Dane County Energy Update

We’ve been getting a lot of questions recently about contractors that are hyping huge energy savings by installing relatively inexpensive radiant attic barriers. There are even local contractors who offer a “free” energy audit and then try to sell this product to unwitting homeowners. As you can see from the links below, radiant barriers in attics simply don’t make sense in our climate. They can make sense in climates where there is more of a need to cool than to heat. Obviously, here in Wisconsin we worry mostly about heating.

As a little bit of a primer, a radiant attic barrier is a reflective blanket (usually made of foil) that is either installed on top of your existing attic insulation of affixed to the roof deck. It gives your attic a nice shiny look and unfortunately not much else. They might save a little money if you have a very poorly insulated attic — but if you have a very poorly insulated attic you should add insulation!

An attic radiant barrier installed on the roof deck

The links below provide some added clarity: (continue reading…)

Can lights (also known as recessed lights) have become a popular lighting feature in America’s homes over the last 50 years. Though these fixtures are simple and easy, they can also be one of the most inefficient features of your home. In this post, we’ll identify the different types of can lights and how you can make sure your home’s can lights aren’t leaking a ton of energy.

The pictures below show just how bad old leaky recessed lighting can be. The photo on the left is the normal photo and the photo on the right is of the same location but in infrared. As you can see, these can lights were about 15 degrees cooler than the rest of the ceiling. As a matter of fact, this home had a dozen recessed lights in the living room which equated to two full size windows being open. Except there’s more heat loss at the ceiling because heated air rises so it’s even worse!

Leaky and poorly insulated can lights making a room cold

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Driving around the Madison area in the winter is an interesting exercise for someone who focuses on home energy efficiency and comfort. After a heavy snowfall a bare spot on someone’s roof is a red flag that the home is experiencing an energy issue. It pains me to no end to see people installing heating coils, using roof rakes, adding ventilation, etc. when none of those things actually gets at the underlying issue.

A customer of Piping Plover’s had their house on the market for a year and hadn’t been getting many bites. They had been experiencing persistent ice damming and had several thousand dollars worth of damage from it. That, along with a few other unique features, was preventing the home from attracting any serious buyers. So they hired us to try to prevent future ice damming.

Though ice damming can happen on even the best of homes under the perfect conditions, we can do a very good job of addressing the problem at its source — heat escaping into the attic. I won’t delve too deep into where that heat is coming from or why ice damming occurs most of the time — I’ve done that in a previous post. We originally tested this home in February and it was approximately 75 degrees in the attic. In this home, there were three major factors:

1) Improperly vented boiler flue — this home had an older, low efficiency boiler that naturally drafted through a flue. The flue ran straight up the chimney chase until it got to the attic and then ran horizontally for about 15 feet until it drafted out of the other chimney. This flue was hot to the touch and was dropping a ton of heat into the attic.

Boiler Flue - Before and After

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In previous posts we’ve discussed the percentage of homes that have crawl spaces and how best to treat them. In this post, we’ll get into finished attics. As an energy efficiency consultant, I hate to see finished attics because they are almost always improperly insulated. Often times, people view basements and attics as (relatively) inexpensive ways to expand a home’s living area without actually building an addition. We’ll get into basements in a future post but unfinished attics are built into homes for a reason — to help control temperature by creating a large area of unmoving air between the conditioned area of the home and the outside. The space in an attic provides enough space for insulation so that our homes can remain comfortable and our energy bills low.

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