How much air is your house leaking? Are you unknowingly slurping in dirty air from your garage and attic? Perhaps a blower door test can help you find out. Tom White is the Publisher of Home Energy (aka "my boss"). He's gotten to know a lot about home performance in this job over the last few years. He knows about blower doors and pressure envelopes, duct blasters and thermal envelopes; and has been initiated into the knowledge that you never use duct tape on ducts. But there was one more initiation to go. So he went to the Web to find someone to do an energy audit on his house.

"I went to the ServiceMagic Web site that I learned about editing a Home Energy article," says Tom. "Within less than a minute after I entered some basic information about my house and what I was looking for in the way of an energy audit, the phone rang." It was Sustainable Spaces, a home performance contractor located in San Francisco. Tom made an appointment for his audit for the next week. "They were offering a 'Stimulus Special' for $395."

The house Tom shares with his partner Dmitri was built in 1907. "The home has never been remodeled," says Tom. "We recently had the furnace replaced with a hot water radiant system. We have been careful to keep to the original features of the home, so we got our radiators from buildings built around the same time that used to be part of the heating systems in buildings at Fort Baker." They also installed a renewable energy source. "We installed photovoltaic (PV) panels on our roof, but we should have had the audit first to show us how to use less energy and save on the PV.  Our annual true-up statement says we owe $75 for electricity, but I want to get that down to $0!"

Rob Mitchell, an experienced contractor who knows a lot about Bay Area houses, came with two younger men for an audit of Tom and Dmitri's 102-year-old home. The crew closed all the exterior doors and windows, installed a "blower door" in the main doorframe, and depressurized the house. Immediately, dust and insulation particles began to pour through the "pocket doors" from the attic. After taking some measurements to get a general sense of how leaky the house is, and blocking some of the major air leaks, the crew from Sustainable Spaces then pressurized the house. "We walked around the house with a liquid pencil, which showed there is airflow around switch plates, gaps in the baseboard where the home is connected to the outside, and the cabinet in our kitchen where there used to be 'torpedo tubes,' which used to hold hot water heated by the wood stove, and other places" says Tom.

So the old house has some problems with air leakage, which means heating energy being lost to the outside. The crew also found out that the humidity in the kitchen was 20% higher than that on the outside of the house. "We both took showers that morning, and I had a cup of hot tea," says Tom. That was enough to keep the humidity high a few hours later.

Since the home has no mechanical ventilation, moisture build up could lead to mold growth on surfaces in the living spaces, or-even worse because it is hidden-within the walls. Mold can degrade building materials and create poor indoor air quality. Tom has allergies and a moldy house could make it difficult for him to breathe. Since Tom is living in the mild climate of the Bay Area, where we can open windows and get fresh air other ways in our leaky houses, the moisture may not hang around long enough to be a problem. If he lived in a cold climate such as Minnesota's, or a hot-humid climate such as Atlanta's, fixing the air leaks in his house without adding mechanical ventilation could create a "sick house", meaning one with poor indoor air quality due to mold.

"We won't get the report until next week," says Tom. The report will include specific numbers for air leakage from the house to the outside-or in this case between the living spaces and the attic and basement. Too much air flow means lost energy and too little means a sick house. The report will also give a range of measures that will make Tom and Dmitri's house healthier and more energy efficient. "We'll decide what measures we want done when we get the report. We made our heating system more efficient with the radiant system that heats the living spaces and provides us with hot water. We use half the gas now to heat water than we did before. So spending a lot more on fixing the building envelope doesn't make so much sense to us right now. We'll probably fix the big leaks by air sealing around the attic. And we may insulate under the floor between the living spaces and the basement."

"I wanted to have our house audited mostly because I'm curious," says Tom. "And we want to save energy." But from now on when Tom talks about home performance, and the importance of healthy and efficient homes, it will take on a whole new dimension-the homeowner's perspective.

