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 We’ve worked long and hard to get our expertise down on paper for home performance contractors across the country and across the world to be able to use, and now it’s here!
HOME PERFORMANCE DIAGNOSTICS is a compendium of all the tests needed to successfully pinpoint opportunities for improvement in a home, and to verify the improvements made, afterward. It features 180 pages of over 40 test methods, with 280 photos, over 30 tools, and 40 useful equations!
I hope you’ll check it out, and even if you don’t find it insanely useful for your own business, I hope you’ll refer it to your friends in the industry!
As many of you have already heard, BPI has overhauled their existing testing procedures and placed some new restrictions on how trainings can be conducted. In an industry where change is rapid and often not well received, these changes have caused a stir among some discussion groups online. This blog post is meant to give an update on how and why BPI plans to implement these changes.
The Basics:
Over the last few years, BPI has had a surge in the number of exams administered through their ‘Affiliate Organizations.’ Therefore, BPI is currently undergoing an accreditation process under the American National Standards Institute’s (ANSI) ISO 17024. This is essentially a national standardized process that will oversee the certification of personnel to ensure all certifications that are awarded are unbiased, fair, and adhere to strict terms to uphold the integrity of BPI’s name.
What Changes With Training and Testing?
‘Affiliate Organizations’ no longer exist. BPI now has ‘Test Centers’ in place of ‘Affiliate Organizations.’ Trainers can no longer proctor the students that they teach. However, trainers CAN still proctor – but there must be clear separation between the trainer and trainee when it comes to testing. Also, all written and field tests must be video + audio taped for quality assurance and dispute resolution.
How Does This Affect The Student?
Well, for starters, it is more expensive. BPI has raised their rates on both written and field exams starting February 1, 2012. On top of that, proctors and Test Centers now have annual fees to pay directly to BPI (see below), which will probably increase the cost as well. You will have to actively seek out a Test Center to take your exams, unless the training institution has the resources in house to administer trainings AND proctor exams. Scheduling on the fly might be more difficult now that BPI has required Test Centers to pre-pay for exam credits. Also, don’t forget to wear your sexy work attire for your tests since you will now be video taped!
How Does This Affect the Training Center / Testing Center?
Well, for starters, it is more expensive. BPI has imposed an annual fee for each proctor AND one for the Test Center to be operating. Each test center is required to own a video camera that meets minimum requirements for audio/video that will film every exam taken (Yes, this includes the entire 7-hour RBE-WHALCI exams too). As mentioned, field proctors may not have any part in the students training and Trainers may not have any part in the students field proctoring. For small businesses like ours, this is definitely a challenge! Also mentioned above, we are required to pre-pay for exam credits (in increments of 10+) before giving any exams.
In Conclusion:
Hurdles. Gotta learn to run faster and jump higher! That’s all. In reality, these are nothing more than just a few restrictions and alterations to what was already in place. BPI certifications will remain in the same format and the certifications will now have extra protection for the student in the following ways:
a) They will be treated with complete impartiality and fairness
b) The integrity of the exam will be upheld to ensure certifications are meaningful
c) The outside perspective of BPI’s certifications will be highly regarded.
So prepare folks – We have some adjusting to do as we move into the future. If you would like to take a look at out upcoming trainings, visit the Building Performance Workshop website.
Have you ever heard someone say, “My car got a flat tire the other day, so I replaced the engine.” Let’s all hope that you haven’t (or at least you don’t know the person who went down that road…) What about this one, “I want my house to be more energy efficient so I bought solar panels.” Now the latter does seem more reasonable, but the underlying message behind each scenario really isn’t that much different; engines don’t fix flat tires just as much as solar panels don’t help a home become more efficient. Just to be clear, I think renewable energy is fascinating and I fully support its implementation, however, such technologies should be reserved for appropriate applications. In a consumerist economy, it is easy to look for shiny new products that will make old problems “go away.” The truth is that an inefficient machine runs poorly, regardless of fuel source.
Now lets face it; there is no ‘WOW’ factor behind insulation and air-sealing. No one invites their friends over to take a walk though the attic, but that wind turbine in the front yard will stop cars off the street for a quick photo shoot. Basically, the point I m really trying to drive home is that there are many simple (and much cheaper!) steps to increasing the efficiency of a house before renewable energy is effective. Key word here is prioritizing.
