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Lets pretend for a moment that you have just purchased a car. There was most likely a lot of research in the particular model, color and amenities of the vehicle. Soon after purchasing the vehicle, you probably got a run down from the seller about how to operate the car and a tour of its owner’s manual. Now imagine that you have just purchased a home with the same methods. What? You didn’t get an owners manual when you purchased your home? Seems kind of silly doesn’t it! Sure, most of us know how to operate a vehicle without reading a manual, does the same hold true for our homes?

Think of your home as one complete system. The HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) system, the plumbing system, the electric system and everything else between the roof and the foundation work in concert with each other. That’s pretty important information that I bet no one ever told you!

One of the chief complaints we received this past winter was that home heating bills were high and getting higher. The culprit in most of these scenarios was an improperly or misused thermostat. If you heat with a heat pump, you certainly felt the effects of increasing costs. A heat pump is designed to run year around, taking heat from the outside to heat the inside and removing heat in the summer. That is not a misprint. Most heat pumps can effectively remove heat from the outside air down to around 35 degrees F. Once the temperature outside drops below that temperature, the auxiliary heat is turned on by the system. The auxiliary heat is comprised of electric heat strips in the air handler unit of your system. The operation of these heat strips is costly. Unfortunately, we had a December that was 20% colder than the previous December and that December was 20% colder than the last December. Do you remember?   Most heat pump thermostats have an indicator or warning when the auxiliary heat is engaged. The goal is to keep the aux heat from coming on and to do so; you simply turn the heat down so the indicator is not on. I also recommend that a programmable thermostat be installed on any HVAC system; this will allow the system to operate on a schedule and be much more efficient.

Staying in the home heating and ventilation department, we will take a look at airflow in a home. Here is a question that you can answer just to yourself if you like. Do you have dirty carpets? Specifically, do you have dirt build up at the thresholds or around the perimeter of the room? You’re off the hook! It’s not your fault, nor is it your vacuum cleaner. There are two things going on here. Lets look at the dirt at the thresholds first. Call me Nostradamus, but I bet if you are interested in the answer, you probably keep the doors to those rooms closed. Was I right? When doors are closed in rooms that have HVAC supply and no cold air return, the room becomes pressurized. When a room becomes pressurized, the rest of the home becomes depressurized. Imagine you are standing outside of a close door with a vacuum cleaner under the door, which is what the air is doing in this space. The carpet at the threshold is acting as a filter for this rush of air out of the room and into the hallway. Closing doors also affects the flow of air throughout the house. When the supplied air does not get back to the system, the system draws air from any place it can find it (ie: outside, attic, crawl space).

Consider this scenario: You have a gas water heater in a closet in the home, or a gas furnace in a utility room. This equipment naturally vents combustion gasses and sometimes carbon monoxide through flues to the exterior. At night, the family of four goes to bed and shuts the doors to their rooms. The rooms become pressurized and the rest of the home becomes depressurized, including the mechanical room. The risk here is that the combustion gasses can now come back into the home and get distributed to those bedrooms and if there is carbon monoxide present, the results can be deadly.

The stains around the perimeter of the home can also be attributed to air flowing throughout the home. In this case, as the home becomes either pressurized or depressurized, air moves across the sill plate and under the wall and again the carpet serves as a filter for the air. The repair for this is to seal the area that has the air loss at the sill plate. This is done in Energy Star rated homes and can be easily done in a retrofit in an existing home.

Excessive energy use in most homes can be attributed to air leaks, either in the envelope of the home or in the duct system in the home. Using diagnostic tools like a blower door or a duct blaster, a trained professional can assess the overall air infiltration rate of the home and identify where the leaks are and the best things to do to improve the deficient areas. This professional can also teach you how to operate your home as a system and give you a virtual owners manual. The sustainability of your home is directly tied to your understanding of how the systems work in your home. If you are looking for help, give us a call for a healthy home.

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