This is a LEED-certified building on Columbus Circle
in New York City. Anything wrong with this picture?The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program has been around for many years, and has became a well-known "brand" among builders, developers and much of the general public nationwide. The program was developed and is administered by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). There are LEED certifications (certified, silver, gold, and platinum) for commercial and residential buildings, building retrofits, and the USGBC is developing a LEED certification for neighborhoods. The focus of LEED is to mark buildings (and now neighborhoods) that are sustainable, healthy, and energy efficient. The program has become so popular and well known that many cities now require that new municipal buildings be built to LEED standards.

But there is some question as to whether LEED buildings actually save energy. Henry Gifford, an engineer and mechanical system designer in New York City, "…the best data available shows that on average, they (LEED-certified buildings) use more energy than comparable buildings." His view is controversial, but I have seen the data he used and have studied his analysis and it seems reasonable to me, though I am not a statistician and have done a limited amount of number crunching in my short career as an engineer before becoming a writer.

I have heard the arguments from the other side and haven't been convinced. Even from a common sense perspective, it seams unrealistic that LEED buildings are built to save energy. I've seen too many LEED certified buildings with a large percentage of windows as exterior walls–that is like trying to build an energy efficient building without walls. Also, LEED certification does not require performance testing of buildings. A building can achieve points for energy efficiency from modeling alone. In my role as editor of Home Energy Magazine, I have wanted to publish in-depth articles about LEED-certified homes, but I have been unable to find a LEED-certified building owner or designer who is willing to publish a full year of performance data, post-occupancy.

The LEED program has made green building a common term and a sought after designation among architects, builders, and developers across the nation. LEED buildings may use more environmentally friendly materials and be healthier for their occupants. But it is not yet clear to me that they save energy compared to business as usual. If we want to achieve energy independence, combat the worst effects of global warming, and grow a green economy, we can't afford to build–and celebrate–buildings built as usual.

By reporter Marjorie Sun.

I got interested in this story after hearing Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla speak at a conference this fall in Sausalito. He explained how he decides where to invest in green tech and it was fascinating. He and other top venture capitalists think they can help stop global warming and make a ton of money at the same time. You can listen to Khosla's talk on a webcast and listen to all sorts of entrepreneurs and v.c.'s talk about the latest renewable energy projects.

Khosla says to achieve a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions fast, we have to think about solutions that make big cuts in emissions and will be widely adopted. Buying a Prius is fine, he says, but it's really just "fashion." We need solutions that people in India and China will buy, Khosla says. To him, the key issues that guide his investments are cost, scale, and adoption. If a renewable solution isn't cheaper than coal, forget it, he says. Geothermal "is nice, but it doesn't scale."

Same with wind. It's "a great technology, but it's a toy." As for hydrogen fuel, the adoption risk is too high. Again, forget it, he says. The focus should be a war on coal, oil, and the manufacturing of cement and steel, which are huge emitters of carbon dioxide. (He's a major investor in Calera, an alternative cement maker in Silicon Valley.)

One more area for potentially huge gains is to improve energy efficiency, such as lighting. Another legendary venture capital company, Kleiner Perkins, is also racing to develop renewable energy solutions and make a fortune. (Khosla is a former partner there.) Kleiner's efforts were profiled in a cover story in The New York Times Sunday Magazine recently

With the Obama administration, it will be interesting to see what new federal policies– tax, economic and regulatory– will be adopted to accelerate solutions and spur more investment during a double whammy of crises: the economic meltdown and climate change.

Listen to the Building Blocks Go Green radio report online.

Watts in your kitchen?
Do you remember the last time you felt that the Federal Government was on your side? I know; it's been a while. One function of government, to protect consumers from fraudulent claims by manufacturers, may be making a comeback.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which develops product testing for the Energy Star program, recently reached an agreement with LG, one of the world's largest manufacturer's of appliances and consumer electronics, over some LG refrigerators that failed to live up to the Energy Star label.

