.  Deconstruction does indeed pay off!

So what does the deconstruction process look like?  Once the appraisal is done and the contract signed, the deconstruction contractor, Marcan Enterprise in our case, came to take away all the cabinetry, appliances, interior doors, plumbing and lighting fixtures.  I was really impressed with how neatly they had all the material sorted and organized on site.

   

The contractor then had to come in and do some abatement of hazardous materials that were found in old tile and sheetrock, for example.  Once the potentially hazardous materials were removed, it took approximately 1-1/2 weeks for Marcan to take apart the home, brick by brick, stud by stud.  Over 5800 lineal feet of wood framing alone was salvaged!

The only materials not salvaged were old asphalt roofing shingles, lumber under 6 feet in length (recycled instead), a small amount old rigid insulation, and single pane aluminum windows (no longer allowed for energy reasons).  Single pane wood casement and double hung windows are salvaged.

So what is done with all these donated materials?  Well, in Oakland at the ReUse People’s retail outlet at 9235 San Leandro Boulevard, anyone from the public is welcome to come by and purchase materials at an incredibly discounted price. (Check their website for additional operations and retail locations in southern California, Denver, Kansas City, Sacramento, and New Britain Connecticut.)  Who are their typical customers?  According to John Morrow, there are several categories:

• People who cannot afford to buy new
• People with income properties
• People looking to be especially environmentally conscious and reduce their carbon footprint
• People looking for authentic period pieces for their remodels
• Artists, including furniture makers, whose purchase of old lumber accounts for 25% of The ReUse People’s sales

 

When my husband and I remodeled our own 1920’s bungalow in the Westwood Park neighborhood of San Francisco some years ago, we purchased salvaged interior paneled doors, scrap marble slabs. A single pane wood window for our garage, and period glass doorknobs.  We saved a lot of money, but we also purchased items that were in keeping with the original design and craftsmanship of the home, so that the addition felt as though it had always belonged.

 

We encourage you to consider deconstruction for your remodeling project.  It is suitable for any scale project, from a small kitchen or bathroom remodel, to a large addition or tear down.  It is the right thing to do, both for the planet, and for your pocketbook!

 

Permit approved!

 

A building permit has just been granted by the City of Los Altos for our first home under Build It Green's Green Point Rated standards.  Congratulations Carol!  Construction should be starting next month with Millenium Enterprises as the chosen general contractor.  We are shooting for 86 points in the categories of Energy Conservation, Indoor Air Quality, Efficient Use of Resources, and Water Conservation.  We plan to keep you posted over the next year to evaluate the associated costs  of our chosen points and the ease of adapting them to the constrution and verification process.

  We are also currently in the construction documentation phase on three other new Green homes in Los Altos and hope to contiue to share our experiences with you.  Feel free to use this format to ask questions, discuss your favorite ponts withing the system, and the greening of residential construction in general.

V is for Victory (and Ventilation)

I recently attended another of PG&E’s great series of classes at their Energy Center, this one about ventilation in houses.  The Title 24 building codes regulating energy use in buildings changed this year (see previous blog “2010 title 24 energy updates”).  This class was about the ventilation component of these upgrades, which now require whole house ventilation as a matter of course.

The interesting thing is, although we all think of the forced air heating and cooling systems in our houses as ‘ventilation’ systems, most don’t actually do any ventilation. The instructor, Judy Roberson,  characterized this as “Where’s the V in HVAC”, HVAC being the industry acronym for Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning.  She even has a collection of photos of  HVAC contractor advertising, all of which mentions heating and cooling, none of which mentions ventilation.

Ventilation is, specifically, the replacement of stale, odorous, humid air from inside a house with fresh air from outside, and most heating and cooling systems in houses specifically don’t do this – they instead recycle the air, heating and cooling it, but never replacing it.  Fresh air is generally left to the occupants opening windows, or whatever infiltration happens when the wind blows or when someone turns on an exhaust fan.

While these ventilation methods have worked historically, as we have tried to make our houses more energy efficient by sealing up gaps in the building envelope, houses are now having more problems with indoor air quality.  There is relatively little of the small drafts that used to keep houses fresh, so air is left in place, and lack of oxygen, humidity, chemical odors from construction materials, and even mold are becoming a problem. This is the situation which the new code changes are meant to address.

The code allows for several compliance methods: stale air can be either exhausted from the house (fresh air is made up via infiltration through the gaps in the building envelope), or supplied into the house, or some combination of the two.  The ventilation can be continuous at a low level, or, intermittent with higher amounts of ventilation.  So, as of last January, all new and most remodeled houses will need to have these ventilation systems, on a twenty four/seven/365 basis. The older, more conventional exhaust fans are also now mandatory, not optional, in kitchens, laundries and bathrooms.

The main points of the PG&E class included Judy’s bedrock opinion that continuous – not intermittent – ventilation was far better for achieving the desired effect.  It is both more effective (intermittent ventilation can only be worse, never better than continuous), more cost efficient (smaller fans, ducts, simpler controls) and less likely to be annoying to the residents (less noise, no on/off disturbance, less obtrusive air movement).

Incidentally, we are talking about small amounts of air.  The typical bathroom exhaust fan, exhausting 50 to 100 cubic feet per minute (CFM) provides enough ventilation capacity to meet the code for the average house. And in fact, that is what some builders are doing – simply providing a better quality, quieter fan in one bathroom that gets left on all the time.  While this can comply with the minimum standards of the code, and is cheap, there are better options.  Judy’s favorite system was a supply fan which served multiple rooms, particularly bedrooms, where we spend most of our time. 

