For the good of Peanut’s bare feet

Our house is really cold in the winter. I don’t think they thought much about energy conservation in 1948. Come to think of it, today’s new buildings sometimes don’t have energy conservation in mind either. We have virtually no insulation, but over the years we’ve been trying to seal up the cracks, putting foam around our leaky doors, windows, and pipes. How inefficient is our home, really? Curious, we found out this past winter (2011)after an energy audit. 

Al Cobb with SIP school and Randy Schwartz with Home Efficiency Solutions conducted the audit.

WVU professor Chris Haddox, who specializes in sustainable design, brought his students for the hands-on training opportunity (our house is just a 3-minute walk from his classroom).

 
Here’s a video and interview documenting our audit and our vision for a Deep Energy Retrofit:

Results from Al Cobb: “Team Zegre: The analysis … revealed that we have a tremendous opportunity. The blower door test showed a leakage rate of over 15 air changes per hour. That ranks the energy efficiency of the Zegre’s house with most tree houses built by eleven year olds.”  

Yikes! I know we're not alone...Al plans to install an ECOP monitoring system to monitor our energy use/consumption. If all goes well, everyone will be able to track our energy pouring from our our house in KWHs, BTUs, and $$$.

We are fortunate to link up with Al Cobb with SIP school in Shepherdstown, WV via Chris Baily Rising Sun Construction in Morgantown, WV; these fellas are the visionaries behind this project.

Currently, there are no examples of a Deep Green Retrofit using SIPs here in West Virginia, only on newly constructed buildings. Nico and I are super excited to learn more about Deep Green Retrofit through this process and look forward to spreading the word about the benefits. Collectively, we hope to use this project as a venue for training skilled workers such as Habitat builders on the virtues and techniques of deep energy retrofits using this method. 

We continue efforts towards promoting our project for the good of understanding and promoting deep energy retrofits...and for the good of Peanut’s bare feet! Our promotion of this project has led to many discussions with groups from the local to the Federal level. Let us know if you have ideas or resources!