Matt and I are in Indy at the moment at the National Weatherization conference. Long ago (1978) I began working in a weatherization program in central Vermont as a job trainer and that led to my using infrared for the first time in 1983. Since that time we've provided training to many in the program around the country so it is very gratifying to be here with nearly 3500 people getting ramped up to begin the process of investing $5 billion in Recovery funding into making the homes of low-income Americans more efficient. Infrared and blower doors have been key tools in achieving an average of 32% savings to date and all here expect to do better moving forward.

The program is directly under a spotlight to produce results ever since the President mentioned it as a key step to economic recovery. I think the connection is clear that investing this money creates jobs, reduces energy dependency, improves trade balance, decreases emissions and helps us correct carbon imbalance. Taken together, that is a pretty impressive return on investment.

If you are involved in weatherization, we look forward to continuing our work with you. I expect hundreds of cameras will be purchased and used for audits, training, installation of materials and for monitoring. If you don't know about the program, check it out: http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/weatherization/. Good work being done by good people for a great cause. 

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Thermally Yours,

John
ASNT NDT Level III #48166
The Snell Group
www.thesnellgroup.com
www.thermalsolutions.org
800-636-9820

Hi all:

United Infrared/EnergyScanIR was an exhibitor at that conference 2009 National Weatherization Training Conference as well and I attended the tradeshow and some of the sessions. I thought the program was very good.

From Wikipedia: "Weatherization is the practice of protecting a building and its interior from the elements, particularly from sunlight, precipitation, and wind, and of modifying a building to reduce energy consumption and optimize energy efficiency."

I did a poll of ~200 people that I met at the conference. From the results, I fear that we (the government) will waste a bunch of money testing low-income housing and producing reports that will never be acted upon. Most of the people attending were from dot.orgs which are doing weatherization programs in various cities for free to the homeowner/agency. From my poll, almost half the programs that these people worked for did not actually do the repairs to the buildings...they just did the testing. The ultimate goal should be to reduce the energy usage by making a building more efficient and its occupants more willing to conserve. These programs need to include a follow-up survey of some type to make sure we are not testing for the sake of testing.

Greg S.

 

 

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Greg Stockton
Stockton Infrared Thermographic Services, Inc. and United Infrared
(800) 248-SCAN (toll-free)
(336) 498-GREG (voice)
(336) 689-3658 (cell)
www.StocktonInfrared.com
www.UnitedInfrared.com

I think if you dig a bit deeper you'll find that the Wx program, has had impressive results over the 30+ years it has been around; this despite always being underfunded and treated all too often like a step child!

Contrary to your informal poll I talked with hundreds of people who are actively involved in the process of auditing a building, the placement of weatherization materials, and the post-installation "test out" for the building; the accumulated knowledge from the program is what will make possible the effectiveness of the next surge in weatherization of many of the 1.2 million homes in this country in need of efficiency improvements. Testing is clearly an important part of learning what works and what does not work and documenting the same.

Many of the buildings these folks deal with, of course, need much more that can be supplied under the Department of Energy's program and other programs—an immense social issue in my opinion, but they are dealing very effectively with what they are able. I would recommend all readers take time to find out more about—and support—their local weatherization program. It makes a real difference in the lives of many people.

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Thermally Yours,

John
ASNT NDT Level III #48166
The Snell Group
www.thesnellgroup.com
www.thermalsolutions.org
800-636-9820

Hi:

I’m sure there are great people doing great things; I was simply saying that since this program is being infused with tremendous amounts of money all at once, the challenge going to be to not waste it.  While this kind of spending puts smiles on the faces of everyone in the industries that are positively affected by the program, there needs to be technical oversight to help the government spend it wisely…http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99F72OO0&show_article=1

Greg S.

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Greg Stockton
Stockton Infrared Thermographic Services, Inc. and United Infrared
(800) 248-SCAN (toll-free)
(336) 498-GREG (voice)
(336) 689-3658 (cell)
www.StocktonInfrared.com
www.UnitedInfrared.com

All:

We are trying to solve some of the issues related to weatherization at a very high level and I would appreciate your help. 

Here’s the scenario that I think will wind-up being the best approach because I think that there is no point in testing poor people’s homes if you are not going to make repairs, because they will not make the repairs themselves.

Given:  Almost every house has air leakage, imperfect insulation and mechanical inefficiencies (ductwork, HVAC, etc.).  Many don’t have enough insulation in the attic and have missing insulation in the walls and under the floors, etc.  My approach is to take a group of houses that have been identified by an effective method (aerial IR or drive-by IR and/or cross-correlating the utility bills with records from a given area...like-valued, like-sized houses) and come up with rated list of some amount.  Then have the weatherization program in a city send in the mechanics (green-collar workers) to do the low-hanging fruit stuff, like putting foam inserts behind the light switches/outlets, put in good weather stripping, measure the level of insulation in the attic and bring it up to spec (there’s a whole other issue), and take a look at the mechanical system.  