DOE allows manufacturers to test their own products. Some LG refrigerators were tested with their icemakers turned off and earned the Energy Star label, meaning that they are among the most energy efficient refrigerators on the market. But consumers don't generally turn their icemakers off. The LG refrigerators in question, with French doors and through-the-wall ice and water dispensers, can use up to twice as much energy than is reported on the refrigerator labels.

If you own one of the notorious refrigerators–go to the LG special web site to find out–then LG will send someone out to make some modifications, and hand you a check to cover all the hidden energy charges for the life of the refrigerator. Home Energy's Senior Executive Editor Alan Meier estimates that LG will be spending around $150 million on home visits and energy rebates.

Is LG the only manufacturer to circumvent performance standards? Probably not, so we are watching the news for more DOE settlements.

Do you know how to spot hidden energy guzzlers in your house? If you get your gas and/or electricity from PG&E, you can compare your home energy use over time and spot those peaks and valleys that indicate something is wrong, or something is right. If your electric bills shoot up soon after buying a new refrigerator, TV, or other appliance, and it isn't due to a change in the weather, you can easily spot the culprit.

If you have an online account, login, click on the "Billing" link, and then click on "Usage History". What's really cool, at least for energy geeks like me, is that you can pull up graphs showing two years of electricity use, gas use, and electricity and gas charges. And you can pull up a graph that superimposes your gas and electricity use with a graph of "heating degree-days" and "cooling degree-days". The degree-days give you a snapshot of the load on your heating and air conditioning systems–more on that later.

Multi-trunk Magnolia sucks carbon.
Photo: Jim GunshinanWe planted several young trees at our home in October, including a Mission Fig, a Japanese Crabapple, a multi-trunk Magnolia, and a Copper Beech. Planting in the fall gives the trees a chance to put down some roots before the winter so that, in the spring, they don't bloom spectacularly and then die from lack of a good grounding in the soil. We took out most of our lawn so that this spring we will use much less water. There is another fall activity that I keep putting off–changing our furnace filter. I think I am averse to climbing around in the attic where our air-handler resides, due to a fear of falling through the ceiling.

I feel good that those new trees are sucking carbon out of the air as we speak. But a recent talk at Berkeley Labs, where Home Energy's offices are located, made me think much bigger. Vinod Khosla is the founder of Khosla Ventures and earned his chops as the founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems. Khosla Ventures exists to “assist great entrepreneurs determined to build companies with lasting significance."

Khosla, a tall, thin, 60-ish, short-grey-haired man who looks like he runs marathons, threw out some questions on a big screen to get us all interested. “What if more coal plants meant cleaner air? What if more driving meant less carbon? What if a million year crude oil production cycle were reduced to hours? What if engines were twice as efficient, cutting world oil consumption in half?" There are companies supported by Khosla Ventures that are making progress on those “what-ifs." For example, a company called Pax Streamline is working on turbine designs inspired by natural forms that will significantly increase the efficiency of wind turbines, power plants, and HVAC systems.

Living Homes is creating cheap, prefabricated, highly resource efficient and really swell looking homes. Khosla talked about making flue gases from coal-fired power plants into cement or fertilizer (that's how coal plants will someday clean the air).

The title of Khosla's talk was “Extrapolating the past or Inventing the Future." He thinks we need quantum leap changes in the way we design car engines, the fuel we use; how we manufacture cement, steel, and glass; and the way we build buildings. He spiced his talked with phrases such as “80% more efficient," “3- or 4-fold increase in storage capacity," and “100 miles per gallon diesel."

This radical way of thinking and imagining is more possible given 1) the Obama administration coming to Washington, 2) the cost in treasure and lives for our fossil fuel dependency, and 3) the crash in the financial sector and the stock market. The same old way of doings things (think incremental steps and short-term gain) isn't working anymore. Except for tree planting. That's always good, even if having a small effect on planetary atmosphere. And I like figs.

(Go here for a video of Khosla's talk. Then go plant a tree and invent the future.)

