Category Archives: Energy Efficiency

Blower Door Home Energy Audit

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Blower door testing is the most practical way to predict energy savings from air-sealing methods.how to do a blower door audit

Compare blower-door operation to inflating a leaky beach ball. When you inflate a beach ball, it doesn’t take much effort to fill it if there are no holes present. If the ball has a few pin holes, you have to apply a little more effort because eventually the air will leak out and the ball will become deflated. If there are holes that are bigger (such as raisin-sized holes), you will have to put forth an incredible amount of effort to keep the ball inflated. The total size of the all the holes and the pressure difference between the ball and the outside determines the rate at which you need to blow air to keep the ball inflated.

Like the blowing pressure of your lungs to keep a beach ball inflated, a blower door pressurizes your home by blowing air in or depressurizes the home by sucking air out. Depressurization, which creates a vacuum indoors, is the most common procedure because air comes in through air leaks, allowing you to feel and locate the air leaks in your home. The combined area of the building leaks and the pressure difference between indoors and outdoors determines how much air the blower door moves. The air flow is measured by CFM (cubic feet per minute). The standard for measuring a home’s air leakage is the air flow through the blower door at 50 pascals of house pressure (CFM50)

Blower door testing involves preparing the home for testing, setting up the blower door in a doorway, connecting the gauges, turning on the blower door, and reading the pressure reading on the gauges.

Prepare for testing by following these steps:

  • Close windows and storm doors.
  • Open all interior doors.
  • Disable heaters and water heaters by turning their thermostats down.
  • Cover ashes in wood stoves and fireplaces with damp newspaper to prevent them from being sucked into the home.
  • Shut fireplace dampers, fireplace glass doors, wood stove dampers, and wood stove air intakes.

The blower door operator should slowly bring the house pressure to 50 pascals. This is usually preset with the blower door gauges before he begins. With the house pressure at 50 pascals, the operator notes the CFM50 number from the digital air flow gauge. Then he begins to look around the home with a smoke generator to help find the air leaks in your home. I promise that you will be amazed to discover where the leaks are and the amount of leakage that occurs.

There are several common factors to help to determine the amount of air leakage you may have in your home. This is a little technical, but it will help you to understand the importance of a test of this nature.

  1. The 50 Pascal Airflow Rate: a blower door reading expressed in cubic feet per minute (CFM50) is the actual flow measured at 50 pascals of house pressure.
  2. The 50-Pascal Air Change Rate (ACH50): a blower door reading expressed in air changes per hour at 50 pascals. This is calculated by multiplying the CFM50 by 60min/hour and then dividing by the house volume in cubic feet.
  3. Natural Air Change rate (ACH natural): natural air change is expressed in air changes per hour.

If all of this seems a bit overwhelming, the home energy auditor in your area will know just what to do with all these numbers and formulas. If you are wondering where to find an energy auditor, check with your local courthouse or utility company. Hiring a home energy auditor will be money well spent!

Are You Thinking About Buying a Smart Thermostat?

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Why You Should Buy a Smart Thermostat

Thermostats are an irreplaceable part of any HVAC system. These handy control mechanisms take the guesswork out of your heating and cooling systems, allowing you to customize their activity based on your personal comfort preferences.

The ABCs of smart thermometers

But if you think thermostats are still simple devices with a low range of capabilities, we have a surprise for you. Smart thermostats have changed the HVAC industry forever—these universally programmable and interactive devices let users streamline and personalize the performance of their HVAC equipment right down to the minute.

Smart thermostats furnish precise and convenient digital control over physical heating and cooling equipment, saving time and money in the process. All across the land, homeowners are singing their praises, and if you don’t know anything about smart thermostats, you truly don’t know what you’ve been missing.

The A-B-Cs of Smart Thermostats

So what is it, exactly, that makes a smart thermostat so smart?

That’s a great question, and the list of differences between smart and conventional thermostats is more extensive than you might think.

Here’s what you’ll get with a good-quality smart thermostat:

  • User-friendly digital features. If you know how to operate your smart phone, you’ll have no problem understanding and managing your smart thermostat. In fact, a smart thermostat is less complex and easier to use.
  • Full Wi-Fi capability. Yes, that’s right. State-of-the-art smart thermostats are remotely accessible over the Internet—meaning you can program them from your mobile devices or laptop even when you’re not at home. All you have to do is download the proper smart thermostat app, and you’ll be ready to roll.
  • Connectivity with all home comfort appliances. Furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps, humidifiers, dehumidifiers, ventilators … you name it, and if it helps regulate your home’s interior environment, a smart thermostat can control it. Install a smart thermostat, and it will operate as the “brain” of your entire indoor climate management system.
  • Long-term programming capabilities. With a smart thermostat, you can program your home’s temperature and relative humidity settings for tomorrow, for next week, or for every day next month. Or if you’re going on vacation, you can program your system to switch on shortly before you return, so you’ll return to a home that’s as cool or as toasty as you desire.
  • Detailed information about energy-use patterns. You can receive as many digital updates as you like, detailing your energy consumption by the hour, day, week, or month. This will allow you to track your energy-use patterns and make adjustments that can save you money without compromising on performance. Your device will even offer customized tips to help you improve your home’s energy efficiency.
  • Automatic adaptability. Believe it or not, your smart thermostat will eventually learn to adapt to your habits and make automatic adjustments in your heating and cooling settings, based on time of day, who’s home, etc. Over time, your new thermostat may come to know more about your climate preferences than you do—which is why they call them smart

In addition to their outstanding performance features, smart thermostats are easy to install and sleekly designed to blend naturally into their surroundings. They can be integrated with all makes and models of furnaces, air conditioners, and heat pumps and will begin saving you money on energy consumption right from the get-go.

