It's often quoted that, "The cobbler's kid has no shoes", because we would expect them to have the very finest footwear and many probably don't. In the trades, electricians probably have a bad light switch or two, plumbers have a drippy faucet, and handymen have… Well, let me tell you about one of the deficiencies this handyman had pointed out to him yesterday.

Because I'm replacing the siding on my 110 year old home, it seemed like a logical time to look at some additional weatherization. I called in my favorite insulation installer, Westside Drywall and Insulation, and asked them to give me a quote on a "drill and fill" in the exterior walls, as well as doing something with the attic. To my surprise, they brought in their Building Analyst, Kim Diemer. And, was I ever glad they had!

Before the Westside estimator arrived, Kim set up a blower door, calibrated his CO and CO2 monitors, and checked his Flir IR camera (about a $50,000 model!). With all the windows and doors closed and the furnace off, Kim turned on the blower door to draw a vacuum inside our house. I was standing in the kitchen, watching him work in my office, and began to feel a draft on the back of my head. As we walked through the house making sure that all the doors and windows really were closed, we saw the drapes blowing in the living room and dining room. Beneath each of those windows is an air return grill and it was like a minor hurricane had been unleashed from each of them!

Taking that as our clue, we headed for the basement to take a look at the heating system. With no need for instruments or fancy cameras, Kim took one look at the duct work and simply said, "You need these sealed." Now, I knew they leaked; that was no surprise, so I asked why this was such an important issue, since I considered the basement to be "conditioned" space. I reasoned that heat and air could escape down there with no detrimental effect, because we work in the basement and want it to be comfortable. On top of that, any leakage would simply find its way up into the house through the floor; it's not as if we were heating a crawlspace.

Kim explained in terms that even this old handyman could understand that the system is designed to put heated and cooled air into specific places and losing so much of the air in the ducts was just darned inefficient! If we seal the ductwork, nearly all of the air will end up coming out of registers in the true living spaces of the house and then, if we feel the need to condition the basement, we can simply add a register down there. As he explained it, it's rather like having a hole in a hose close to the faucet. The water is under its highest pressure there and will really decrease the amount of water reaching the nozzle. In my case, the "hose" (ductwork) has "holes" (leaks) in it all the way from the faucet (air handler) out to the "nozzle" (registers).

The other thing he pointed out is that the basement is really not the cleanest part of the house, and he's right about that. Half of it is just concrete with bare framing and the other half, separated by some drywall, is a dirt crawlspace. Any time the house is in negative pressure, air from this "not so clean" space is being sucked into our home.

OK, so what's the lesson here? My original "instinct" was to simply get some insulation into the walls and the attic to help keep the house warmer. I'm sure we'll still do that, because it just makes sense. But, the first thing I'm going to do is seal the ductwork and see how much change we notice as a direct result of that one, simple fix. The lesson here for all of us is that the cost of a professional often pales by comparison with the cost saving (in dollars, health issues, and comfort) we can realize if we know what the real priority is on our projects. I might be just as well off to seal the ducts as to install insulation, in terms of real energy costs. But installing the insulation will cost five times what the duct sealing will, so my return on investment is much greater sealing the ducts (and it's a whole lot easier!)

To learn more, I'd suggest a visit to http://westsidedrywall.com.

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Filed under: Attics • Bob's Corner • Heating & Cooling • Home Inspections • Insulation • Walls • Weatherproofing

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