Mackey Kitchen: Foam and Rigid Insulation.
Photo credit: Daniel MackeySometimes Home Energy gets accused of being California-centric. We cover home building and renovation from all over the country and all over the world—our January/February 2009 issue will include articles about home building in Denmark and a cutting-edge green community in Italy. But since California leads the way when it comes to energy efficiency in the United States, it does get more than it's share of press. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) just released its 2008 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard, and California ranked first in efficiency, followed by Oregon, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, and Washington. My home state, Maryland, went from 20th in 2006 to 12th in 2008. Florida went from 29th to 19th.

Since the 1970s and the first energy crisis, California's per capita energy use has remained about the same. Even though we all now have a lot more gadgets–computers, cell phones, DVD players–and a lot more air conditioning, energy use per person has remained the same. This is thanks to energy efficiency. But the world needs more than efficiency to deal with the present energy and environmental crisis. We need to use less energy overall. California, which has committed to reduce its CO2 emissions rate to 1990 levels by 2020, can't rest on its laurels.

California's Title 24 building codes are among the most progressive in the country. New homes built in California today are about 15% more energy efficient than the average new home. But 70% of California's existing housing stock was built before Title 24 came into being in 1980. Making new homes more efficient is not enough. To solve our energy and environmental problems, we have to make our existing homes much more efficient. Home Energy is publishing an article in its January/February 2009 issue about an old home outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that was retrofit to use 80% less energy than it did before the retrofit (way to go Pennsylvania!). This was done without a lot of fancy and expensive technology. The house is comfortable, and the occupants are energy conscious and make wise choices about its energy use. It gets down to the basics–air sealing, insulation, proper ventilation, and educated occupants.

A new program in California is reaching for deep energy savings in existing homes. Build It Green's GreenPoint Rated Existing Home program aims at "the mother lode of energy savings," California's existing homes (Build It Green also rates and labels new homes). "GreenPoint Rated Existing Home makes it possible for existing green homes and remodels to quantify their performance in the five key environmental categories of Community, Energy, Indoor Air Quality, Resource Efficiency, and Water, while providing the homeowner with a label they can trust," writes Cory Fitch, Program Associate for Build It Green. "The GreenPoint Rated label adds value to the home as homeowners gain confidence that their home is not only more resource efficient, but more comfortable and healthy as well." The program is past the pilot stage, and Build It Green is offering training to contractors and builders who want to participate in the program. As the housing market continues to slump, builders can distinguish themselves from the competition by offering green homes and green home retrofits and by participating in reputable labeling programs like Build It Green's. And saving energy and money makes more sense in difficult economic times.

The California Academy of SciencesThe California Academy of Sciences is officially the greenest museum on the planet. LEED, which stands for Leadership in Environmental Engineering and Design, is under the umbrella of the U.S. Green Building Council. It is the benchmark for certification and ranking of green buildings throughout the United States and the world. LEED gave the Academy the highest rating of Platinum for a green building on October 7, 2008. Fifty-two points are needed to for a Platinum rating and the Academy received fifty-four points.

Before starting construction, the Academy was committed to creating a Platinum building to exemplify and embody the Academy mission to explore, explain and protect the natural world. Thirty-four of the fifty-four points were received for the construction of the building. The remaining twenty points were awarded a year after the building was built to ensure that all systems worked effectively. LEED awards its point in the following categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality and innovation and design process. The examples below touch upon the many ways the Academy took on the commitment to a green building and sustainability:

• The new Academy was integrated into the natural environment of Golden Gate Park. The vision of Renzo Piano, the architect of the building, was to lift an acre of the park up and put a museum underneath. His use of light and transparency further reinforces the integration with the park.

• By absorbing rainwater, the new Academy's living roof prevents up to 3.6 million gallons of runoff from carrying pollutants into the ecosystem each year (about 98% of all storm water).