When that is done, then send the thermographer with the blower door and duct blaster, get the results and make additional repairs ONLY if it is cost-effective and offers a good ROI.

Now, I have been corresponding with people that I know over the past year about the means to indentify homes needing weatherization and have written about the fact that correlating the results of aerial IR imaging with heat loss is really hard, even on this board… http://www.irtalk.com/forums/thread/657.aspx.

This is so important though, that we have been spending a bunch of time and money trying to figure it out.  I know how to scan houses, but I am trying to wrap my arms around the macro issue. Here’s a post from our brand new blog… http://www.recoverir.com/blog/2010/01/06/why-aerial-infrared-surveys-can-dramatically-increase-roi-for-president-obama%e2%80%99s-weatherization-assistance-program-in-each-state/ 

There are a bunch of smart people that read this message board, so I am asking you to tell me what you think, mainly about the identification piece. 

Greg S.

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Greg Stockton
Stockton Infrared Thermographic Services, Inc. and United Infrared
(800) 248-SCAN (toll-free)
(336) 498-GREG (voice)
(336) 689-3658 (cell)
www.StocktonInfrared.com
www.UnitedInfrared.com

If I can be honestly blunt, and I think we know each other well enough to just be that way, it seems like you have a solutions looking for a problem. To some extent it also seems to be the "nuclear-powered butter knife" syndrome: a very high tech way to attack issue that are currently being solved quite nicely with a low-tech home visit. Much of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) involves people-to-people interactions that have proven to be a vital part of the whole delivery of services.

If your methodology works, it might be interesting to look at changes over time for large areas to see how effective a program has been. 

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Thermally Yours,

John
ASNT NDT Level III #48166
The Snell Group
www.thesnellgroup.com
www.thermalsolutions.org
800-636-9820

Am I missing something? How can you do an aerial survey of homes and accurately determine which ones are most in need of "weatherization"? There are far too many factors that will affect the IR image, at least here in the cold climate where weatherization would have the biggest impact: snow on the roof (snow slides off many metal roofs; emissivity of galvanized or aluminized roofs would be lower; south facing roofs would melt snow quicker than a north facing roof, etc.); well "ventilated" roofs (I have seen several cases where another roof was built on top of the original to create a "cold" roof to "fix" ice damming, but the heat still escapes from between the two); lots of people "rake" their roofs; I have been in homes that are kept at 60 degrees and others that are kept at 72 degrees.

So let's say that you do aerial IR imaging in the middle of a very cold, calm night, following several days of above freezing temperatures that melts all of the snow on the roofs. Let's say that you then use software to adjust each building for all of the above factors and determine a priority list of which houses appear to leak the most amount of heat. Are you going to then tell those people what you found and ask them to get their home weatherized? or is the government going to do it for them? I have thought about taking IR images of local homes and knocking on the doors of the worst homes for leaking heat. I haven't done it because I believe that many Vermonters would then not trust me because I was "spying" on their home with my high-tech camera.

I beleive that it is more effective to give homeowners substantial financial incentives or no interest loans to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. Let the homeowners initiate the work. Most homeowners don't realize that when they spend money to save heating dollars, the money saved on heating goes to pay off the investment, which is often less than 10 years. Once paid off, the money no longer being spent on heating is going into the local economy, rather than foreign oil or huge energy companies. I believe that the non-profit weatherization programs, at least the ones here in Vermont, do a very effective job of putting their funding to good use. They screen applicants based on income levels and fuel use. They then do an audit to document existing conditions and create a battle plan for how to improve that home. They then do what needs to be done, more or less in an order of priority more or less based on Return on Investment. There is also a cap on how much can be spent on each house. The result is that the low income people that receive this service can now spend more money on nutrition, health care and other necessities. Less money is going to the oil companies and more is going into the local economy.

What is really scary is when I see advertising for a "certified" inspector doing an "energy audit" on a home using just a software checklist and an IR camera ("you don't need a blower door because the IR camera will show you where the leaks are"). NOT! and for an extra fee, they will perform a "whole house moisture survey" with the IR.

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Brad Cook
Building Performance Services LLC
Warren, Vermont
Level I Thermographer
Home Performance Contractor

Hi:

Thanks John and Brad. I will address what you both said below. I was actually hoping for five or six additional thoughtful responses like these before I posted, but it did not happen yet.  Pretty please….

