2nd Green Revolution

by Guest Author Jono Sher

In these times of economic hardship, there has been a real push towards energy efficiency in all sectors. This is in large part due to the fact that the most gains to be had are from minimizing losses and taking advantage of the ‘low-hanging fruit’ or, as my fellow energy auditor colleagues say, ‘fruit lying on the ground’ that is conservation. Most of the residential East Coast was built in the early part of the 20th century and pre-dates much of the common knowledge we now share about building science. The most fundamental part of building science is rooted in air exchange, or the natural pathways of air as it travels from outside to the inside and vice versa. The amount of air that a home exchanges from inside to outside is measured in “air changes per hour” with an air tight home turning over ¼ of its air every hour, whereas a leaky home would exchange all of its air within an hour. The majority of residential energy costs come from heating a home in the winter, and if your home is losing all of its air within an hour’s time, it will be extremely expensive to continue to heat that space. Hence the importance of creating air barriers, or air sealing, which is essentially blocking air where it might otherwise be leaking into a home. Oftentimes, this is the most cost effective way to improving a home’s energy efficiency because most of the sealing can be done with simple silicone caulk or spray foam. Read the rest of this entry »