A Building Science Sunday

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Here’s a confession: Sometimes even BPI-certified energy advisors have complicated, efficiency-challenged houses. Take Cree Hale Krull, who leads Evergreen’s charge in Maine’s southern Midcoast region. He’s the proud new owner of an older home that’s been full of efficiency surprises.

When the water heater up and quit last month, Cree decided to replace it with a high efficiency heat pump water heater. These appliances essentially work like refrigerators in reverse – they pull heat from the surrounding air and dump it, at a higher temperature, into a tank to heat water. Cree and local heating contractor Steve Winchenbach figure it will cut the cost of heating water in half, with the added benefit of dehumidifying the basement.

Since Cree knows a thing or two about financing energy efficiency projects, he looked into Efficiency Maine’s loan programs. He chose an unsecured PowerSaver loan, which offers up to $7500 for up to 10 years and is not tied to the property.

While he was at it, Cree decided to tackle an area where a day’s work would make a big difference: his attic hatch (left). Whether you access your attic through a panel-style hatch, pull-down stairs, or a real door at the bottom of a real staircase, these openings are often energy holes. They connect living space and unconditioned attic space, and all too often they offer a pathway for heat to leak from the house to the attic all winter, and to radiate from the attic to the house all summer.

At Cree’s house, the solution included air sealing the 4’x8’ opening in the second floor ceiling with a combination of spray-foam and caulk (below left).Not content to seal just what he could see, Cree pulled up the attic floorboards around the opening… and uncovered an unsealed top plate of an interior wall (below center). The top plate is the stud, laid lengthwise, at the top of the walls. When “open,” or unsealed, it creates another pathway for air to worm its way through. Cree put a stop to that with another round of spray-foam and caulk (below right).

With the attic hatch opening air sealed, the next step was creating an insulated plug for the 4’ x 8’ opening. (Though there’s a door at the bottom of the stairs, it’s an original interior door that provides very little in the way of insulating value. For energy efficiency purposes, the stairway is part of the second floor, and the barrier between conditioned and unconditioned space is the attic flat – so that’s where the insulated plug belongs.) Cree’s improvised door – constructed of scavenged blue board, 1×3 strapping, and weather-stripping – provides what he calls “a reasonable radiant/thermal barrier to heat transfer as well as the all-important air barrier – and even then it wasn’t perfect.”

All told, it was a 9-hour Sunday for Cree. “Most people don’t realize how much work it takes to do this right,” says Cree. At least the results were immediate: one of his sons commented (without prompting) that the second floor was significantly warmer, and the whole family noticed that the furnace cycled on far fewer times. Being a building science geek at heart, Cree quantified the improvements with a blower door test and found that air sealing the attic hatch reduced his home’s air leakage by 13%.

Not bad for a Sunday’s work.

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Awesome company. It was a few years ago that they did the audit and then we commissioned them to do the work. We subsequently sold our house and moved to South Africa, but their level of service and expertise will live on.

Odette Brown

Bryan, Dave and the entire Evergreen team are wonderfully professional, prompt and thorough. I enjoyed working with them and look forward to continued work as we upgrade our home! Thank you so much for your professionalism, fairness, time and diligence.

Cait

Yarmouth

A thorough inspection of our (older) house and its energy needs. Competent and personable work crew.

Jacob Watson

Our house still the most efficient home we’ve ever lived in. And we have you folks to thank for that! A special howdy to Brian Robinson please!

Bruce O’Donal and Eva Butler

I never leave reviews, but had a great experience with Evergreen and wanted to spread the word! In short, we worked with them to insulate our roof this winter and have noticed surprising immediate results. The constant ice dams I have wrestled with are completely gone, and the home is noticeably more comfortable. It's a little too early to tell if our oil bill is going to reduce, but I imagine we will see an impact there as well.

Joel W.

Portland

Evergreen completed the work at my home thoroughly and professionally. An inspector from Efficiency Maine came to inspect afterwards and described it as "state of the art" and "outstanding". The crew was very pleasant and considerate during the project. Their cleanup each day was perfect. Communications with the office were easy and reliable. I am very satisfied.

Catherine H.

South Portland

We had a fantastic experience working with Evergreen to insulate our roof this winter. Everyone was extremely friendly throughout the process - the crew at our home worked hard, were approachable with questions, and the team leader even showed me around the project to point out specific areas they were working to improve.

Joel Wentz

I had gotten estimates from several other companies, but Evergreen was in another league entirely with their professionalism. If you want the job done correctly, I couldn't recommend this company enough.

Rayna Mayo

Freeport

Evergreen came back this year to finish insulating our house. We have been remodeling and renovating an 1850s cape for several years. Their employees are very professional and pleasant to deal with. Over several years Brian Robinson has been able to schedule us in for several small areas that needed addressing and finally turning a room we used to close off in the winter into a comfortable usable space. We primarily heat with wood and since Evergreens great work our furnace has only come on ONCE this winter. Fantastic. Really satisfied customer in Thomaston.

Chris F.

Thomaston

From beginning to end – that is from the moment Justin McEdward stepped into our home to assess our energy conservation needs until the crew left – the Evergreen Home Performance process went absolutely smoothly. Justin made a thorough inspection and took pictures with an infrared camera. His proposal described the scope of work in detail, and he explained what we could expect the proposed work to accomplish. Our proposal was forthcoming within a couple of days, and Justin was available to discuss it and answer questions.

Adrienne Harkavy

Highly recommended. Our heating usage is now less than half what it was before we had our roof insulated. Evergreen was knowledgeable, friendly, and left no trace they were ever in our house. Not only is our heating bill much lower now, but our home is generally more comfortable year-round with less temperature fluctuations. Money well spent.

RC Lations

We had Evergreen redo the insulation in our roof. The team handling our project did a great job. They left the house spotless. We've already noticed the difference in how much better our house is retaining heat. I would definitely recommend and will use them for future projects.

Ffej C.

South Portland

Thorough, smart, informative, integrated, and communicative -- that's how my experience was with Evergreen even with the covid interruption midstream. The team picked up where they left off, insulated basement and air sealed attic and knee wall in 100' temps under the eaves! This business group was a pleasure to work with.

Karen W.

Gray

"Working with Evergreen from start to finish was a great experience." See what our customers have to say about their experience with Evergreen Home Performance. 

Jeff L.

Nothing but good things to say. The guys that came and did the actual work were extremely nice and did a great job. The energy audit was thorough and I was presented with multiple improvement options, I was even given ideas for improvement that Evergreen didn't offer. I never felt like I was being "sold".

Ryan Adams

Portland Buy Local
Efficiency Maine
EPA Lead-Safe Certified
Building Performance Association
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