Attic Work

Started getting my house checked out by Energy Pro's who tell me I can get a $3000 rebate of weatherizing my house. They performed a blower door test creating a pressure differential of 50 pascals which required 6000 CFM of air to maintain. That's a pretty leaky house. We will be reducing this leakage by sealing openings around the ceiling at the chimney and canned lights.

 So at Q=6000 CFM @ 50 Pascals, this puts my ACH@50 (Air Changes per hour @ 50 pascals) equal to 15.1 for my 3100 sqft house (about 23,800 interior cubic feet).

 My ACHnatural (natural air changes per hour) = ACH@50/20 = 0.756 changes per hour. A tight house should be at 0.4-0.5

 My house ACH@50 = 15.1

Energy Star 2.0 requires ACH@50 < 5
Energy Star 2.5 requires ACH@50 < 4
PassivHaus requires ACH@50 < 0.6

So in order to obtain the "good" energy rating for my house tightness, I need to reduce leakage down to the following to meet said standards.

Energy Star 2.0 < 1983 CFM @ 50 Pascals
Energy Star 2.5 & 3.0 < 1586 CFM @ 50 Pascals
PassivHaus < 238 CFM @ 50 Pascals (not gonna happen)

Door Blow Test 1/16/2013

We also were plannint to put in R-60 insulation which is a blown fiberglass depth of 22 inches.

While they were in the attic they discovered potentially unsafe wire conditions with connections made outside of J-boxes.  Yesterday I hired an electrician to install J-boxes at all exposed connection points.  This was due to the removal of the utility room and transfer of the water heater to the outside back side patio.

New Water Heater J-box

J-boxes installed over new extra room in-place of old Utility room.

J-boxes installed over office area