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Use It Or Lose It, Part II: Guest Quarters!

In the Working with What You Have department, I have decided to build out some Guest Quarters in my spacious, unfinished, and—best of all— dry basement. There's a bathroom down there already, which is about 75% of the battle (digging drains is very pricey and/or labor intensive).

I had a wonderful trip to the ReBuilding Exchange a few weeks ago, where I bought a mess of building materials, and for a great price. Check it out, people:

-Framing lumber for a 230-square-foot- room
-1 darling yellow kitchen-style entry door with window
-1 24x36" vinyl window
-1 pair french doors
-1 2x5' piece of pegboard

I got all this for $101! Then I also bought lunch and gas for my two stalwart helpers. At this rate, I can hardly afford NOT to build it.

This will be another Brothers Bowman project. At the end of it, Brother #1 (in order of age) will move in.

Project estimated to take another 4–6 weeks, mostly weekend labor. Stay tuned for photos and updates.

Use It or Lose It, Part I: The Chicago ReBuilding Exchange

Readers! I hope this post finds you well and not too snowy. As we head into the chilly depths of winter I'd like to spend a little time on a topic that never fails to warm my heart. That's right, folks, I'm talking about the reuse of building materials.

Salvaged materials have so many charms! They are beautiful, well made, and full of texture. They reflect the local building heritage, which, if you live in Chicago, is superior. They are cheap. Their manufacture has not recently generated any industrial waste, they are no longer offgassing any noxious fumes (if indeed they ever did), and they are otherwise destined for a landfill that is doubtless reaching capacity. Like anything worthwhile, they are somewhat challenging to work with, but this challenge can lead to all sort of wonderful design solutions.

Finding salvaged materials is sort of like finding a leprechaun. You can comb the alleys and garage sales, you can skulk around on Craigslist, or—if you have money to burn—you can go to some fancy salvage shops. The trick is not only finding the leprechaun, but finding him just when you need him, unless you have room in your basement to put him up until you are ready to start your project. We all know how hard it is to hold on to a leprechaun).

If you spend any time at all thinking about this problem you will quickly realize that it's a lot like world hunger: it's all a matter of distribution. We all know that people are constantly throwing away perfectly good doors, bathtubs, and lumber, just as people are constantly throwing away uneaten bread, cheese, and pate de foie gras. But getting that bathtub into the arms of a hungry person is no mean feat; for all it costs to ship it to Africa you might as well just write a check to the Heifer Project and donate a whole barnyard full of geese.

When I met Elise Zelechowski, Deputy Executive Director at the Delta Institute—she was grappling with this very issue. The Delta Institute, devoted to sustainability in the Great Lakes region, was getting ready to open a materials reuse warehouse. Elise had all kinds of willing donors—everyone likes the idea of giving away things they no longer need—but nowhere to put the stuff. She was hunting for someplace big  and cheap and well-located so that she could hold onto enough materials and get enough customer traffic to make it a going concern, even as a nonprofit.

Why It Made Sense to Put a New Roof on the Garage

Having spent three years fixing up the inside of my house (in addition to the roof), this summer was to be the Summer of the Yard and, by extension, the Garage, and I guessed I might as well tackle the Fence while I was at it.

High on the agenda were a raised vegetable bed and expanded flower beds. But I was also moved to paint the garage by my friend Tony, who pointed out that all of this flaking paint was a sign of rotting wood. You better paint this, he said, or your garage is going to fall apart.

Then I received the gift of a lovely book called Private Places: Photographs of Chicago Gardens by photographer Brad Temkin. It includes photos of several garages with more personality than you'd expect (and by personality I mean color) and I realized that a freshly-colored garage can be quite a striking backdrop for a flower garden.

So I called in my brother Pete the Painter and said, we better do this now before I plant so you don't scrape paint all over my new flower beds. I was a little worried about the side of the garage where my compost pile is, as I knew that Chicago backyard soil tends to have a fairly high lead content; I was not eager to scrape many decades of paint into the compost that feeds my vegetable garden (¡Foreshadowing!). But he promised to use drop cloths, and so I sent him off to buy a couple gallons of Lewisville Green.

