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There is no free lunch

  • boomzilla
    ♿ (Parody)

    @Zemm said:

    @boomzilla said:
    Bonus: your house didn't burn

    So you did hear about our controversy then? Some of the insulation used was metal foil and installed incorrectly, which then shorted out electrical wiring, killing some people and burning down some houses.


    Yep.

    @RHuckster said:

    @boomzilla said:
    I really need a better exhaust fan in the attic, but the HOA is a PITA about putting new holes in your roof

    Even if it's on a side not facing the street?

    Oh, yeah. Although, behind my house is basically a park that's part of our development and maintained by our HOA, so nothing is really terribly hidden from view. OTOH, it's a great place for the kids to play. And it has a perfect view of the town's 4th of July fireworks show.

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  • blakeyrat

    @Zemm said:

    @Weng said:

    A snow belt house will keep heat in just as well as it keeps it out.
     

    I remember an old Home Improvement episode where Tim the Tool(man) created a low pressure (exhaust fan over the front door) in his house and used a smoke machine to detect air leaks. Are your houses really that air-tight? Every house I know would leak horribly with that test. Every window has drains for condensation and there are multiple openings like exhaust fans in kitchen/bathroom. The window in the toilet room even has meshing on the top so it would never seal.

    But then we just had our coldest June (equivalent to your December) day for a decade and it only got down to ~8 degrees C. :-)

    Pretty unfair to just say "house" without saying when it was built. Yes, my house would leak like a sieve. It was built in 1927. A house built in 1997 would (or should) be almost completely airtight, and Tim's test would work in that case. (Although there are cheaper ways of testing insulation... I'm sure they were using the smoke machine to set up hijinks.)

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  • locallunatic

    @blakeyrat said:

    Pretty unfair to just say "house" without saying when it was built.
     

    While when it was built matters there is also how much work has gone in since as any significant work on a room generally involves getting it inspected again to match current building codes (plus swapping things like windows, or tossing up moisture barriers can help with the airtight and insulation while taking basically no effort).

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  • blakeyrat

    @locallunatic said:

    While when it was built matters there is also how much work has gone in since as any significant work on a room generally involves getting it inspected again to match current building codes

    This is true; my house was built in 1927 and barely touched since then.

    @locallunatic said:

    (plus swapping things like windows, or tossing up moisture barriers can help with the airtight and insulation while taking basically no effort)

    If you live in an old house and you swap the windows, you've probably just taken a few thousand off your resale value. Yeah, the old windows are awful single-pane monsters, but for people who buy old houses that's like 60% of what they're looking for.

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  • locallunatic

    @blakeyrat said:

    If you live in an old house and you swap the windows, you've probably just taken a few thousand off your resale value. Yeah, the old windows are awful single-pane monsters, but for people who buy old houses that's like 60% of what they're looking for.
     

    Point, but it is also a matter of are you doing things to the home cause you plan to live there and you want to reduce bills meanwhile or do you just care about resale value.  If you own as an investment and don't have a long time frame (which the lower heat/cooling costs offset the reduced sell price) then I could see not doing it for that reason, but otherwise there is at least a good chance that it's still worthwhile (assuming the building is just old and not historic).

     

    Edit: and you are in the northwest so maybe 1920s is historic rather than just old, wasn't thinking about which markets.

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  • blakeyrat

    @locallunatic said:

    Point, but it is also a matter of are you doing things to the home cause you plan to live there and you want to reduce bills meanwhile or do you just care about resale value.

    How are those two things mutually-exclusive?

    I plan to live in the home (I have for several years), and I want to maximize resale value. As such, I've determined my best course of action is to cope with the leaky windows and use a sweater or space heater when necessary.

    @locallunatic said:

    Edit: and you are in the northwest so maybe 1920s is historic rather than just old, wasn't thinking about which markets.

    Yeah; I should have said "historic" instead of "old". It borders an official city historic district (although it's not in it), and most of the neighboring houses are beautiful 1900s Victorians.

    Of course in this economy the only thing you can do to maximize the sale price of a house is "wait 5 years and hope prices go back up pretty please".

