Archive of posts tagged foam
Remodeling with Passive House Approach
Kevin Stamm, general contractor based in San Francisco, wanted to apply many of the Passive House techniques to achieve high degree of energy efficiency when he started to renovate his home. While the project is still work in progress, he offered to pass his learnings along. He hosted a tour of his project on March […]
Safer Sofa Foam Exchange Announced for Bay Area
You may have heard about the problem with flame retardants in polyurethane furniture foams. If you haven’t, I highly recommend reading the Chicago Tribune’s exposé on the flame retardant industry: Playing With Fire. The California flammability standard, known as TB117, in effect required manufacturers to use toxic flame retardant chemicals in polyurethane furniture foams. For […]
More Basement Sealing
The blower door test revealed that there was still room for improvement (see On-going Saga of Air Sealing). One of the areas of air leakage was from the basement. Tom and his crew checked and ensured that the polyurethane liners are well taped to the stem walls. They also added foam sealing over the tape […]
Energy Improvement Opportunities
This is a 100+ year old house. Obviously there are many energy efficiency shortcomings (hence many improvement opportunities). The house has been vacant for over 2 years so we don’t have the latest operational information. Exterior Walls. Before taking the walls apart, we already expect little to no insulations for houses of this age. The […]
Want A Warm Floor?
A friend of mine recently had some renovation done for her one-story house, including replacing the flooring. The energy-conscious contractor sealed the perimeter of the concrete slab to cut off any air from infiltrating. Next he placed a layer of water barrier over the concrete to stop moisture from rising. He then placed a layer […]
Selecting High Performance Windows
There are over 100 million homes and approximately 20 billion square feet of clear glass residential windows in the U.S. Most of these homes are more than 30 years old, and as a result, the market is growing for replacement windows with energy efficient insulating glass units (IGUs). High performance options are now readily available […]
Easy Steps to Reduce Energy Use before Renewables
Distributed renewable generation systems such as solar electric and solar hot water systems are great ways to get clean energy. The price of these systems, in particular solar electric systems, has come down in prices so much in recent years that homeowners may want to consider installing them. While the energy generated is clean, the […]
Weingarten House at San Benancio – Energy Conservation without Sacrifice
“Freezing in the dark”, is how Ronald Reagan characterized energy conservation. I’ve been thinking about energy matters for about thirty years now and don’t think conservation must mean sacrifice. One goal with this house was to demonstrate that it’s possible to meet the current challenge of sustainability and do better than we have done in […]