At the same time I began to cast a critical eye on the garage roof, which was flying off one stiff wind at a time. Ever budget-minded, I thought, this can surely wait. Yes, it looks like crap, but only when I look down from the second floor. And I'm sure my garage tenants can handle a little drip now and then. Wouldn't I rather put that money toward a furnace? Some landscaping help? A vacation?

However, Pete soon came to me and said, the wood is rotting because there is a hole in the roof. If you don't fix it, you will just have to paint this garage again next year.

A light went on: it turns out that the garage roof exists not only to keep the rain off the cars (of negligible value to one who believes that cars are overrated), but it helps to keep the entire building intact. A building is a system, and this one was failing. And my friends, there is nothing sustainable about painting more often than you have to or, God forbid, tearing down what was almost a perfectly good garage.

To me this served as a reminder of one of the blessedly simple principles of sustainability: if you take care of stuff, it will last longer, and you will save the energy, materials, and waste of replacing it. It may sound too simple to even mention, but in fact it is so simple that we often forget it. And if you're new to property management, you might not even think of it to begin with.

I am blessed enough to have not one but two handy brothers and both were available for hire. So Jim and Pete strapped on their tool belts and made me a new roof.

BEFORE (Summer 2008)

OFF WITH THE OLD (In case you are wondering: I did not manage to recycle the old roofing or do anything wonderful with it. I filled my trash cans with it for a few weeks and finally called a hauler to take it away to a landfill.)

INSIDE
If only I'd thought to call a barn dance.

STRETCH, HYDRATE

TARPAPER SHEATHING, THEN SHINGLES

HAMMER HAMMER HAMMER

FINITO

Insulation Story Part II: Execution

Armed with the list of insulation contractors, I called around and made appointments for estimates with two of them. They visited separately, but had a lot in common. They both knew Cheryl and had worked with her before; I gathered from both guys that their relationship with her involved a fair amount of friendly negotiation.

Both wanted to see the report from Informed Energy, which I showed them each in turn, and we reviewed the insulation recommendations in some detail. Both had the same immediate reaction: insulate the floor, not the roof. It will cost less money and be more effective. I explained that I was planning to renovate the attic, and thought I might as well insulate the whole thing now. They remained unconvinced: how soon are you planning to renovate? Well, I had to admit it was going to be five years anyway before I was likely to raise the kind of credit (let alone cash) necessary to do the renovation, which would be extensive.

Here's the thing: my tall, steep roof naturally has a much greater surface area than the floor; any half-awake high school geometry student can tell you that much. A quick eyeballing leads me to guess that the surface of the roof is three times that of the floor, in which case I could expect to spend three times as much on insulating materials. Furthermore, if I insulate the roof and not the floor, I may be preventing heat from leaving the house but I am still allowing it to escape from my apartment into the attic where, for the time being, no one will benefit except the mice.

It didn't take me long to decide that insulating the floor was the way to go, especially after one of the contractors told me that if I insisted on insulating the roof, he wouldn't take the job, since he knew it would not be effective enough and he couldn't stand behind it.

Without going into excruciating detail about the two estimates, I can say that both contractors A and B seemed quite competent and professional. They proposed similar plans: to blow insulation under the attic floorboards and even, if I were willing to give up my attic storage, ten inches deep on top of the floor for increased R-value.

However, Contractor A seemed much more engaged on the topic of air sealing, pointing out all of the gaps and explaining exactly how he intended to seal them. Contractor B was pretty casual on the subject. Also, Contractor A was a little more convincing when it came to adding up the R-values of the various layers of insulation. And finally, Contractor A said he would perform a blower-door test before and after the installation to measure the effectiveness of their work. That showed me that he really meant business. For these reasons I chose Contractor A, even though his estimate of $3100 was about twice that of Contractor B.

In the end, Tom, the salesman, convinced me to let him cover the entire floor with an extra ten inches of insulation to attain a resistance value of R49! Readers, that is a full 13 points higher than the most heavy-duty of the plans suggested by Informed Energy. It is par excellence in the home-energy world. And it would cost about half as much. The drawback was that I would no longer be able to walk around or store things in the attic, but the fact is I really do have plenty of room in the basement. And when it came time to renovate (which, given the current economic climate, seems less and less imminent), I could simply remove the extra fill or—Tom's favorite idea—raise the floor by ten inches and simply leave all of the insulation where it was. 

