C O V E R F E A T U R E
Follow That Draft
You turn off the
lights when you leave the room, you keep the thermostat at 65, and you just
spent a few grand on storm windows. But your home may still be hemorrhaging
energy. These guys can help.
Author: Harold Henderson 
Date: Appeared in Section 1 Word count: 2001
John Porterfield was tracing an air leak
through a
Porterfield's been taking calls like this
since the 70s energy-price spike, when people suddenly wanted to make their
homes and offices more energy efficient. Trained as an architect, he built his
own system to check for air leaks and started using an infrared scanner to see
where buildings lost the most heat. He even wrote a book on the subject. When
prices dropped consumers lost interest in conservation, and most energy
consultants went on to other things. Not Porterfield, who attributes his
continuing career to a combination of stubbornness and wishful thinking.
He's now in a partnership with Earl "Cappy" Kidd under the name Informed Energy Decisions
(energydetectives.com). Kidd came up in the construction business. "In the
1960s," he says with a rueful grin, "I was helping build the
buildings that I'd be fixing now." Between them Kidd and Porterfield have
54 years' experience in construction and energy conservation. They're members
of the Illinois Association of Energy Raters and two of the two dozen
Chicago-area raters who can certify buildings under the federal Energy Star
program.
Today's rising energy costs--which have
provoked even George W. Bush to pay lip service to conservation--mean a growing
number of people recognize that there are clear economic incentives to change
and want advice on how to do it. Porterfield and Kidd suspect a lot of the
information people get will be outdated. The energy-conservation technology of
the 70s "is what we know," says Porterfield, "but it will never
get us out of global warming." And they worry that energy efficiency is
now being sold as something obvious and easy. "It's not just low-cost,
no-cost stuff," says Porterfield. "You have to invest, there are
subjects you have to master. You can't just go out shopping."
Porterfield and Kidd are firm believers in
"building science," a still-accumulating body of knowledge based on
thousands of obscure studies of how buildings use energy. David Richmond, a
Waukegan-based colleague and sometime collaborator of Kidd and Porterfield,
teaches it to contractors: "They say, 'We've been building that way for 20
years,' and I say, 'Then you've been building wrong
for 20 years.' This is basic physics applied to buildings. You can build any
way you want, but you can't reverse gravity or the laws of thermodynamics and
moisture."
Building science looks at energy-saving ideas
in the context of an entire structure. One recent client, says Porterfield, was
thinking of spending $700 on attic ventilation fans for his building. "We
told him that was a waste of money. A 1978 National Bureau of Standards study
established that running roof fans just increases electricity use for cooling,
without improving on natural ventilation through grills. That's only one of
thousands of in-field energy-efficiency studies that builders and buyers are
unaware of."
People ambushed by high heating bills often
ask Porterfield and Kidd, Where can I buy the right appliance? They answer that
in nonemergency situations it's more important to
reduce their home's larger energy losses first, then
buy equipment to fit their new lower energy needs. In other words, make sure
the building shell is doing the best possible job of using and retaining
whatever energy is put into it.
Porterfield and Kidd figure they spend more
time--and achieve more savings--tracking air infiltration than anything else,
which sounds like old technology. But one key new idea since the 70s--the one
that sent Porterfield into that attic--is that buildings are hollow in ways we
don't necessarily realize. Most have a hidden network of air pathways, such as
plumbing chases, unused chimneys, built-ins with gaps at the back, and unsealed
"knee walls" between attics and porches. Outside air can use these
passages to get almost anywhere--the source of the draft chilling your feet
could well be on the far side of the house. Last spring in a north-side
three-flat they found that the six recessed light fixtures in one room were
letting in more cold air than the nine old windows. Kidd told the client about
new airtight baffles for the lights that cost $17 to $27 apiece. Replacing the
windows would have run $3,600--and the room still would have been drafty.
"Something can look leaky and not be,
and something can look tight and not be," says Kidd. "That's our
favorite slogan for our customers: stop guessing."
Porterfield spent four and a half years as a
volunteer on the committee that wrote the city's new energy code. "We got
hors d'oeuvres," he says.
Considering how much time he put into the
committee, how strongly he feels about the underlying environmental issues, and
how much the new regulations could benefit his business, Porterfield is
surprisingly skeptical about top-down solutions for our energy problems.
"When somebody tries to make me do something," he says, "I
resist." Kidd adds that he knows some contractors who "aren't
figuring out how to meet the energy code, but how to skirt it." They get
repair permits that are intended for jobs affecting less than half a building,
which don't have to meet the new code, then rehab the
whole building on the sly.
