Habitat For Humanity Deep Energy Retrofit, Part 1: Principles, Budget & Priorities

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Originally published on Energy Smart Ohio.
By Nate Adams

Here at Energy Smart, we really like a challenge. A deep energy retrofit on a Habitat for Humanity retrofit project? Aiming for the toughest leakage target in the world (Passive House)? Now we’re talking.

This is the first in a series of articles about this project. This one is about the principles we work from and setting priorities and budgets.

This Habitat affiliate, Habitat of Portage County, does about 50/50 new builds/rehabs. This is a rehab project.

A quick word on Habitat for Humanity, because I found out I had misconceptions. Their motto is ‘simple, decent, affordable housing.’ These houses are not free to the people that buy them. There is a focus on minimizing operation costs so utility costs don’t break budgets. Some material is donated and some labor is volunteer. The clients are expected to contribute in Habitat’s ‘sweat equity program’ which could include working on the house, volunteering at a ReStore, etc. This, combined with simple designs, can lead to homes with very affordable mortgages. Often total housing costs are less than the rent the clients are paying now even including utilities, taxes, and insurance. I’ve always loved the idea of Habitat, I’m tickled to be working on a project! Thanks to project manager Scott Craven and Executive Director Rachel Kerns for pulling me in.

Principles of Home Performance

In solving many issues in a home – such as comfort, mold, rot, pests, icicles, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and so forth – my basic priorities are almost always the same:

1. Reduce air leakage

2. Reduce air leakage

3. Reduce air leakage

4. Insulate appropriately

5. Install well designed and executed HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning)

Yes, air leakage is that important. If you have a leaky boat, it’s tough to get it to go fast, handle well, or get good fuel economy. There is always a bunch of water in it making things hard. The same goes for houses. When they’re tight, they have good control over heat, air, and moisture flows into and out of the house. Similar to a boat with no leaks you can now make it go fast (set any temperature you like), handle well (have very good IAQ), and get good fuel economy. Air leakage is at the root of a shocking number of problems.

Once air leakage and insulation are taken care of, giving us good control over air, heat, and moisture flowing in and out of the house, now we have to control air, heat, and moisture movement inside the house.

That’s where HVAC comes in. A well designed and installed HVAC system has these attributes:

• Correctly sized – not too big

• Provides good filtration for air quality

• Keeps moisture levels low 24/7/365 with dehumidification

• Brings fresh air in from outside in a clean and controlled manner

• Matches output to what’s needed. A little heat on cool days, a lot of heat on cold ones and vice versa.

If you do air sealing, insulation, and HVAC right, you get a house with really good balance, kind of like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

You Can’t Always Get What You Waaaaannnnt

Depending on budget, we can’t always get all of these simultaneously, but we try. Speaking of budgets, we ask clients to give us two things early on in every project:

1. Prioritized list of problems to solve and

2. A budget to work with.

A huge part of what we do involves planning. Clients often tell me ‘it will cost what it costs’. Not true. If you want to get a kitchen remodeled you can do it for $10,000 or you can do it for $60,000. The paths are very different. I doubt the $10K kitchen will have granite countertops or custom cabinets, nor a Viking cooktop. It probably uses different contractors, too. That’s ok, it’s what that client can afford. Once priorities are set, the budget largely determines the path. We may or may not solve all priorities within a budget.

Our projects work the same way. We have a lot of tricks up our sleeves, a budget really helps us hone in on one or two paths. Otherwise my ADHD tends to come out. (We could do this! Or THIS! Or that! Or THAT! Yippee! Hey look! A chicken!) I need some direction, and so do clients. A budget is required to set that direction. Thankfully Habitat is used to working with budgets!

If a client is willing to DIY (hello Habitat!), lots of possibilities open up because in many methods the material costs aren’t that high, it’s the labor that gets expensive. In the case of Habitat, they get some free or discounted materials from manufacturers, and they have a lot of volunteer labor.

OK, let’s talk about the priorities and budget for this project.

Priorities

1. The Clients – Provide a comfortable, healthy home that’s inexpensive to operate for the clients, a single mom and her 17 year old son.

2. Bleeding Edge – Push the boundaries for retrofits on air tightness and HVAC design. Remove the gas meter and go all electric. (Saving $300/year in meter fees.)

3. PR – Hopefully use the story of the project to attract more funding for more projects.

4. Leadership – Perhaps influence how Habitat views Home Performance and efficiency nationally.

Budget

This one breaks a bunch of my normal rules. First, normally the options are DIY with one or two homeowners or working with contractors. Here are a few of the twists:

• Habitat gets 48 sheets of 2” foam board for each project. It’s almost enough to cover the whole house.

• A free electric box and breakers.

• We have free siding to work with.

• Discounted windows.

• Materials can be acquired from the Habitat ReStore which gets used and excess building materials.

•  4 free LED recessed light retrofit kits and 8 LED bulbs.

• Lots of volunteer labor.

The second major twist is that the budget is particularly fluid. There is a cap for all items, but if we can secure free or discounted materials, we can continue to scoot the budget around. Some plumbing budget can move to HVAC. Insulation can move to electrical. While Scott and I discussed initial budgets, we may be able to do upgrades within the same budget as we secure discounts, free materials, or open up more projects for volunteer labor. Or the money can be put towards the next project. The fluidity adds a fascinating challenge, I look forward to looking for donations!

The Energy Audit & Inspection

This is where an energy audit comes in – what does the house look like? What is easily possible? What is hard? What do we have to fix? Those are part of what the audit on this house told us.

Tune In Next Time…

So what did we find? In the next article we’ll discuss what we found looking the house over. Then I’ll dig into the planning process where we made the initial decisions on which path we would actually take. (The fluidity will keep things interesting, I’m hoping to get a few upgrades for little to no additional cost.) And that will have us up to date, because I’m writing this practically in real time!

Thanks to Habitat of Portage’s Scott Craven, construction manager, and Rachel Kerns, executive director, for the challenge and being willing to move to the bleeding edge of Home Performance. And thanks to the Journal of Light Construction for agreeing to pick up this series.

Reprinted with permission.