From Theory to Action: Meeting A Home Performance Contractor

In the pursuit of reshaping our old home for the 21st century, I have wrestled with the roles of student, planner, and now, reluctant general contractor.

As a student, my quest for knowledge led me to a Total Building Performance (TBP) Certificate from the Building Performance Institute (BPI), where I learned a crucial lesson: everything in the home must mesh, and energy upgrades that are part of an overall blueprint will be most effective.

As a planner, I have spent the past two months (and blog posts) developing a decarbonizing blueprint for our home.

Since then, I’ve been warming up to what’s next: Meeting with contractors, real people who do real work.

Enter Brian Larson

With credentials as a certified Building Analyst and owner of Air Seal Tech in Bloomington, Minnesota, Brian is not only well-versed in the nuances of air sealing and insulation but is also a pioneer, being the first in Minnesota to earn the BPI Gold Star Contractor certification.

I met Brian Larson in the living room of our home. I noticed that throughout the interview, Brian had a tendency to put health and comfort of the home first. Eventually, he explains why.

BL: I see things picking up some momentum in the last few years, especially as this IRA [rebates] brings it to the fore.

ME: I actually left the field. I thought it was going to be big under Obama. The biggest thing since, you know, sliced bread. And then it just went poof.

BL: Well, when energy is cheap, people don't worry about it, right? It goes up, then they freak out.

ME: I was telling my friend who I've known forever, who has a house in the Catskills in New York, and she's saying how she just got a quote for solar installation for $26,000. And I said, Melissa, that's great, but you really need to follow this in sequence. There are steps. And I spoke to her for I don't know how long. She ended the conversation by saying, I'm going to send you the proposal from the solar guy. And I was just like, did you hear a single word I just said?

BL: There are a lot of times people get those blinders on, or they get some vision in their head that they want, and it doesn't jive with reality.

For example, I went to a house, I don't know, it was probably a month ago. And I go in the attic and the attic is just moldly - covered. And so I came down and asked, “Does anybody have any asthma or allergies?” The owner goes, “Well, I've got asthma. I got it after we moved into the house three years ago.” And I'm like, well, there you go. But now, he doesn't want to spend the money. It went right over his head.

ME: So is that a good place to start, would it be for mold?

BL: So it could be, or it could be other triggers, insects, pollen, rodent droppings, you know, all this kind of stuff, which there's a lot of it in your attic. Your house was built when?

ME: 1918.

BL: So your house is 106 years old, right? And if you have ventilation that's working, it's continually pulling all that in. Mice go up in there. They're not house-trained. They don't go back outside to do their business.

Me: Right.

BL: You've got mold in there. I mean, mold is everywhere. We have mold spores on us right now. Given the right conditions, we would mold.

ME: Right, right, right.

BL: So when you turn on the air conditioning, stack effect causes negative pressure against your ceiling, and you start pulling all that stuff down.

ME: Ouch…Well, if you were teaching a course. And let's say it could be homeowners or it could be trade. What would you start with? The mold issue, or like some people call it, pre-weatherization. And then what other modules would you add…

BL: So I don't even like the word weatherization because what does that mean to most people? They have no clue what that is. I do a lot of weatherization work, but I think home performance is a much more accurate term.

ME: So, what would be your first module of a home performance course, if you had to design one?

BL: I would talk some building science, stack effect, if you don't know anything. And when I talk to people in their home, I tell them there's no such thing as cold. There's only different levels of heat. Heat travels to cold. Trying to even out - everything in the universe wants to achieve synchronicity, basically. Except men and women, they don't ever even out. Right? But moisture travels to dry, high pressure travels to low pressure. And these are the things that happen in your home that cause all the things that you're unhappy with.

ME: Cold spots?

BL: Cold spots, drafts. Hot spots. Health issues, all that kind of stuff. And to prove that heat travels to cold, what I do is I'll pull out the infrared camera, and I'll have somebody, I'll have them stand in front of a window like this, and I'll point it at the window and you'll see the heat signature on the window. Because that window is colder. The heat from our bodies is going, trying to fill in there. And I'll put the cursor on the window and the window might be 64 degrees. And then put it where the head is in the window. And it's reading 67.2. So I say that your body is warming that window up three degrees in that spot. And when they can see that then it really drives it home. And then they then then they understand it.

ME: Because it's normally invisible to them?

