New Owner for DNZEH aka Darn Near Zero Energy Home

Hello to all who may be reading this. I'm the new owner of DNZEH and I want to thank Joan for all of the information and work that has been put into the house thus far. I've never blogged before but no time like the present and like Joan I will be continuing to investgate methods to minimize the energy usage of this beautiful Colorado home. I will be posting my improvements as soon as I can get some photos and have the time to properly document them. Oh yes, my name is John and I believe my profile is available on google now.

Results of crawlspace retrofit provides solid, passive solution to radon

I'm happy to report that the couple thousand bucks I spent on the crawlspace insulation and air sealing seemed to have made a huge dent in the radon problem in the house. By EPA standards, trying to get to below 4.0 for the living level. The actual level inside didn't change by a huge amount, but you can see the source levels in the crawlspace dropped from 27 or 37 down to 6.6. I'm still a bit surprised that it's even this high, but am happy with the results.

Each time I tested the same two locations: the lower level family room (living area) and the crawlspace (unoccupied). The results in picocuries per liter (pCi/l) were:
July 08 (Kidde brand): 2.7 family room, 6.6 crawlspace
January 08 - CRAWL SPACE INSULATION AND SEALING
April 07 (Kidde brand): 4.8 family room, 37.5 crawlspace
Feb 07 (Accu-Star brand): 3.6 family room, 27 crawlspace

Cooling system: AC but no screen door?

This house has a huge stack effect, with hot air rising with a vengeance. Today, it's hot upstairs and cool downstairs. My question, when these houses were built new, why was a screen door not part of the standard design. I'm getting ready to sell the house and haven't gotten around to adding a screen door, but think this is an obvious easy Colorado cooling measure. Why, in a 1990's McStain house, is a screen door not seen as a necessity? The house has AC, but no screen door. Go figure!

3-month energy use of appliances

I'm trying to tidy up the house getting it ready to sell. So, it's probably time to remove the killawatt loggers I've had appliances plugged into.

Here are the results for 2420 hours (over 3 months):
Refrigerator 107 kWh, Dishwasher 16.8 kWh, Microwave 13.04 kWh, Washer 9.37 kWh

To see what the annual energy use of these is, multiply the values by 8760 (hours in a year) divided by 2420 hours:
ESTIMATED ANNUAL ENERGY USE
Refrigerator 387 kWh
Dishwasher 60 kWh
Microwave 47 kWh
Washer 30 kWh

Looking back at the posting from Jan 10 2007, from a short term measurement, it looked like the refrig might use about 431 kWh. This longer term measurement shows a bit less at 387 kWh. I'd expect it to pull more during the summer. Still either of these measurements are below the Kouba-Caballo Associates website that predicted 561 kWh per year. Still, surprisingly efficient.

I wish the kill-a-watt would measure 220 so I could have logged the electric dryer. But no.

The dishwasher is the new Bosch unit that is supposed to be water efficient. Energy efficient too. I don't have a sense for what to expect for this.

The usage from microwave and clothes washer are one-tenth that of the refrig.

Weatherstripping on front door

The front door's air sealing has gradually been getting worse. The sweep at the bottom comes off partially or completely, and I didn't notice before that you can actually see light through the vertical edge of the door (on the doorknob side). That's crazy.

When Unlimited Property Improvements came to do some painting and patching, they installed new weatherstripping and a new sweep. Something I thought I should do, but never did. So nice now!

Radon test...snail mail invalidates test

Geez are we still plagued by things delayed in the mail? I sent the radon tests by regular mail. Apparently it took a full week to get from the mail to the lab...thus invalidating the tests. Now, I have to start over.

Another radon test

Dang it. I never mailed in the previous test kit. You were supposed to mail it immediately. These are sitting on the floor of my car.

So, I got another radon test kit. This one included the testing fee in the initial price. Did the test (ended on Mar 12th) and mailed it in. Now awaiting results.

Retesting the radon levels

Now that the crawlspace has been sealed and insulated, it's time to see if the radon levels have improved. I went to Home Depot to pick up the radon test kits, found yet another brand (Pro-Lab) for $10 and bought two: one for the crawlspace and one for the ground level family room. But when I opened them, found that they charge $30 to do the analysis. Wow, the last two times I tested the kits included the analysis. But I didn't realize this until I'd already opened the packages, and I do want an accurate reading, so I'll go ahead and use these and see what I find. The interesting thing about these is that they recommend placing two detectors 6" apart, and they take the average of the two detectors. Hopefully, this will give me fairly accurate picture. I'm hoping for better results this time.

My tests from Feb and April 07, showed nearly 4 pCi/l in the family room and 27 to 37 in the crawlspace.

Insulating and sealing the crawlspace

On January 30, two trucks from Advanced Design pulled up and were ready to insulate and seal the crawlspace. They spent all day going under the house and back out to the garage and truck, really tough work. The goal was to solve both the cold floor problem downstairs as well as to get rid of the radon problem. They put a pipe down, the plastic over it, R-10 rigid insulation on the wall. The panels of rigid insulation were sealed to each other, at the top of each piece at the rim joist, and at bottom to the plastic.

On the back burner

I've been using my energy on projects other than the Darn Near Zero Energy Home, including many in Ghana. Hopefully, I'll still be able to do more on this project but I definitely spent my time and money in Africa. That's another story!