We keep getting more snow
We’ve had a lot of snow locally in the last few weeks. Another 8″+ today has made the commute difficult and added significantly more to the piles of snow next to our driveways.
Not quite roaring, but a fire nonetheless.
A roaring fire can exhaust as much as 24,000 cubic feet of air per hour to the outside, which must be replaced by cold air coming into the house from the outside.
My insulated, air tight coffee mug
If you’ve ever met me you’ve likely seen my coffee mug. If you’ve been to an A-HEET event you’ve likely seen me use that coffee mug as an example of insulation vs. weatherization.
The two are very different, but go hand in hand. Continue reading
UPDATE 12/28/2010: Nails used to install Q-Lon should be either galvanized or stainless steel to prevent rusting.
UPDATE 2/27.2011: I’ve updated step #11 – the Q-lon kit comes with three pieces: a top, a left and a right. The left and right are NOT interchangeable. Make certain you measure and cut the correct one.
Q-Lon is one of the few materials we use that you can’t get in most hardware stores. Typically stores will carry a few different types of door weatherstripping that run from mediocre to really bad. They’re flimsy, don’t seal out the air, can be difficult to install and you’ll be lucky if they don’t fall apart within three years.
By contrast, Q-Lon costs about the same amount but will do the job well and last many years.
Installation isn’t difficult, but I still see professionals install it wrong all the time. All it takes is a few simple tips and tricks, and about 45 minutes, to install properly so it does the job right, you can still close your door, and it lasts a very long time. Purchasing information is at the very bottom.
HOW TO INSTALL Q-LON PROPERLY
1. Measure the top of the door, side to side, then measure it again.
2. Cut the top piece of Q Lon (the smallest of the three pieces) to size. Remember that it is better to cut too large than too small because you can always cut it smaller but not make it longer. A hack saw or a back saw works well. NOTE: I always cut the rigid vinyl piece to size but try to leave a small amount (1/2” or less) of the foam gasket extending from either side. This buys you some margin of error when cutting the Q Lon.
3. Close the door and lock/latch it. (This is where installation usually fails: Most installers don’t latch the door, and the result is a poor/loose fit.) Push the Q Lon into place, compressing the foam gasket against the door 30-40%. (Remember that you want a tight seal but you do NOT want the door to be impossible to close.)
4. With the Q Lon in place use a pencil to scribe the back edge (the one without the foam) so you know exactly where the piece should sit. Note that the line is visible and a small distance back from the QLon.
5. Lay a bead of caulk on the flat side of the Q Lon (the part that will rest on the top jamb of the door) and put it into place.
6. IMPORTANT: When you scribed that pencil line you could see it, right? You want to make sure that when you put the Q Lon in place that you can still see it.
7. Open the door. This is another place installers frequently fail and the reason we scribed the line. Holding and nailing Q Lon into place with a closed door ½” away is a recipe for disaster, usually involving whacking the door with the hammer.
8. Holding the Q Lon in place you should nail it in (using galvanized or stainless steel 4D nails), starting about 2″ from one side and every 6″ to 8″, with another approximately 2″ from the opposite side. After each nail check placement along the scribed line – nailing in place tends to shift the QLon.
9. Close the door again to make sure it seals well. A good seal means that you can’t slip a piece of paper between the door and the gasket, but that the door can still close easily. Rejoice.
10. Measure a side of the door jamb (NOTE: Frequently the sides will differ in size.) I like to measure from the installed rigid piece, just inside the foam, to the floor. Measure it again.
11. Take one of the longer pieces of Q Lon and find the side with the correct “cope” NOTE: Each long piece is designed for a specific side, either right or left, of the door. They are NOT identical. Each has a cope (a curved piece has already been cut out.) That “cope” will, when installed, fit perfectly around the piece you’ve installed at the top of the door. When in doubt about which is for which side, hold it up to the top piece – it will quickly become evident.
12. Measure from the bottom of the cope (see picture at right), not the tip, to the threshold to
determine the length you need. Measure and mark the piece.
13. You can now use the scrap from the top to mark a perfect 90 degree line – using the machined edge of the scrap, lay it on the piece to be cut, flat side to flat side, at the mark you made (see right). This lines up perfectly to give you a perfect mark to cut on.
14. Cut. NOTE: I always cut the vinyl piece to size but try to leave a small amount (1/2″ or less) of the foam gasket extending from either side. This buys you some margin of error when cutting the Q Lon.
15. Slip it in place to make sure it is the correct size. Adjust if necessary. Once it is correct you should close the door, latch/lock, and scribe.