Recently, Mother Earth News did a brief article about green remodeling strategies. Although important, the article did not focused on paints, particle boards, flooring, and other typical remodeling-type products, but rather a prioritized approach to increasing the efficiency of your home. Now it should be noted that every home is different, and there is no prescriptive method for fixing ALL homes, but the sequence of events outlined in the article is pretty well laid out.
Let’s take a quick look at what this figure is trying to tell us:
A: Sealing air leaks and adding insulation. Often the best opportunity for improvement in any home. It pays itself off, and it increases comfort. In short; stop unwanted heat loss.
B: Improving heating and cooling systems. This measure can drift a bit around on this list, however, it is important. Nevertheless, it should ALWAYS be considered after step A. It should be noted that ‘improving’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘replacing.’ I have found 50+ year old boilers that have been well maintained and operate just fine with minimal improvements.
C: Sealing ductwork. This is very important. Yes, I may be fairly young and naive when it comes to certain aspects of home performance, but I do not hesitate to say that I am baffled by the quality of the HVAC work that I have seen in the field. Ducts have a single job: transport conditioned air to specific locations. If ducts lose a large majority of that air (DOE estimates up to 30% in some cases!), then they are not doing there job.
D: Upgrading lighting, appliances, and water heating equipment. These items are grouped together, and in many parts of the US, so is the fuel source for them. Sometimes this group is the ‘low hanging fruit’ of reducing consumption, but in the big picture, they have a small percentage of overall consumption. These upgrades are easy and relatively cheap, and can pay themselves off over the life of the appliance.
E: Installing renewable energy systems. Now we’re ready! Well, there is still a lot that can be done prior to this step but you get the point. Basically, these systems will make a much larger impact if the home is ‘renewable ready.’
I think the above steps are great starting point for considering efficiency upgrades. Remember that a house is a system and that individual components alone can’t solve problems. As a last thought, take a peek at the pie chart below that breaks out typical consumption percentages in a home. Now look again at the steps outlined above. Did we tackle the biggest chunks first?
It’s almost 2012 – So I am going to act like it. I must give the disclaimer that I am still naive enough with technology that the simplest things impress me (I just got an Iphone and I can’t use in public for fear of losing control due to over stimulation). How does this relate to home performance? Well, I have recently discovering ways to use specific technologies to make my job easier (and way more awesome). I highly suggest that anyone in the home performance industry consider using these tools as an aid to make your life easier.
A few months back I took the HERS exam and performed training ratings with Frank Pipal over at Home Energy Raters of Illinois, and have since performed multiple probationary ratings here at Green Dream Group with Corbett as my mentor. These mentored ratings have been both field visits and ratings from plans. Both types of ratings have presented specific challenges that can be a headache if you let them beat you down. So what are some challenges and how can we work around them? Its almost 2012, remember? Here are two examples of how I have made technology work for me to make my job easier when it comes to HERS Ratings.
Field Ratings
Recently GDG was contracted to perform a HERS rating for an older Chicago home that was rehabbed a few years back. The takeoff was fairly straight forward until I reached the top floor: 4 separate side attics (only one of which had access), vaulted ceilings in various places, knee walls, dormers, various ceiling heights, among other strange dimensions and features. Two things that are crucial to an accurate HERS rating are volume and surface areas of conditioned spaces. So you can imagine how difficult this one probably was. A lingering aspect of my engineering education is that I like things to be extremely precise. I did do my best in the field to come up with a volume of the top floor, but I felt unsatisfied knowing that it was not as precise as I would have liked it to be. Insert Google Sketchup here. For those that are unfamiliar with Google Sketchup, it is a FREE surface modeling program provided by Google for designers to put ideas and concepts into a 3-D computer model. So back to the strange third floor that I was speaking of: I spent less than an hour using all of my field measurements to create a model of the awkward top floor. BINGO! I now had extremely accurate values for volume, surface areas of knee walls, attic spaces, vaulted ceilings, and exterior walls. Take a look at the screen shots to see how this looks from the NW and SE perspectives:
The gray areas are the four side attics. Since Google Sketchup is a surface modeler (as opposed to a solids modeler), I had to install a plugin to calculate volume. Surprisingly, the corrected volume was only about 10% more than what I estimated in the field! Long story short: I am going to use Sketchup much more often to when performing field ratings. It’s quick, accurate, fun, and provides good documentation to support a rating file.
