Relative Something

It ended up taking two days, but the sealing and insulating job is complete. There are still a few finishing touches that will be required, but the house is as tight as we dare make it. As it is, we need to be careful with how many exhaust fans we run at once or we could get a back-draft through the flue of the water heater. That is the kind of situation that causes headaches and makes you sleepy. Permanent sleep, even.

The ultimate solution for this will be to replace the water heater with one that has fan-assisted, induced draft exhaust. In the mean time, we know to not have the stove top vent on at the same time as the clothes dryer, and all three of our bathroom fans, while the water heater is trying to do its thing. We also now have added incentive to bring our house up to code for carbon monoxide detectors. The single unit we have on the main floor is insufficient.

The job of maximizing the efficiency of a home is quite a process. I’m struggling a bit with the fact that I have lived in this house for over 20 years and am just now getting around to addressing these issues. What’s done, is done, and it doesn’t pay to beat myself up over it, but it is something that eats at me. It’s a good thing that I am interested in learning to live in the moment. This kind of thing provides incentive. I really don’t need to dwell on the fact that I didn’t do anything about this in the past.

What was vividly demonstrated by this process of fixing air leaks of our dwelling, is how the area that draws initial attention will be the largest leak. Obviously. It was difficult to clearly detect the smaller leaks when the majority of air is going through the biggest opening. In our case, it was between the second story and the attic, where an exhaust flue passed through the barrier. The opening was huge. It made no sense. Somehow, the blown fiberglass insulation that was put in originally, obscured the opening so that I never even knew a hole existed. The crew setting up to work in the attic were setting down tools and losing them as the disappeared through the insulation. When they moved the bunches of fiberglass away, it revealed an abyss.

Once that huge opening got sealed up, the smaller leaks became more apparent, and the guys would alter their focus to work away at each spot where the thermal camera identified a leak. When the attic leaks were all sealed, new cellulose insulation was blown in to create a proper thermal barrier. After applying foam sealant to the baseboards of the main floor, all that was left was leaking air into the spaces between the joists of the second story floor. Since they had done so much work to fix the top and bottom, it didn’t feel right to me to leave the middle of the house leaking.

Unfortunately, the access point for that fix required drilling 2″ holes in the ceiling, every 16″ for cellulose to be blown in to seal the end of each channel. Now my house is adequately air-tight, and well insulated, but I have sheet rock dust everywhere, and painting that will need to be done.

Did I say it’s a process? It is a never-ending process.