How much money, you ask? If you learn to use all the features of your smart thermostat, you may be able to reduce your fuel and electricity consumption by as much as 20-30 percent.

While smart thermostats are more expensive than older analog models, with these types of savings, they should pay for themselves in one or two years, tops.

Smart Thermostats for Smarter Living

Only you can decide if a smart thermostat is the right choice for you and your family.

Just know that if you do take the plunge, your control over the operation of your HVAC system will grow exponentially. On-demand fingertip programmability gives you complete autonomy over indoor temperatures in your home seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, from wherever you are in the world.

From a cost-benefit standpoint,  a smart thermostat is one of the smarter investments you could ever hope to make.

Is Your Ceiling Fan a Friend or a Foe?

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Recently, there has been some fast and loose talk about ceiling fans being ineffective for cooling. Are these claims true or false? As with so many issues, the answer is “both.” Read on to learn how to make the most of your ceiling fans.Are ceiling fans effective in cooling down a room?

The reason some energy experts disapprove of ceiling fans has more to do with how people use ceiling fans than with the fans themselves. Unlike air conditioners, which contain cooling agents called refrigerants, fans don’t actually cool the air. In fact, the motor that runs the fan actually warms the air around it! However, the air movement that the fan creates gives the feeling of cooler air. It’s the same principle as the wind-chill factor that meteorologists use when determining outdoor temperature; a cold wind will make the air feel colder, even though the wind doesn’t register on the thermometer.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) states that for users of both air conditioning and ceiling fans, the wind chill factor of ceiling fans allows users to raise their air conditioning temperature four degrees without sacrificing any real-feel comfort. During milder weather, ceiling fans can actually replace air conditioning, drastically reducing energy usage.

So why would energy experts complain about ceiling fans? Note the Department of Energy’s recommendation that users can reduce or even eliminate their air conditioning usage by using ceiling fans. Many users only take the second piece of that advice; that is, they keep the ceiling fans on, but they don’t bother raising their AC temperature or turning their AC off when it’s not necessary. This results in a greater energy expenditure than if the ceiling fans weren’t turned on at all.

Furthermore, most people leave ceiling fans on, even when they’re not in the room. As the DOE says, fans cool people, not rooms, so it doesn’t do any good to leave them on if you’re not in the room. To get the most out of your ceiling fans, follow these simple steps:

  • Raise your AC temperature a few degrees if you’re using a ceiling fan.
  • In temperate weather, use a ceiling fan instead of air conditioning.
  • Turn off your ceiling fan when you leave a room.

Should You Cover Your Air Conditioner for the Winter?

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Winter has finally reached the Triad; are you ready? Hopefully, you’ve already had Johns Plumbing, Heating, and Air Conditioning do our seasonal maintenance on your HVAC system. But now the question arises: should you cover your air conditioning unit for the winter?Should I cover my air conditioner in the winter?

This is a question that has been hotly debated for years, and there’s not exactly a simple answer. Read on to learn about the pros and cons of covering your air conditioner, and to decide on the best choice for you.

Reasons to Cover Your Air Conditioner

  • It keeps falling snow and ice out of the unit.
  • It keeps leaves and debris from clogging the unit.
  • It keeps water off the coils, where it can freeze and damage them.

Reasons Not to Cover Your Air Conditioner

  • Even with a cover, moisture from condensation can get into your air conditioning unit, causing damage. This is why seasonal maintenance is so important.
  • The moisture from condensation can breed mold and mildew, which can also damage your system and degrade air quality.
  • Covering your air conditioning unit can create a lovely haven for mice and other animals to make a winter nest.

What’s the Bottom Line?

In the Triad, we don’t often experience extended harsh winters. However, blizzards and hailstorms are the two weather events that warrant covering your air conditioning unit. If such a storm is in the forecast, cover your unit before the storm starts, and remove it afterwards. In the case of a blizzard (extremely rare in the southeast), take a few minutes to brush the snow from around the base of the unit.

DIY Alert: You Can Insulate Your Pipes

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DIY on how to insulate your pipes

Why should I insulate my pipes?

  • As discussed previously, insulating your pipes can keep them from freezing during a cold snap. Even if you hire the experts at Johns Plumbing, Heating, and Air Conditioning to do it for you, it’s a relatively cheap insurance policy against the huge cost and mess of a flood.
  • Even without the risk of flood, insulating your pipes makes good financial sense. Uninsulated hot water pipes cause water to lose some of its heat as it travels through the pipes. But insulating the pipes allows you to lower your water heater temperature by four degrees without any change in the heat of the water when it reaches the faucets.  According to the U.S. Department of Energy, it only costs $10 to $15 to insulate your pipes, which results in a savings of $8 to $12 a year. This may not seem like much, but it adds up over the years, and the investment amortizes in just one year.
  • Insulating your hot water pipes also keeps water in the pipes warmer for longer, thus reducing the time you have to wait for heated water to flow from the tap if you turn it off for a few minutes and back on. This adds convenience, as well as helping to save water.

How do I insulate my pipes?

  • Foam pipe covers make insulating your pipes a breeze. Your local hardware store stocks several different diameters for different sized pipes, and you can cut the length to fit. Most pipe sleeves have a vertical slit down the side so you can easily slide them over your pipes. Some already have a sticky inside which adheres to the pipe, but you can secure the sleeve with duct tape, wire, or a clamp, and you’re ready to go.
  • Fiberglass spiral-wrap insulation looks a bit like shiny duct tape, but it’s not actually sticky. Secure one end of the insulation around the beginning of the pipe, and then wrap the pipe, overlapping each layer by about a half-inch. Secure the other end of the insulation at the end of the pipe.