Porterfield says the new code sets a standard
that's just "a little bit higher than customary practice," so the
only developers it's pressuring to change much are the
"bottom-feeders." He points out that the code "allows heating
equipment to be as little as 78 percent efficient. There's 98 percent-efficient
equipment available, yet we see brand-new buildings--even in the current cost
climate--where the developer's installing 78 percent equipment. There are a lot
of missed opportunities if all you do is comply."
Porterfield and Kidd would rather see
developers stretch to meet the two main voluntary standards in the field: the
federal Energy Star standard, developed in the early 90s by the EPA and the
Department of Energy, and the professional Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) program, administered by the U.S. Green Building
Council, of which the two are members. For builders and energy consultants,
these standards serve as checklists and benchmarks. For consumers lost in the
jargon, they're a seal of approval. Anyone interested in an allegedly green home that doesn't
have an Energy Star or LEED certificate had better ask the seller a lot of
questions.
The city uses these standards in regulations
that go beyond the energy code, including the Department of Planning and
Development's "Building Green/Green Roof Matrix." Since June 2004 it
has required all building projects that get significant city aid--empowerment
zone grants, land write-downs, tax increment financing--to get either Energy
Star or LEED certification. And large residential and nonresidential projects
must meet even higher standards. (Details at cityofchicago.org; search on
"green.") As of May, according to Michael Berkshire, green projects
administrator for the department, more than 150 green-roof projects were in
various stages of completion and more than 40 buildings had been registered or
certified under the LEED program.
Porterfield and Kidd also hope that the
Department of Construction and Permits' "green permit" program will
encourage more builders to go green. Developers with projects that meet higher
standards than either the energy code or the matrix can get a building permit
in 30 days instead of the usual four months. To qualify, small residential
buildings must meet the Energy Star ratings and add at least one item from a
"green menu" that includes such things as a green roof, renewable
energy generated on-site, and a location near public transit with minimal
parking. The flow chart for getting one of these permits fills an 11-by-17
sheet of paper, so it remains to be seen how many builders will find the
program worth the trouble.
Despite such efforts, Kidd says, "New
houses being built today in
It educates, trains, and works with builders
and home owners, and people who consult energy raters can get the program to
pay part of the fee.
Education is happening in
Porterfield praises the center's initiative
but points out that the classes are only one to two hours long. "At the
practical level--for insulators and carpenters and others--we need a 16-week
course meeting two or three times a week, with examinations." He thinks
technical schools and community colleges would be the logical venues.
"Right now it's all anecdotes and tip sheets. Our buildings are the single
most valuable asset in our society. It's strange to have them determined by
what somebody's cousin said."
Porterfield and Kidd started their business
by auditing existing buildings and recommending cost-effective ways to improve
each one's performance. Now they've begun to get calls from developers and
architects who want to build green and energy efficient in the first place. In
addition to crawling around in leaky old attics, they now compare software
packages to see which ones create the best passive-solar designs or the best
configuration of heating equipment for a given building. They've used software
to create energy-efficient designs for a 37-story commercial-residential
high-rise near downtown and an eight-town house development near
They're pleased to see the changes. A few
years ago they were trying to stop an epidemic of inefficiency one building at
a time; now they can vaccinate before it hits. They used to be limited to
proposing often costly retrofits; now they can make a building efficient in the
most cost-effective way--before it's built. (One example: insulation that costs
34 cents a square foot to install during construction will cost about five
times as much to put in later.) If nothing else, working farther upstream in
the construction process cuts down on the frustrations of seeing seemingly
well-informed clients procrastinate and fall back into old habits.
Soon after I met him, Porterfield handed me a
bulky set of photocopies--Elizabeth Kolbert's
remarkable three-part series on global warming in the New Yorker, soon to be
published in book form. I saw it as evidence of how much he cared about the issue,
but I didn't quite get the point until a few days later when he was talking
about the owner of a vintage building whose problems included a worn-out
boiler. Porterfield told him to buy a boiler that was 93 percent efficient and
that could modulate its output according to the weather. The client put off his
decision until severe cold weather hit. His heating contractor had only one
kind of boiler on hand, so that's what he bought--"a standard-issue nonmodulating boiler," Porterfield told me. Not only would
the client's heating bills be significantly higher month after month, but if he
someday decided to insulate his building the boiler would be oversize, blasting
heat then shutting off.
"We need people to be bold and
decisive," Porterfield said. It dawned on me that he wasn't talking about
just boilers and buildings anymore, but our joint human household. "People
often defer decisions until they get boxed in and have no alternative. And then
they have to do something they'll regret for the rest of their time in that
house."