• Over 90% of the demolition waste from the old Academy was recycled. 9,000 tons of concrete were reused in Richmond roadway construction, 12,000 tons of steel were recycled and went to Schnitzer Steel, and 120 tons of green waste were recycled on site. Most of the materials used to build the new building were also sustainable. All the steel in the building was recycled and the insulation within the walls was made from recycled blue jeans.

• Radiant floor heating reduces energy needs by 5-10%. Heat recovery systems also captures and utilizes heat produced by HVAC equipment, reducing heating energy use.

• At least 90% of regularly occupied spaces has access to daylight and outside views, reducing energy use and heat gain from electric lighting.

• Rather than hiding the green aspects of the building, they are in plain sight. Such examples include the living roof, use of remarkably clear glass, skylights, concrete with recycled bio-ash and a motorized ventilation system. The green building is an exhibit in itself.

Jamais Cascio and a carbon-spewing cheeseburger.Ever wonder what the carbon footprint of a cheeseburger is? According to Jamais Cascio, Research Affiliate with The Institute for the Future, it’s 4-6 kg of CO2 equivalent per burger — or 150 million tonnes per year in the United States, given that we eat an average of 100 cheeseburgers per person per year. (I'm sure the Bay Area brought the national average of burgers consumed way down. Thank you Alice Waters!)

Cascio recently spoke about cheeseburger emissions and other unintended consequences of our lifestyles, in a plenary address at the Summer Study of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE), which took place at Asilomar State Park, Pacific Grove, California, August 17–22. He also discussed 250-mpg hybrid cars, cool roofs, walkable cities, and urban auto congestion charges.

Cheeseburger emissions include that from fuel used to transport beef to market, food that fed the cows that gave the meat and the milk to make the cheese, as well as… cow farts, a significant source of methane, a serious greenhouse gas.

The more I examine our lifestyle, the more I find that it has an impact on the environment equal to, if not greater than, that of our technology. The most energy efficient homes can be operated in a way that makes them energy hogs — turning thermostats way up in the winter and way down in the summer. A myriad of electronic devices, all sucking energy in standby mode, will overcome the best of design intentions. When architects add square yard upon square yard of glazing to new buildings, even ones designed to be efficient and sustainable and to the highest of green building standards, energy efficiency suffers. Even the very best insulating window assemblies deliver at most an R-5 insulation rating, equivalent to about an inch and a half of fiberglass batt insulation.

Because behavior influences energy use so profoundly, the scientists at ACEEE recently hired Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez, a sociologist, as a Research Associate. To give you a hint at the kind of research Ehrhardt-Martinez will be doing, here is the title of a recent paper she published in Dialogue: "Energy Efficiency and Socially Rational Behaviors: The Role of Social Sciences in Bridging the Energy-Efficiency Gap and Accelerating Efficiency Gains."

I’m wondering when the energy efficiency community will be calling on the research abilities of people with theological backgrounds. This theologian is ready! I've already come up with the title of my first academic paper, "Measuring the Spiritual R-Value of Homes: Aquinas on Building Tight, and Ventilating Right." Or something like that.

Architect Nabih Tahan's home in Berkeley was built to Passivhaus
standards. It needs no furnace or air conditioning
and is comfortable year-round.I missed writing my blog entry two weeks ago because I was at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers writing poetry with about 60 poets from around the country. We created community through expressing artfully what is almost impossible to express any other way.

One of the highlights of the week was going on nature walks a few mornings with David Lucas, a naturalist. (He is the author of Wild Birds of California and revised the classic guidebook Sierra Nevada Natural History.) His insights about birds and other life forms found their way into many a poem written that week. Did you know that some bird species have more that 120 distinct tunes that they learn to sing in a certain order? I didn't. The really hot singers can do a shuffle of songs but not miss one of the 120. Just before dawn, neighboring birds duel with one another with song variations. And their brains are so much smaller than ours!

Imagine memorizing 120 poems and being able to recite them all in a row, and then getting up early the next morning for a poetry slam where you mix and match stanzas; starting, for example, with some Wordsworth, then a little T.S. Eliot, mix in some Emily Dickinson, and end with some "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg.