We made a date, and the guys came out a few weeks later. It was super fun. There was a crew of at least six, maybe eight men. They showed up at about 10:00 a.m. First step: blower-door test, which confirmed what Cheryl and Aaron had told me, which was that my house was, in layman's terms, VERY DRAFTY.

Then they set to work on the air sealing. Remember all those gaps around the plumbing chases?

 

And how about the duct openings:

While that was going on, others built a walkway out of foam board and still others pulled up the hoses from the truck.

 

Once the gaps were sealed, the foreman led me around the attic (and basement) to show me their work. They were very thorough.

 

Then came the fluff:

 

Before long, my 90° attic looked like a winter wonderland.

 

There was a pink walkway through the middle of the attic, allowing me to reach the furnace and the front window. Any exposed ductwork, as well as the furnace plenum, was insulated with spray foam. The furnace itself, as well as the exhaust pipe, had to remain clear because they would get too hot. Otherwise, it was all covered up.

 

And out of the covered ground rose my gleaming chimney and toilet stack, looking for all the world like a scene out of Mary Poppins, only in winter:

When all was done, the foreman ran the final blower-door test. In the time it takes to spell Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious we determined that my house was (again, in layman's terms) only two-thirds as drafty as before! You may recall from my energy audit that it was initially three times as drafty as it ideally should be; I had improved my home's heating efficiency by 30%. When winter came, my heating bills (assuming similar weather and gas prices) should be 30% less. And my house should become a whole lot more snug.

The crew was gone by 5:00 p.m. I waved from the porch. It was only September, but I was ready for winter.

Readers, you must be thinking, it's winter now! It's been very cold. HOW'S IT WORKING? It's mean of me, I know, but I'm going to keep you on the edge of your seat for just a bit longer.

Insulation Story Part I: Plan

Readers,
I thank you for your interest in the results of my home energy audit. I know that many of you wondered whether I have followed the suggestions made by the Energy Detectives and whether they were successful. After keeping you in suspense for two whole weeks I am finally here to answer: yes and yes.

Insulation is complicated, readers. So many kinds to choose from! There's fiberglass, cellulose, petroleum- or soy-based spray foam, denim fluff, and mushrooms. A comparison chart rating these options according to price, R-value, and varying shades of green will show you a complicated matrix of pros and cons that could give you a bit of a headache (nothing to do with the formaldehyde). Fiberglass is cheap and easy to install but itchy and not very good for the lungs of the installers, nor is it as effective as, say, cellulose or, better yet, spray foam. The very dense, closed-cell spray foam gives you a lot of bang, but for a considerable buck. Denim is kind of sexy, but what about the mice?

Before I get into the particulars of the plan for my house, let me offer a brief primer on insulation:

R-value: The basic measure of insulation's effectiveness, it indicates resistance to heat flow. A higher R-value means more resistance, i.e. better insulation. It should be noted that every building material has an R-value, but of course 1/4" plywood, with its R-value of .31, is significantly less resistant to heat than, say, [fiberglass batting, which could give you an R-value of 3 or 4 for every inch of thickness.]

Fiberglass (approximately R3 per inch): not the favorite of energy-saving types or the health-concerned. While it's cheap, it doesn't have as much R-value as, say, cellulose or spray-foam. As mentioned above, it is uncomfortable to work with and sends tiny glass particles into the lungs of installers (koff, koff). It was traditionally made with formaldehyde, although this seems to be on the wane.

Apart from the health risks, it seems that fiberglass batting is less effective than other types of insulation. For one thing, when placed inside a wall, it fails to prevent air from moving up or down through the fibers. In a balloon-frame house (like mine), the base of a wall is open, as is the top. If you are going to install fiberglass batting inside such a wall, it's important to seal the wall at the top and bottom so that drafts cannot flow up or down.

Another problem with fiberglass batting as opposed to blown-in cellulose or spray-foam is that it cannot fill a space completely; there will always be gaps in between bats, allowing air to flow where you don't want it to.

Cellulose (R3.5 per inch): Made from recycled paper, this fluffy material is blown in through a large tube that comes out of a big truck. If used to insulate walls, it must be drilled and blown into a closed wall so that it can be contained. It's blown in very densely so that it is tightly packed. If used to insulate a floor, it can be blown into an open space and remain as loose fill. More expensive than fiberglass, less expensive than spray-foam. Requires professional installation.