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  • locallunatic

    @blakeyrat said:

    @locallunatic said:
    Point, but it is also a matter of are you doing things to the home cause you plan to live there and you want to reduce bills meanwhile or do you just care about resale value.

    How are those two things mutually-exclusive?

    I plan to live in the home (I have for several years), and I want to maximize resale value. As such, I've determined my best course of action is to cope with the leaky windows and use a sweater or space heater when necessary.

     

    Not really mutually exclusive, but losing a few thousand on resale vs. hundreds less in energy costs every year makes a lot of sense to me.  Though again the case I'm familiar with of doing that on an old home also isn't going to get sold for at least decades so the savings also has more time to add up (more likely to burn the hell down or be condemned then be sold frankly so the trade off makes even more sense).

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  • I

    @blakeyrat said:

    If you live in an old house and you swap the windows, you've probably just taken a few thousand off your resale value. Yeah, the old windows are awful single-pane monsters, but for people who buy old houses that's like 60% of what they're looking for.
    Not sure if they have them over in Yankland, but you might want to have a look at stuff like these guys:



    There are some rather clever solutions out there which satisfy English Heritage and so-on because they look just like single-glazed panes, but are much more thermally efficient.

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  • frits

    @blakeyrat said:

    Pretty unfair to just say "house" without saying when it was built. Yes, my house would leak like a sieve. It was built in 1927.

     

    My house was built circa 1825 (nobody is sure, since the hall of records burnt down in the 1950s), it's mostly post-and-beam construction.  It only had cotton batting insulation, and only in the attic when we bought it.  Now, thanks to creative use of Tyvek on the inside of the clapboard siding and fiberglass insulation, the house is up to relatively modern standards of insulation and air-tightness.

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  • I

    @blakeyrat said:

    A house built in 1997 would (or should) be almost completely airtight,
    It depends how it's built. Most houses are designed to 'leak' for ventilation - building codes usually specify the volume of air that must flow through, and it's very high. There's a Scandinavian style involving completely airtight houses, where the ventilation passes through a heat exchanger, but it's pretty rare outside the Arctic circle.

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  • blakeyrat

    @intertravel said:

    It depends how it's built. Most houses are designed to 'leak' for ventilation - building codes usually specify the volume of air that must flow through, and it's very high. There's a Scandinavian style involving completely airtight houses, where the ventilation passes through a heat exchanger, but it's pretty rare outside the Arctic circle.

    Well, yeah, but you know where the "leaks" are (places like the bathroom fan, for example) and you can either seal them up, or ignore the smoke from those places.

    At my house, you'd get smoke pouring out everywhere, and it would be super-hard to prioritize any insulation work. You'd be much better off with a IR heat detector thing gizmo, whatever those are called.

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  • blakeyrat

    @intertravel said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    If you live in an old house and you swap the windows, you've probably just taken a few thousand off your resale value. Yeah, the old windows are awful single-pane monsters, but for people who buy old houses that's like 60% of what they're looking for.
    Not sure if they have them over in Yankland, but you might want to have a look at stuff like these guys:



    There are some rather clever solutions out there which satisfy English Heritage and so-on because they look just like single-glazed panes, but are much more thermally efficient.

    That's good to know, but there's also the whole "new windows cost $15k" issue. I'd need a loan for that kind of expense, so.

    NOW GIVE ME MORE SOLUTIONS SO I CAN PRESENT MORE EXCUSES!

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  • I

    @blakeyrat said:

    @intertravel said:
    It depends how it's built. Most houses are designed to 'leak' for ventilation - building codes usually specify the volume of air that must flow through, and it's very high. There's a Scandinavian style involving completely airtight houses, where the ventilation passes through a heat exchanger, but it's pretty rare outside the Arctic circle.

    Well, yeah, but you know where the "leaks" are (places like the bathroom fan, for example) and you can either seal them up, or ignore the smoke from those places.

    I'm no expert, but I don't think it's that simple. You could go around blocking up all the obvious things - draught excluder round doors and windows, cover the bathroom fan, and so-on - and still not have got many/most of the leaks. For example, your roof space is probably ventilated, and you probably have holes in the ceiling for light fittings. Maybe you have a basement, again, requiring ventilation, and floorboards with gaps between them. If you live in a wooden house, it may effectively not be sealed at all, if the walls leak draughts. Holes in a cavity wall for pipes/electric sockets? More leaks.