16. Pull it away from the door again and follow the same instructions as for the top piece: caulk and nail, keeping the scribe line visible. Be careful not to nail too close to the top coped portion as it is weaker and may crack. Allow at least 2″ below the cope for the first nail.
17. Again, close and latch/lock the door to make sure the fit is correct.
18. Measure the opposite side and follow instructions 10 thru 17.
IF THE DOOR DOES NOT CLOSE PROPERLY or for any other reason you need to remove the Q Lon to reinstall:
This is a difficult thing to do without snapping the Q Lon. It is vinyl and sturdy once in place but does not like to be pried out. Using at least two pry bars or at least two flat-head screwdrivers, start at one end and gently pry the Q Lon up, away from the door. Pry it out only a little bit and move along the length of the piece and do not, for example, try to pull the bottom end off of the door while leaving the middle/top attached. You need to pry a little bit at a time going up and down the length of the piece. If you don’t do this you will almost certainly snap the piece.
HOW TO PURCHASE Q-LON:
If you’d like to purchase some Q-Lon please contact:
Steve Lavelle: wholesale@efi.org and 800-876-0660 ext. 1 and tell him A-HEET sent you!
Bathroom fans are great. They rid the home of excess moisture and allow you to see your face when trying to shave afterward, as long as they’re set up properly.
The down side is that when first installed, a hole is cut in the ceiling somewhat larger than the unit itself. Sometimes it is significantly larger, sometimes just a bit. That gap between the unit and the drywall allows conditioned air to escape whether the fan is blowing or not. That means warm air in the winter and cold air in the summer is leaving even if you finished your shower hours ago.
This is one of the easiest fixes around the house and it takes about ten minutes, including set-up and break-down.
1. Turn off the fan and the light within the unit (if it has one.)
2. Remove the light cover and light bulb.
3. Pull down the fixture cover (plastic piece that sits on the drywall.) In most cases you’ll now see that the cover is held in place with two metal spring clamps. You can leave it as is for now or make your life easier by pinching the clamp to remove it from the metal housing. (Tip: See where the clips attach BEFORE removing them.)
4. Now the fun part – see that gap all around the metal housing? Use an appropriate tape such as an aluminum tape or FlexFix to cover that hole. (See note about tapes below.)
5. As long as you have a CFL in that fixture you can also cover all the many holes inside the housing with FlexFix or similar tape. IF YOU HAVE A HEAT LAMP OR USE INCANDESCENT BULBS do NOT use FlexFix which will melt – use aluminum tape instead. As a rule we now recommend using aluminum tape.
Here’s a short video shot and edited by Martin LaMonica, featuring Cambridge HEET’s Audrey Schulman, explaining what to do.
Similar to a dryer exhaust, bath fans should vent outside. Venting a bath fan into an open attic is a recipe for rot, mold and other issues.
One great, and inexpensive, addition is a simple timer switch. Before entering the shower set the timer switch for about ten or 15 minutes longer than you’ll be in the shower. Now you don’t have to remember to shut the fan off – it will do its job.
There are nifty humidity sensing bath fans but if you don’t want the hassle or expense of a new fan, this switch is fast and inexpensive (just make sure you hire a competent electrician to do it.)
One of my favorite resources for information is Green Building Advisor. If you’re interested only in making your own home as efficient as possible and want to learn only the basics, it probably isn’t for you.
If, however, you’re interested in learning more about insulation and air-sealing for any reason, GBA is the place to be.
Regardless which category you fit into, I consider this article a “must read” for anyone interested in making their home more comfortable.
Some quick snippets:
Stopping air leaks is just as important—maybe more important—than adding insulation. Unless builders prevent air from leaking through walls and ceilings, insulation alone won’t do much good. Not only are drafts uncomfortable, but air moving through insulated cavities can cut the efficiency of the insulation by as much as 50%.
and…
Doubling the thickness of insulation will double the insulation’s R-value, cutting heat loss in half. Each time the insulation layer is doubled in thickness, this rule applies. The energy saved per year by doubling insulation from R-10 to R-20, however, will be considerably more than the energy saved by doubling insulation from R-20 to R-40, because of the law of diminishing returns.
This is why A-HEET, during the initial walk-thru of a home, looks at both air-sealing and insulation opportunities. We don’t do insulation (due to materials, tools and training necessary this is best left to pros) but we know that if your home is leaky, all the insulation in the world isn’t going to fix the problem. The two go hand in hand. We try to help directly with one and indirectly (with guidance) with the other.
We’ll be doing a number of events in the coming months and the next one will be Sunday, December 5.