 

To John’s response:

Unless the creation of short term jobs is the real goal of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), the way it is currently structured, it is not a good deal for the US tax payer.  If the average DOE projected “expenditure”/ payout per home of $6,500 is not reduced by at least 13% to $5,680, it will take more than 30 years for the program to payback the American taxpayers, assuming our government is borrowing the money at the January 27, 2010 30-Year Treasury Bond yield rate of 4.53% (See Attachment A).  At higher historically interest rates above 4.53% with DOE projected WAP average energy savings rates of $350 per year per house, it would make better economic sense to simply give every one of the estimated 593,000 home occupants $350 per year, saving us $792.45 million per year for the first five years.  The savings from the first five years would almost pay for the annual $207.55 million payment to these 593,000 in perpetuity (without inflation).

There are many other issues like, waste and fraud as well.  And don’t forget the talk of the conference (2009 National Weatherization Training Conference) - the Davis-Bacon wage problem.  So, to say the program is going along swimmingly [for those not directly benefitting from it] is a stretch.  This is not just a political issue; it is an engineering and economics issue as well. If anyone has numbers different than these, from sources more reliable than the GOA and DOE itself, I am sure we would all love to see them.

 

To Brad’s response:

In his first two paragraphs, Brad laid out some of the technical challenges that I and others have pointed out about aerial IR surveying of houses – mainly, that of emissivity, ventilation and de-coupling of the thermal envelope from the roof.  I am aware of the issues but can use some good ideas.  Clearly, there is some correlation to what we can see thermally from the air and the efficiency of houses, but I do not know what exactly it is.  I would like to know, but even if we did a job for free, we would need on-ground/in-home data to go with it to validate the results.  That said, I would like at very least try a pilot survey as John suggests, a before and after study.  Snow and ice dams are a non-factor, because there is plenty of opportunity for cold, dry-weather surveys, even in the Green Mountain State.   

The idea is not just to use aerial IR anyway, but a combination of aerial IR imaging, comparing utility bills to liked-sized/aged houses, tax records, etc., to come up with a smart matrix for ID-ing to the low-hanging fruit.  The utility thieves are going to have some of the most energy inefficient houses, owing to the fact that they are not paying to heat/cool the house.  That number could be an average of 1% to 5% nationwide. It could be much more, especially in the areas of the country with high unemployment and poverty. This is where aerial IR imaging has proven to be very effective (www.recoverir.com).

As for Brad’s third and fourth paragraph, perhaps Vermont has the most effective program in the country which could be used as a model, but Vermont’s CEP is certainly not without criticism.   As far as the energy auditor’s marketing and techniques, there are some pretty good standards...but no one standard yet (Resnet has a new draft out) and there certainly will never be standards for advertisers.  The standard-writing game is a hard row to hoe.  I agree with Brad about the blower door.

 

To my money-saving scenario:

I was referring to WAP and energy efficiency programs in general.  Nobody really addressed that, which was one of the things I was hoping for.  The idea is that we already know the 90^th percentile of homes (poor people, rich people and all in-between) have lots of deteriorated/missing weather stripping and air leaks of all sorts, and many have insufficient attic insulation, with attic stairwells/scuttles rarely insulated correctly.  So why not have a crew bail out of a truck (private or WAP) packed with insulation, weather stripping and chalking and give the house a general going-over to quickly and efficiently grab the low-hanging fruit, before sending the IR camera and blower door?  Monitor usage for a while and then send the "energy auditor" when it is apparent that there is a real problem. 

 

Greg S.  

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Greg Stockton
Stockton Infrared Thermographic Services, Inc. and United Infrared
(800) 248-SCAN (toll-free)
(336) 498-GREG (voice)
(336) 689-3658 (cell)
www.StocktonInfrared.com
www.UnitedInfrared.com

There are very good reasons for not just going into a house and start sealing and insulating. 1.) You need to prioritize the improvements based on payback, safety and comfort. 2.) You need to look at the whole house because when you change one thing (air sealing or adding insulation) you usually affect other things. I have encountered several heating systems that were back-drafting. I have encountered very damp or wet basements. Air sealing or insulating can make these and other problems worse. I have encountered homes that were fairly tight, but had big thermal bypasses to the attic creating warm roofs and big ice dams. After sealing off those bypasses, we had to install mechanical ventilation because we had made the house too tight.

One of my earliest projects involved an 1800s house that had 3 1/2" fiberglass in 4" walls. The owner didn't want to spend much money, so we only went for that "low hanging fruit". We sealed up some very big holes between the house and attic crawl and around the foundation. The house was very very leaky to begin with. When we finished and tested out, we had not cut down on the air infiltration by one bit. The walls were very leaky. If we had dense-packed the walls with cellulose, we would have made a difference. In many homes, you cannot tell where the energy leaks are without testing with the blower door and IR. In many homes that fruit is not so low hanging and the solutions are not so easy.

Just sealing attic hatches is not going to make a big difference. Adding insulation without finding and sealing air leaks first is a waste of insulation. If you don't test, you don't know.

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Brad Cook
Building Performance Services LLC
Warren, Vermont
Level I Thermographer
Home Performance Contractor