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  • blakeyrat

    @intertravel said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @intertravel said:
    It depends how it's built. Most houses are designed to 'leak' for ventilation - building codes usually specify the volume of air that must flow through, and it's very high. There's a Scandinavian style involving completely airtight houses, where the ventilation passes through a heat exchanger, but it's pretty rare outside the Arctic circle.

    Well, yeah, but you know where the "leaks" are (places like the bathroom fan, for example) and you can either seal them up, or ignore the smoke from those places.

    I'm no expert, but I don't think it's that simple. You could go around blocking up all the obvious things - draught excluder round doors and windows, cover the bathroom fan, and so-on - and still not have got many/most of the leaks. For example, your roof space is probably ventilated, and you probably have holes in the ceiling for light fittings. Maybe you have a basement, again, requiring ventilation, and floorboards with gaps between them. If you live in a wooden house, it may effectively not be sealed at all, if the walls leak draughts. Holes in a cavity wall for pipes/electric sockets? More leaks.

    Ok, this is a stupid debate.

    1) we're talking about a SITCOM CHARACTER who's entire schtick is that he's a home improvement "expert" who usually does more damage than improvement
    2) he undoubtedly set up the smoke arrangement specifically to set up some comical comedy situation of comedy haha
    3) anybody testing their insulation in real life would use the IR test, since it's cheaper, easier, and probably gives better results

    So I'm bowing out.

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  • I

    @blakeyrat said:

    Ok, this is a stupid debate.

    1) we're talking about a SITCOM CHARACTER who's entire schtick is that he's a home improvement "expert" who usually does more damage than improvement
    2) he undoubtedly set up the smoke arrangement specifically to set up some comical comedy situation of comedy haha
    3) anybody testing their insulation in real life would use the IR test, since it's cheaper, easier, and probably gives better results

    So I'm bowing out.

    Wait, what? I think I may have missed a post - I thought we were just chatting about how houses are built in different parts of the world.
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  • boomzilla
    ♿ (Parody)

    @intertravel said:

    I'm no expert, but I don't think it's that simple. You could go around blocking up all the obvious things - draught excluder round doors and windows, cover the bathroom fan, and so-on - and still not have got many/most of the leaks. For example, your roof space is probably ventilated, and you probably have holes in the ceiling for light fittings. Maybe you have a basement, again, requiring ventilation, and floorboards with gaps between them. If you live in a wooden house, it may effectively not be sealed at all, if the walls leak draughts. Holes in a cavity wall for pipes/electric sockets? More leaks. '

    My tax dollars at work (pdf). Abstract:
    @Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said:


    The air leakage of a building envelope can be determined from fan pressurization
    measurements with a blower door    . More than 70,000 air leakage measurements have been
    compiled into a database. In addition to air leakage, the database includes other important
    characteristics of the dwellings tested, such as floor area, year built, and location. There
    are also data for some houses on the presence of heating ducts, and floor/basement
    construction type.

    The purpose of this work is to identify house characteristics that can be used to predict air leakage. We found that the distribution of leakage normalized with floor area of the house is roughly lognormal. Year built and floor area are the two most significant factors to consider when predicting air leakage: older and smaller houses tend to have higher normalized leakage areas compared to newer and larger ones...

    Lots of stuff in there.
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  • bjolling
    :belt_onion:

    @blakeyrat said:

    @intertravel said:
    It depends how it's built. Most houses are designed to 'leak' for ventilation - building codes usually specify the volume of air that must flow through, and it's very high. There's a Scandinavian style involving completely airtight houses, where the ventilation passes through a heat exchanger, but it's pretty rare outside the Arctic circle.

    Well, yeah, but you know where the "leaks" are (places like the bathroom fan, for example) and you can either seal them up, or ignore the smoke from those places.

    At my house, you'd get smoke pouring out everywhere, and it would be super-hard to prioritize any insulation work. You'd be much better off with a IR heat detector thing gizmo, whatever those are called.

    The roof is always a good place to start putting insulation since it's a large surface directly pointed at the coldest direction on earth in winter (open sky) or the hottest in summer (sun)
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