Three letters…PDF. It is terribly annoying to do takeoff from PDF files. Other jobs that I have held in the past have spoiled me because we had a plotter in the other room; so going from PDF to a full-sized scaled drawing set involved refilling my coffee and cleaning my email inbox until it was done printing. Without a plotter, its difficult to find a method to get scaled measurements from plans in PDF form. Zooming in sucks, flipping pages sucks, panning around sucks, and as a last resort, rescaling the document and printing it on 8.5×11 paper and then having to convert each measurement to some other scale sucks even worse! Solution? Digital takeoff software. There are multiple companies that provide such software (see list below) but the one I have been using as of recently is PlanSwift. These programs work like this: Import PDF of plans, set the scale, and begin takeoff. These programs are so awesome that I can only begin to explain the basic functionality of them. Generally, these programs are used for cost estimating, but they are useful for takeoff relating to HERS also. Areas, distances, volumes, counts, costs – you name it. Each takeoff performed is automatically input as a new layer with a different color, each step is autosaved, and then it’s takeoff quantities are neatly organized in a nice summary report that can be exported with company logo’s. Additionally, you can export the images from plans with your choice of layers to visually represent exactly what and where your takeoff numbers represent. See screen shots below for an idea of how these programs look:
Here is a brief list of digital takeoff programs out there:
On Screen Takeoff
Planswift
Blue Beam
Quick Measure
Each of these should have a free trial version so spend some time using each program to see which one is best for you. Thanks for reading and have fun!
Electricity. Sometimes it is easier to pretend it is an unexplainable magical force than it is to try and understand it. However, the reality is, well… that it is real and explainable!  Corbett and I recently did a personalized training session with our friend over at Energy Reduction Inc., Bruce Cross, about diagnostic testing and safety concerns with electricity. Bruce walked us through everything from electrical basics to diagnostic tools to the most common safety issues found in homes.
As home performance professionals, Green Dream Group gets calls periodically from homeowners who are drowning in electrical bills. Generally, the reasons for this become apparent when doing a simple inventory of electrical appliances. Plug loads, inefficient equipment, and negligence are often the culprit of wasted electricity. Just take a look at this list from the DOE that shows typical electrical capacities of common household appliances. As I heard recently from an electrical engineer at an energy efficiency meeting, “behavior is everything” when it comes to reducing electrical usage. Although changing habits or reducing day-to-day convenience (when it comes to appliances) is the most effective way to stop energy waste, homeowners generally don’t like to hear that.
Going back to our training session with Bruce, it became clear that high electrical usage in a home rarely stems from a “problem” in the configuration of the home. Therefore, diagnostic testing for electricity is more of a verification of what is already known. There are ways to locate electrical problems such as electrical arcing or reverse polarized outlets, which are both significant safety hazards. In fact, according to the U.S. Fire Administration, about 47% of house fires are caused by electrical arcing. Bruce informed us of these handy little tools that you plug into an outlet to detect whether or not the breaker is equipped with and Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter (AFCI). Additionally, there are other tools that will tell you if the outlet is reversed polarized and is equipped with a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI). Again, these tools won’t help pinpoint electrical waste, but are for safety testing. Bruce also discussed safety precautions that should be taken if you plan on opening up a circuit breaker box. Basically, electricity can move through you if it can’t find a way in AND a way out. Therefore, simple steps can be taken to prevent this: leather gloves and rubber soled shoes. Using a Multimeter, amperage and voltage can be measured at the breaker box on non inductive loads to give an estimate of how much electricity certain appliances draw. It was even mentioned that a Kill A Watt is very effective at doing this.
In short, our training with Bruce helped correct some misconceptions we had in regards to electrical testing. It also validated various techniques that we were already using to pinpoint electrical waste. We learned invaluable information regarding safety in the field and also for the homeowner. Next time you are looking for knowledge in a specific field, I would highly suggest calling an expert and booking a personalized training at an hourly rate; you get the exact information that you are looking for!
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