when home visits pay off
ENVIRONMENTAL HOUSE DOCTORS
Pennsylvania company uses not-so-sexy sustainable techniques to provide customers with comfortable energy-saving living space.

David Biddle

From home fuel cells to solar electric cars to “smart” windows, many of the technologies envisioned by such alternative energy pioneers as Amory and Hunter Lovins or Hazel Henderson are finally becoming commercially available after years of incremental improvements. Spurred on in part by the dramatic changes taking place in the electric utility industry due to so-called “deregulation,” advanced technology offerings for buildings and homes is at an all-time high.

One example is a Simi Valley, California showcase home built as a joint venture project by Southern California Edison and Beazer Homes. It’s part of a new HUD program called Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing, whose objective is to “accelerate the use of new, market-ready technologies in home design and construction.” Project sponsors claim a 35 percent energy cost reduction to consumers through such technology improvements as high-performance windows, super insulation, attic venting, high-efficiency heat pumps, efficient lighting, state-of-the-art solar hot water heating, and advanced duct designs.

As innovative and sexy as these high-tech gadgets are, their effectiveness as sustainable solutions for the majority of consumers is still limited by unproven economics and applicability to a wide variety of situations. On the other hand, services offered by Princeton Energy Partners (PEP)— a 19-year-old energy conservation “house doctoring” firm based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania — are anything but unproven. In its two decades of operation, PEP has performed its miracle work on more than 15,000 homes and created comfortable, energy-saving living space for thousands of families. In many cases, PEP has been able to reduce heating and cooling energy by 35 percent or more, and at a fraction of the cost of many of the technology options garnering press coverage these days.

HOW THE COMPANY PERFORMS

Using a blower door to depressurize air flow, PEP technicians follow convective energy flows through a house by employing smoke tracers and a high-tech infrared scanner. The objective, according to co-owner David Smith, is to go beyond weather-stripping, caulking and insulation. “Our services usually take less than a day to implement and we can usually reduce heating and cooling costs by 25 to 35 percent. The economics speak for themselves. Paybacks to our customers usually take less than five years.” Besides the economic gains, house doctoring enhances thermal comfort in homes by eliminating major drafts and helping balance temperatures from the first floor on up. He says there is no way to put a dollar figure on increasing quality of life in the home, but “it is definitely true that many of our customers are more motivated by comfort problems than a desire to reduce energy costs.”

PEP got its start in 1981 as an off-shoot of research at Princeton University investigating the dynamics of building heat loss during the energy “crisis” of the 1970s. Although conventional wisdom tended to emphasize the need for attic and wall insulation and that heat is transmitted through cracks around doors and windows, Princeton researchers of the 1970s and their PEP descendants have found that as much as 70 percent of the heat loss in homes comes through hidden “thermal bypasses” in walls and floors that often connect attics to basements and the interiors of houses to the outside environment. Attaching a blower door to the entrance of a house, closing all other door and windows, and then throttling the blower door fan to achieve up to 50 pascals of pressure difference allows technicians to exaggerate air flows throughout a building, thereby exposing convective heat loss patterns. Use of infrared scanning equipment makes it possible to identify heat flowing behind walls and through plumbing, electrical, and architectural cavities. Smoke tracers also aid technicians in this process, enabling them to “see” air flows.

EVALUATION PROCEDURE

A standard house doctor evaluation usually takes an hour or two. This is the problem identification portion of PEP’s services. The real work starts once problems have been identified. Taking a systems approach to the house, technicians establish a full list of heat and energy conservation measures, which are then prioritized. Typically, major contributors to heat loss are convection currents set up within walls where air moves from the lower portions of the house — often the basement — and finally vented into the attic. PEP technicians spend the majority of their time capping and sealing the space between wall joists in the attic and basement of homes. They also find numerous hidden gaps and openings allowing air to be sucked into these thermal bypasses — both from the interior and exterior of houses.

The end result is often quite remarkable. Considering the typical four-bedroom home in most of the northern latitudes of the country costs around $1,400/year to heat and cool, a 25 percent savings translates into $350/year, meaning that a $1,200 retrofit job would have a simple payback of under four years. Smith notes that some retrofits are straightforward and can cost just several hundred dollars, meaning that the payback is virtually immediate, especially in cases where PEP’s services are included in mortgage fees or home improvement loans.

DEALING WITH NEW HOMES

New construction is where the payback on house doctoring is most cost-effective, usually in less than two years. PEP’s services are often offered through builders and general contractors, and are sometimes packaged with HVAC and insulation services. At its best, house doctoring for new construction involves three major phases: 1) After rough framing occurs, PEP seals up pipe and wire chases and other framing gaps; 2) After drywall has been hung, technicians return to focus on thermal bypass convective loops through walls into the attic and basement; 3) Once the house is completed, the final visit is made, in which the blower door, infrared scanner and other high-tech gadgets are used for quality control and sometimes to refine measures already implemented. In addition, over the years house doctors have learned that forced-air distribution systems can have a significant impact on air flows in a house, so PEP technicians often find themselves evaluating the tightness of duct systems as well as the design and capacity of blowers and fans.

The comprehensive nature of this work with new construction, notes Smith, has the potential to allow builders to move beyond conventional industry energy standards into the realm of EPA and DOE’s new Energy Star program, which certifies that houses are 30 percent more efficient than the Model Energy Code. Smith points out that Energy Star is nonprescriptive and thus allows builders and architects a great deal of flexibility in how they optimize energy efficiency. Because one of the main objects of Energy Star is to achieve a low rate of air exchange, Smith is confident that builders will be interested in PEP’s services. He emphasizes as well the value-added aspect to builders of helping guarantee that heating and cooling are balanced in homes and that comfort throughout a living space is not compromised.

This value-added approach has landed PEP exclusive regional contracts with some of the largest builders on the East Coast. And the thoroughness and predictable outcome of PEP’s services has allowed Smith to begin discussions with a major name brand home improvement company to provide energy conservation guarantees to customers.

BUSINESS EVOLUTION AND GROWTH

PEP’s original configuration was a set of seven small contracting franchises located throughout the United States, each employing between four to ten people with average annual revenues of up to $500,000. But beginning in the late ‘80s, relatively inexpensive utility and petroleum prices diminished the public’s concern about energy costs. PEP’s franchise operation contracted dramatically, eventually being reduced to the single company that Smith now helps run. Curiously enough, several of the key contractors operating franchises that folded still operate expert air sealing firms under different names in the Philadelphia area, making Philadelphia the de facto center for house doctoring nationwide.

Smith, who had been vice president of development from 1985 to 1987 and actually left the firm to start a radon mitigation and indoor air quality company, became a co-owner of PEP this summer and has worked hard to build it back into a viable entity. Changes in the utility industry along with a growing awareness by Americans again about the need to conserve petroleum-based energy have spurred Smith to consider expansion in the Mid-Atlantic and New England states. Currently, PEP is planning to grow from its present employee base of four up to a nine-person operation. This kind of growth would allow PEP to achieve annual revenues in excess of $1 million.

David Biddle (biddlecswr@email.msn.com) is Research Director for Philadelphia Self-Reliant and a contributing editor to In Business.