Spray-foam (R5.9 per inch): Most spray-foam is made of polyurethane, a petroleum product. It is expensive, but has a very high R-value. Non-petroleum alternatives exist, the most common of which is made of soy. Cheryl makes the point that while it's nice that soyfoam is not made of petroleum, it has a lower R-value than the urethane sprayfoam, so if you use the same amount, you will have to use more heat, which will probably come from a fossil fuel. So there's a tradeoff, and Cheryl made the point that no studies have been done comparing the total petroleum cost or carbon emissions of the two types of spray-foam use. She also made the point that urethane foam doesn't use that much petroleum and that, once dried, it is inert, offgassing nothing but nitrogen, which is harmless, and water.

Rigid-foam Board (R7 per inch): Polyisocyanurate board comes in large panels (pink, in my experience) that are maybe the size of a sheet of drywall. Its rigid shape makes it structurally useful and good for retrofitting; this is the stuff you see on the exterior walls of a house being built or resided.

I should note that during my first conversation with Cappy Kidd, president of Informed Energy, he rejected my use of the term "green insulation," making the point that no product is inherently green; it's all a matter of using the right resources in the safest and most efficient manner.

When devising my insulation plan, Cheryl Pomeroy and Aaron Lund, the energy auditors, took into account my plans to renovate the attic at some point. Currently an empty, unconditioned space, my attic housed nothing but a furnace, a lot of ductwork, and a beautiful two-year-old chimney (it's amazing what $4000 can buy).

The furnace would soon need replacing and it was my plan to put the new one off to the side or out in the enclosed back porch and run new ductwork under the floor, leaving the floor open and ready for renovation, whenever I could afford to get around to it. Given these plans, Cheryl and Aaron thought it would make the most sense for me to insulate the underside of the roof, even knowing that I would eventually be cutting it open to build dormers. Better, they reasoned, to condition the attic space, which I would have to do anyway once I remodeled, and keep the floors clear: any heavy-duty insulation of the floor would probably end up covering the floor, making it unwalkable. Also, it is always good to keep your furnace inside a conditioned space so that the heat it generates does not escape to the outside.

Having established that, Cheryl drew up four plans:

Option 1: Add rafter baffles for ventilation between soffit (eaves) and roof ridge (this is to prevent the gathering of any moisture, which could turn to ice in winter and damage your roof). Add 1" rigid foam board to underside of rafters. Aaron explained that it's important to cover the rafters because, being made of wood, they conduct heat, acting as a thermal bridge. In other words, they will let heat out or in, probably whenever you least want it. Drill and blow in cellulose. Est. R-value: R18

Option 2: Spray-foam entire rafter cavity (spray-foam is entirely airtight and allows no condensation; therefore, no baffles are necessary). Then hang 1" rigid-foam board across the rafters.  Est. R-value: R30

Option 3: Cut and friction-fit unfaced polyiso board between the rafters; carefully seal gaps and joints with spray foam so that the entire system is air tight. Then add another layer of foam board across the entire system, covering the joists. Est. R-value: R29 with 1" board; R36 with 2" board

Option 4: To be honest, I did not entirely understand Option 4, but it basically involved sistering out the joists (extending them) by attaching 2x2 boards to the existing 2x4s. This would then create more room between the joists, into which you could fit more insulation. I suppose one advantage of Option 4 is that it would allow you to increase the R-value of Option 1 by using a greater volume of cellulose, which is cheaper than spray foam. Option 4 seemed a little overly complicated, so I did not consider it for long. Est. R-value: R28

This entire project would not be cheap, especially if I went with spray foam, which is quite expensive. As with so many things, you tend to get what you pay for: the most energy-efficient solution would probably end up costing me the most money. Cheryl guessed off the top of her head that Option 2, which would give me the greatest R-value, could cost as much as $6000; Option 1 would probably cost about one-third as much.

Cheryl and Aaron left me with a list of insulation contractors that they had worked with before, complete with notes about the particular expertise as well as strengths and weakensses of each company. They both made the point very strongly that air sealing would be every bit as important as insulation, and that any contractor I hired should take this seriously.

Finally, they urged me to call with any questions once I started the job.

Next up: Insulation Story Part II: Execution.