Once the formalities were dispensed with, Paul got down to work. He started with an exterior visual survey of the house and taking some overall measurements. This survey gives the auditor an impression of the house and can often show signs of energy leakage issues, especially if there has been a recent snow fall. “Hot” areas of the roof of the building can be readily seen by snow melt.

With the exterior inspection complete Paul came in and familiarized himself with all the rooms of the house. He even climbed into the attic. Then we went down to the basement where my water heater and boiler reside. The first thing he did down there was to use a gas detector to look for leaks in my gas piping, and there turned out to be a few minor ones! Gas leaks are not at all uncommon. Discovery of gas leaks and carbon monoxide issues is one of the big benefits of getting a home energy audit. Paul marked the leaks he found with green tags so that when I call my plumber in I can take him straight to them.

Checking for gas leaks.

Identified Gas Leaks

Next he tested the hot water heater and the boiler. He used a smoke pencil to determine how well they were drafting (reasonably well, though the boiler flue was a little anemic). He also tested the efficiency of both by drilling a hole in the flue pipe and inserting an instrument that reads the amount of carbon monoxide in the flue gasses and calculates burning efficiency. And finally, after the equipment had been running for a while, he tested the ambient air for carbon monoxide. Paul found a very low level of 1-2 ppm (35 ppm is the threshold for safety). He suggested I might want to get the boiler tuned and serviced to see if that could be eliminated.

With the water heater and furnace testing complete, Paul went upstairs to the kitchen where he proceeded to test the carbon monoxide output of the gas range. Our oven is electric, not a combustion appliance, so he did not test it. All was well with the range.

Now that all the combustion testing was complete it was time for the blower door. A blower door is a device that is inserted into the opening of the front door. It is a big fan mounted at the bottom of a nylon fabric insert. When turned on, it sucks the air out of the house to depressurize it. You then walk around the house with a smoke pencil and/or feeling with your hands to see where there are drafts, which indicates an air leak. Surprisingly for the age of my house, the results showed that I did not have a lot of leakage. Most notably there is a second flue chimney in the house that has been abandoned. The chimney was removed to below the roof line, so it communicates with the attic. Air was being sucked straight down from the attic into the basement through an open hole in the chimney at that level. This will certainly help feed what is known as the stack effect. The stack effect refers to the tendency for warm air to rise. As it does, it lowers the pressure at the bottom which invites cold air into the building. If there are ways for air to enter at the bottom, and escape at the top, considerable motion of air from bottom to top can develop. This leads to a lot of heat loss in the winter. In my case, cold air would be drawn down from the attic space in the winter to replace warm air rising.

Blower Door Installed and Running

We also determined that a door to the outside in the basement needed weather stripping as did the door from the kitchen to the outdoors.

Next, we went around counting light bulbs and their wattages. I had thought that we replaced all our incandescents with compact fluorescents, but we found a few in fixtures where they were hidden from view. Replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents is an easy way to save some money on your electricity bill.

Finally, Paul measured the size of all the windows and doors so that he could input them into the software he uses to calculate heat loss and predict energy savings.

The whole process took about four and a half hours. As Paul departed he told me that he would have my report in approximately one week. Stay tuned, my next blog post will talk about what he found and recommended in that report.

Through this program, homeowners can borrow up to $25,000 if the financed portion of the project has a payback period of 15 years or less, and $13,000 if the payback period of the financed portion is more than 15 years. In the On Bill Financing program, monthly payments can not exceed 1/12th of the estimated annual savings on energy cost. Payments and interest on the loan do not begin before June 2012. NYSERDA also offers an unsecured loan product at higher interest rates for those who would rather not have the loan obligation attached to their mortgage. A comparison of the two loan programs can be viewed here.

To qualify for the program a homeowner must first sign up for a NYSERDA Green Jobs Green New York energy audit which can be free to low cost, depending on income level. My wife and I are in the 250% of AMI (Area Median Income) bracket and our cost for the audit will be $50. The audit is performed by a NYSERDA approved certified home performance contractor, which means at least one member of their crew has completed Building Performance Institute (BPI) training and certification. These audits not only identify opportunities to improve a home’s energy performance, they also identify safety issues, such as gas leaks and carbon monoxide issues.

The audit takes 4 to 5 hours to complete. Upon completing the audit the home performance contractor will generate a report (usually within 1 to 2 weeks) and present the home owner with a list of measures that can be implemented and paid for by incentives or financing programs from the state. The homeowner can elect to finance with a low interest unsecured loan from the state or with On Bill Financing. It is important to know which loan program you intend to pursue, as the analysis and reporting requirements for On Bill Financing loans are apparently more stringent than for the unsecured loan product. If in doubt, tell your auditor to prepare his report according to the higher standards of the On Bill Financing loan product.

This is an important opportunity for homeowners to reduce their energy bills. Funding for the program is limited so act sooner rather than later. My wife and I signed up for an energy audit which was conducted this past Thursday. Stay tuned, I will be writing another blog post about the experience and the results.

The community I presented to are recent immigrants from southeast Asia. They are generally here legally and are generally hard working people trying to raise their kids and have a decent life. They depend on these accessory dwelling units to help them afford their mortgage. Some attending yesterday admitted that they are under water. They can’t afford their mortgage, their house is worth less than they have paid for it, the building department is making seemingly unreasonable demands to correct a situation they did not know was illegal, their tenant has been forced out as a result.

New York City fire and building department officials have good reasons for being stringent about these units. It is not uncommon for people to die in fires in them. Unscrupulous landlords will sometimes divide them up into multiple single rooms for rent. The sanitation, light and ventilation conditions can be appalling and they are fire traps.

And yet, there are situations where a homeowner could make some legitimate changes to his or her house if only the hurdles were not so high. Owners must hire an architect or engineer, file at the building department, get a contractor in to do the work, all expensive to do. And recent changes in the building code mandate a fire sprinkler system in certain situations if changes are made to the C of O. For a family under water on their mortgage and struggling to survive these hurdles can prove impossible to overcome.

My role yesterday was to educate home owners in this community about what is and is not legal and what some of the hurdles are. As it turned out, it was also to listen to the stories they had to tell about their situation. One man told me about how he often has to choose between feeding his children and paying the mortgage. The children win of course, but his situation grows more precarious as a result. A woman talks about how she lost a good paying job and now works three different jobs in its place. She is also starting up a home business embroidering bed linens. She is determined to keep her home. She asks me if the building department will give her a violation if she has a bed in her cellar which she plans to use for display of her wares. I tell her if she can make the case that she is running a home business and needs it as a prop, probably not.

Chhaya Community Development Organization, sponsor of my presentation, is trying to help these homeowners renegotiate their mortgages with the banks. They all express frustration that the banks are unyielding even though, in many cases, adjusting their mortgages would be more profitable than foreclosing. There is apparently a slippery slope they don’t want to proceed down here. Of course, we let the banks out on that slippery slope when we deemed them too big to fail and collectively bailed them out. A fact these homeowners are aware of. For a while I am the face of the banks and they politely vent their frustration at me. There is discussion of joining the protest at Wall Street. They feel a need to add the faces of their community to the cause.

As I left the meeting to go home the man who chooses between food for his children and paying his mortgage follows me out. He needs to talk more about his situation. After listening to him and sympathizing with him for a while I finally have to tell him I need to go home. Tears begin to rise in his eyes and I see the desperation. I suggest that he consider renting the house to another family and moving his family to an apartment he can more easily afford. That way his mortgage gets paid, and hopefully he reduces his overhead. Its an idea he had not thought of. I tell him to talk to the people at Chhaya about it.