So, What has this to do with green homes? Lucas showed us the force of nature that in all things wants to survive. At Squaw Valley we created poetry that in a short time connected us to one another. That feels to me like surviving in a culture that wants us always competing with each other. Creativity seems as natural as eating, and I think it's how we are going to get out of the present environmental crisis we are in.

This morning I heard about some scientists at MIT who discovered a catalyst that could very well make the conversion of sunlight into hydrogen easy and inexpensive. And a few weeks ago I visited a house in Berkeley built to Passivhaus standards. The standards were developed in Austria but are new to the United States. The architect and occupant of the home I visited in Berkeley, Nabih Tahan, is bringing the concept in this country. A Passivhaus is so well designed that it doesn't need a furnace for heating or an air conditioner for cooling, even in Germany. Because the house is so well sealed, it needs to be ventilated mechanically. That is done through a heat recovery ventilator, a device that pulls up to 80% of the heat from exhaust air and transfers it to the incoming, fresh air. These houses use very little energy.

The poets and the architects are doing it, and the birds are doing it with their tiny birdbrains. We all can learn to adapt creatively to different ways of thinking about our environment, different ways of building buildings, and different ways of living in them.

Senior Radio Editor Andrea Kissack also contributed to this post.

When we started working on this project, we thought it would be easy to find people to interview: D.I.Y.ers with a passion for sustainable building who were testing out new technologies in their backyards. We called consultants, local suppliers, green-minded architects, and collected as many leads as we could. We found a handful of great subjects, but we never quite tapped into that centralized hub we'd envisioned. And that, it turned out, was the point. When you're a D.I.Y.er, you tend to D things Y.

Which is what's so appealing about these projects. Green innovators like those we meet in the radio piece and slideshow are working on their own initiative, spending much more time and money than they would with more conventional technologies, and running a high risk of failure. Ultimately, though, we'll all learn from their mistakes.

Wind Turbine

Chris Beaudoin fits one type of these backyard innovators: He's a long-time environmentalist willing to spend some extra cash trying out something new. San Francisco's Department of the Environment put Beaudoin in touch with Blue Green Pacific, a local company that will ultimately have two turbines up and running on Beaudoin's garage. So far there are only about five "micro-wind" projects like this in the city, about half of them operational. But stay tuned. Gavin Newsom is encouraging homeowners to experiment with wind turbines, and the state of California is already offering rebates on home turbines.

Dixon Beatty and Stephanie Parrot, who live in West Oakland, fall at the other end of the spectrum, what I'd call extreme do-it-yourselfers (though I'm sure they'll disagree). They've spent years remodeling a beautiful old Victorian in West Oakland that they still call a work-in-progress, despite well-functioning solar thermal and photovoltaic systems that keep the house warm and lit with almost no help from PG&E.

Dixon Beatty

When Lisa and Michael Rubenstein wanted to build their green dream home in Hillsborough they thought they would derive the majority of their energy from photovoltaic rooftop solar panels. PV Panels, afterall, have been the energy technology of choice for eco-friendly buildings. But as the Rubensteins waded further into construction, their architect suggested a geothermal heating cooling system. They were told geothermal can provide the most energy efficient, environmentally friendly home and so, they decided to go for it. Together, with PV solar and solar thermal panels, the Rubenstein's monthly energy bill is only eight dollars. Not bad for a 6,000 sq. foot home. It was an expensive project but what they have created is an experimental, contemporary home that gives living green a whole new aesthetic.
Lisa and Michael Rubenstein

Also merging modern design with eco-practical, is Sunset Magazine's idea house for 2007. PIX Located in San Francisco's Mission District, Casa Verde is Sunset's first idea house to be focused in an urban setting, The model home features solar and wind power, a green roof and a sleek, eco-friendly aesthetic.

Listen to the"Beyond Solar: Do It Yourself Home Energy radio report online, and watch our Web Extra: Generating Energy Right at Home slideshow.