BL: Yes. And then what I'll do with stack effect is a lot of times I'll open a closet door and I'll do a little smoke jumper. And I say, here's how stack effect works, especially in the winter. This works great, especially in cold weather. In that closet, I demonstrate by giving a little puff of smoke and explain: down low, you've got negative pressure pulling air in, and up high, you have positive pressure pushing air out. This is a classic example of the stack effect, where warm air rises and creates higher pressure at the top of the house, drawing colder air into lower pressure areas at the bottom. And they see that smoke going up.

ME: So without the education they're not going to let you do the work.

BL: And that's why I try to educate them. Oh, and also after I meet with somebody, I've got a 60 page home performance guide. I email everybody the link to that, and it's got a stack of diagrams and pictures. Yeah, do it yourself tips. So then it's not me just trying to sell them something, right? If they have issues and they want to fix it themselves, here's how you do it.

ME: Interesting.

BL: But they need to have a little bit of that building science background. Just a few key things. And then it really helps them.

ME: Totally agree. I totally agree. I mean the people in our neighborhood that are doing retrofits, you know, like net zero, they might know as much as you do....

BL: I can usually tell how much someone knows. Because when I talk to them, if their eyes go like this, I know they have no understanding of it but if they're nodding along and I know they're understanding, then I ask them what they do. And then a lot of times it's, you know, IT people, engineers, medical professionals that type stuff. Or they have a scientific background. Where they know what a Pascal is and they know thermodynamic laws and…

ME: Yeah, yeah, heat transfer.

BL: Heat transfer, all that kind of stuff.

ME: But some…

BL: Some people are just like, “oh?” and you can see their brains turning to mush.

ME: That's me half the time.

BL: I try to slow it down.

ME: So let's discuss how this could be sold. From an energy and a CO2 standpoint, and there's people that are interested in that. Your point is that they may be interested, but they are not going to spend money as much as for comfort.

BL: Look, if I tell you, this is going to cost you X. And If you were to finance it, it would be 75 bucks a month, and you're going to save 50 bucks a month on your heating and cooling. Who is going to go for that? But if I tell you're going to have higher indoor humidity in the winter, you're going to have lower indoor humidity In the summer. You're going to have warmer floors. You're going to have fewer drafts. Your indoor air quality is going to improve. If you've got asthma or allergies, you're going to see a noticeable and demonstrable difference. And you're going to save some money as well.

ME: Right…So the Home Energy Score, the idea that they had and still do, is...

BL: On home sales. I think there's 14 places, right?

ME: Something like that.

BL: But you know, I've gone into a lot of homes where they've got a HERS rating.

ME: Yeah. Yeah.

BL: And the people don't know what it is!

ME: So the Home Energy Score is like a first grader’s edition of the HERS rating. But the actual modeling is still pretty good and it's improved. I just recently did it myself. So this house is a two out of ten.

BL: This house?

ME: Yes, this house. So you know, I want to be a seven, okay?

BL: Are you rich?

ME: Yeah right. But what? Could you see the sales opportunity? You know, you got this guy over here that's eco-conscious. He wants to be a seven. You know, he wants to cut his CO2 emissions by 80%. You can show it to him right here. Don't you think that would sell? You know, like I'm going to do a Home Energy Score. You're a two and these are the improvements. You're going to be a seven and you're going to cut your CO2.

BL: Who are you going to have do that modeling?

ME: That's the problem. That's the problem.

BL: So HERS raters are probably going to charge you $400.

ME: Or a thousand.

BL: Or more to do it.

ME: Right. And a Home Energy Score is supposed to be 150 bucks. But who could do the rating? Your salesperson?

BL: I looked at getting becoming a HERS rater, but… all the builders that are doing it are doing it in conjunction with somebody that's getting them rebates and all our stuff. So generally I'm, you know, if I were to come in here and just met you, I would be basically giving you a free, I'd hate to call it half-assed, but it would be a halfway good energy audit, because I'm gonna show you all your walls, your attic. I look with the infrared camera right through there. I can tell you how much insulation you have. I can show you every thin spot. Do a blower door test. Let me show you the leaks. And look at every window. You know you're going to see it. And it's just this 20 or 30 minute snapshot that shows you the basic the health of your house.

ME: Wow! Exciting! Let's do it!

BL: All right. Exciting? It's not that exciting…

To me it was, and I learned a lot.

After he left, Brian emailed me a link to a study he reference that links home weatherization to improvements in health for children with asthma.

Bravo Brian Larson!