The event will include things most homes need as well as some less common air-sealing work. We’ll be caulking and sealing windows with v-strip, replacing door weatherstripping, fixing problem areas in the basement, wrapping pipes, installing smart strips and more.
We’ll also be installing a chimney balloon at the end of the event. Chimneys are frequently a giant hole allowing all your conditioned air up and out. We’re hoping to run a blower door test immediately before and after installing the balloon to test just how effective it is.
This will probably be the least dirty event we’ve had yet – a clean finished basement, no attic, etc.
RSVP by sending us an email at: arlheet@gmail.com
Some things never cease to amaze me when doing these audits. One is how few people know how important it is to clean their dryer vents.
Not only does allowing them to clog reduce the efficiency of your dryer but it is a fire hazard as well. Remember when you were in college and the laundry rooms would, on a semi-regular basis, catch fire because someone forgot to clean the lint vent – for a week?
Well, when was the last time you cleaned your exterior vent?
Obviously the screen in the dryer itself is your first line of defense and should be cleaned every time you add or remove a load of clothes, but a lot of lint gets past that screen and gets stuck on your vent. Once there it continues to build and trap ever more fibers until, in some cases, the whole thing gets blocked off. At a minimum, the “flapper” gets stuck in the open position, allowing cold air into your house 24/7/365.
I’ve also seen many times (but never remembered to take photos) people venting their dryer out the basement window (for which they had to bust a pane) but not beyond the window screen. As a result the lint all gets caught between the vent and the screen – no chance for the lint to escape even if it wanted to.
If your dryer is venting into the home – hire someone to fix this ASAP, and read the note below.
If your dryer is on the second (or higher) floor there likely isn’t an easy way to clear the vent. Most people have their dryer in the basement though, so here are a few simple steps to cleaning them.
1. Locate your dryer vent – you might be surprised how many people don’t know where it is outside the house.
2. Using just your fingers, push up the flapper or louvers (the two most common styles).
3. Using your fingers or a flat-head screwdriver, scrape off what lint you can.
4. For flappers, make sure to get all the way up to the top where even a small amount of lint keeps them from closing.
5. For louvers (three horizontal pieces layered atop each other) you can actually pry one or more of the pieces out – pull in the middle of the louver so the piece arcs. Clean each of the louvers off and you can actually stick your hand into the duct and pull more lint from the sides.
6. Go back inside and turn the dryer on to a no-heat mode. Sometimes this is “fluff-no heat” or “timer-no heat” or similar. Go back outside. With the louvers off or the flapper open, try to reach your arm in and pull any additional lint out from the sides. The air flowing through the ducts makes it easier to get all that gunk out, but watch out for your eyes – it comes flying at you.
7. Louvers should be reinstalled. You’ll see pegs at each side. Put one peg in, arc the piece (bending at the center again), and put the other peg in. Repeat for all three louvers and the order (top, middle, bottom) doesn’t matter.
I typically recommend homeowners clean their vents every month or two.
*****UPDATE***** I’d long suspected but never been certain that the IRC residential building code says not to vent a dryer indoors. Bob’s comment and another offline got me to do the research and indeed, indoor venting is against code. Thanks to the good folks at Green Building Advisor and their avid readers I got the answer I needed. (If you’re interested in these issues check them out – they’re one of the best resources I’m aware of.) Emphasis below is mine.
M1502.3 Duct termination. Exhaust ducts shall terminate on the outside of the building. Exhaust duct terminations shall be in accordance with the dryer manufacturer’s installation instructions. If the manufacturer’s instructions do not specify a termination location, the exhaust duct shall terminate not less than 3 feet (914 mm) in any direction from openings into buildings. Exhaust duct terminations shall be equipped with a backdraft damper. Screens shall not be installed at the duct termination.
NOTE to people venting dryers indoors: If you’ve got a gas dryer venting indoors you’re blowing lots of hot moist gasses, including carbon monoxide, into your house. If you’ve got an electric dryer venting indoors it isn’t anywhere near as dangerous as a gas dryer, but it is still a very bad idea.
Think about how much moisture is in your clothing when it goes into the dryer. Not sure how much? How heavy was your laundry before it went in the wash as compared to after? Yeah, it’s about that much water.
All that moisture is now going into your home where it can cause mold, mildew, rot and other safety issues. The fancy contraptions available online are designed to catch lint, not stop moisture from entering your home. Especially if you’re trying to make your home safer and more efficient (why else would you be reading this?) you do not want to add moisture to the house.
Still don’t believe me? Spend a few bucks on a decent hygrometer. Check the humidity before and after running the dryer. If you’re willing, drop a note in the comments with what you found.