The supply-type system gives you filtered air from a selected source (not just infiltrated air from anywhere), and positively pressurizes the house so that there is less chance of infiltration from 'dirtier' spaces like attics, crawlspaces and garages.   The electrical usage would generally cost twenty to thirty dollars per year – not too bad considering the positive indoor air quality advantages.  This is the other main point: the energy savings of having a ventilated but ‘tight’ home, which doesn’t leak the much larger quantities of energy that a leaky house does, are much more than the energy used in ventilation.  Thus the title of the class: Ventilate Right, Build Tight.

Our first negative PG&E bill!

Yippee!  Our current monthly electric charges from PG&E are at a record low -$0.34!  Keep in mind that we only designed our solar system to offset about 55% of our typical usage.  Hooray for that "beau" soleil, and hoorah for the long summer days of June. 

Yesterday was our record day so far with 20.41 kilowatts generated by our 2.7kwh system.

Can green = cash? Part 2

It's been a busy few weeks, which hopefully is a sign that the economy is picking up! 

Part of our busyness has been getting this particular project in for permit, and having discussions with the owner, contractor, Title 24 consultant and window suppliers, to start to evaluate the potential "greening" of this home.  Now, many of you may think that "greening" means some strange design with plants on the roof, or perhaps covered in solar panels, perhaps using technology or materials that are not tried and tested, or subject to "green-washing" by manufacturers hoping to enter into the construction product market.   (How green is a countertop material that is manufactured sustainably, but comes all the way from Israel, for example?) Though these can certainly be analyzed and defined as green and be beautiful, most homeowners we come in contact with still prefer more traditional looking homes.   I wanted to start out by assuring you that this home is a very traditional French Mediterranean design with stucco walls and clay tile roof, found all over the Bay Area as well as in Europe, and its' construction materials are very traditional,  tried and true.

There are three basic requirements of a BuildItGreen Green Point Rated home that have to be met before you start to calculate any points. 

One: A2a Divert/Recycle demolition waste and construction material waste. 50% is required for the rating. 
The city in which the project is located already required 60%, so there is no additional cost required. Many municipalities in California have understood the importance of recycling/reuse and have developed their own standards. There are also companies such as The Reuse People, which will organize the demolition process for you to maximize the recycling effort and obtain tax credits for the homeowner,  which can sometimes offset all the costs of demolition, resulting in a net savings.

Two: J2. Design and Build Energy Efficient Homes - You must exceed California Title 24 requirements by at least 15%. 
This required a bit of research as the preliminary Title 24 calculations prepared and submitted for permit showed we were only 2% over Title 24.  Our consultant, Mark Madison of Energy Code Works told us that for our climate, we did not need to add extra insulation or do anything differently, we needed to take a closer look at the windows. Since for most of our projects the windows are chosen during construction by the owner and contractor in light of the overall budget, we do not have a particular manufacturer's specifications to plug into the calculations.  Mark is then forced to use a lower default value for the U-value (.58) and shading coefficients.  After getting quotes from several manufacturers for double glazed clad windows, we opted for low e glazing with a .32 U-factor (vs .43 for clear).  With a total window price of about $28,000, the clear glass would have saved about $2000, but the owners had planned to use low e so for now, there is still no additional cost incurred. Mark Madison revised the calculations, and we are now at 22.4% over Title 24, garnering 44 points, with no changes to the project design or budget!

Three: N1 Incorporate Green Point Checklist in Blueprints.  This should take about two hours of our time, to put in the list,and also add notes throughout the drawings and specifications.  Estimated cost $250.

We are currently filling out the Green Point Rated checklist and having some things priced, so this discussion will continue.  Stay tuned for part 3!

Can green = cash?

We are very fortunate to be currently working with a developer on a new five bedroom, four bath home on prime real estate on the Peninsula not far from Stanford University.  While we try to encourage all of our clients to make green choices for environmental and health reasons, in this case, the decisions need to make sense on the bottom line from day 1. 

Contractors, real estate agents, material suppliers, green point raters, designers, green homeowners, we need your help!

Over the next few weeks, we would like to analyze the project using Build It Green's rating program for new homes and try to find areas where green features can be added with little or no additional costs.  We would love input from you in the building profession as to what has worked for you in the past, or where you are seeing good deals now in this competitive economy.  Designers and homeowners who have incorporated green features in past projects, where have you seen the most bang for your buck, either in initial savings or in operating costs?  What features have given you the most pleasure over the long term?

We'd like to hear from you real estate folks as to whether buyers in the Bay Area would pay a premium if they knew that the home was Green Point Rated with points in community, energy, indoor air quality/health, resources and water.  Has real local research been done?  How would you quantify the potential financial differences between traditional vs. green construction?

Especially given the current economy where real estate sales are sluggish and prices reduced, it is all the more important to build efficiently and to price a project properly.  We know green building is important environmentally, but can it also make sense economically, even in the short term?

Please feel free to leave your comments.  We are hoping our blog will bring an open dialogue and become a resource for all.

Here are a few links to published articles/research on the topic.  The first two require payment, but the website gives basic information about their research.  If anyone has purchased these in the past, perhaps you can share your thoughts with us.

The Green Home Consumer: Driving Demand for Green Homes by McGraw Hill Construction 11/08

Shelton Group - Energy Pulse 2009

Residential Green Building Report - A Market Engagement Framework for Developers and Builders, a thesis project from the University of Michigan, 2007.