Affordable Home Upgrades (Energy Efficiency & Indoor Air Quality )

if you're building a brand new house or doing a whole house remodel like you see me do often on the build show there's a lot you can do to ensure that your house is going to be very energy efficient and also have cleaner healthier indoor air but what if you're an existing house what if you're in a house and you just don't have the budget don't have the means or the ability to do a big remodel or to build a new house that's what today's build show is about we're going to talk about what you could do to an existing home for one thousand five thousand or ten thousand dollars that would really make a significant difference in healthy indoor air and energy efficiency today's build show all about upgrades let's get going [Music] okay so if you're watching this you own your house and your house is maybe five to ten years old or older what can you do that would really make a dramatic and significant difference in your indoor air quality and your healthy air quality and your energy efficiency for that house and what can you do in a couple of increments of dollars first off let's start with a thousand dollars if you've got a thousand dollars to spend i think the best way to spend that money is to do an energy audit now there's a lot of different ways that you can get an energy out of it if you just google energy audit in your area you're going to find that there's people that will do them for free right and it's usually the local hvac company that wants to come out and give you an energy audit but what you really want is someone who's a certified raider there's really two bodies that i trust resnet and bpi i'll put a link in the description but these are two really good training bodies that certify raiders and you want somebody who's been certified with one of those two now they actually have a find a professional link on both those pages so look in the description for that and that's going to vary and cost that maybe a few hundred dollars if you have a big house it may be a few thousand dollars but for the most part you can do this for under a thousand dollars and when they come out one thing that you also want them to do is to do a blower door test if possible that may cost a little bit more but that's really going to give you a good understanding of where you're using your energy how your house is performing and how you can upgrade it and you may not be able to do all those upgrades immediately but in the future now what i like about this is this is an independent person that doesn't have a dog in the haunt if you get a windows sales company to come out and give you an energy audit lo and behold they're going to tell you that no matter what your windows are they probably need to be upgraded and look at this amazing savings you can gain no you don't want that you want us you want an independent person spend that money what if you're not interested in that you just want healthier air there's a couple things that i would do the best thing to do for under a thousand bucks if indoor air quality is important to you which it certainly is right now is to install a four inch pleated media air filter in your hvac system those little one-inch filters they don't do very much and and having a higher filter doesn't really necessarily mean you're getting better filtration they just don't seat well you get a lot of air that bypasses those and they clog quickly they're just not great what you want is a real thick pleated media filter they can vary in cost but the least cost model that i use all the time is an aprilaire model they make them in merv 11 and merv 13. merv is how all the air filters are rated it's minimum efficiency reporting value you want a minimum 11 in your house 13 is really better that's really what i put it on my house is regardless of whether people tell me they're allergy sufferers or they have asthma or whatever merv 13 is a really good standard not quite to hepa quality but very very good filtration those are going to run you a few hundred bucks plus install so for under a thousand bucks you should be able to get one of those installed what if you're not interested in getting that invasive could you use a standalone one you could i probably needed a whole to do a whole video on those because most of the ones you're going to spend 100 or 200 or 300 bucks on they're really not worth the money you got to spend more to get a good one and that's why i'm gonna put this in my thousand dollar or under category iq air makes a really nice one it's a beast it's kind of a model that's about this tall big box really good filtration though the guys at field controls makes it make a really nice one that's that's actually what i have at my house aprilaire makes a nice one but you need a big unit that uses a lot of cfm it's really moving a lot of air and you typically want to place that near your return if possible in your house if you just have one or in your bedroom where you're spending the most time at night now remember though on high is where it's getting the best filtration and the most airflow sometimes not the easiest to sleep with so that's why i'm saying put it in your hvac system that's the best place to spend that thousand bucks okay last thing in the thousand dollar category if you're in the south like me a plug-in dehumidifier you can get them for two three hundred bucks at your local home center i'll link to a model you can get even on amazon if you have a relatively small house like i do under 2500 square feet one of the 70 pint models will probably do your whole house having a lower humidity in your house is going to make a big difference in your air quality it's going to lower mold and and allergens from reacting in your house and it's just going to feel really good so those are all options for under a thousand bucks okay next five thousand bucks what can you do for five thousand dollars now the best thing you can probably do at five thousand dollars is to take that energy report that you spent a thousand bucks on and implement that go watch my video called insulation 2.0 this is a video that's focused on air sealing first and then insulation most houses in america at the ceiling level have insulation right above the ceiling and the attic space is an unconditioned space and if you have ductwork up there that ductwork can be leaky the connection between your house and that attic can be very air leaky so we need to seal those things up and having a professional come out and do that can make a big big difference i'm going to call that insulation 2.0 you're probably going to spend every bit of 5000 bucks on that and it's going to make a big difference in the long run because we're not just re-insulating or adding insulation we're air sealing first and then we're insulating and that's gonna make a difference the other thing that five thousand dollars might give you is the ability to seal your ductwork if you have ducts out of your condition space now this isn't so applicable if you're in the north if you're in you know minnesota or canada watching this you probably don't have any duct work that's not in your basement or in your air conditioned or heated space in your house but if you're in the south watching this you very well likely have ducts in your crawl space which is a nasty area and you probably have ducks in your hot attic also a nasty area by air sealing your ducks this can make a huge difference now there's one kind of national brand that i like called aeroseal i'll put a link in the description of those guys that's a trained network of contractors that have this proprietary system that will basically send out an aerosolized caulk into your ductwork system while it's under pressure and seal up all those small cracks and leaks in your system you could also have an independent person perform a duct blaster test and find out how leaky your ducts are most houses in america from the data i've seen have air leakage from 15 to 25 percent in their ducts and again if those ducts are outside of the condition space in attics and crawl spaces that's really not good that means we're losing money that we spent on air conditioning or heating and we're also potentially sucking stuff back in which is really not good we definitely don't want crawl space or attic air being sucked back into our houses at the 5 000 level the other things that we can do to our hvac system are adding a dedicated dehume if you're in the south i highly recommend this every new house that i build or remodel we put a dedicated dehumidifier in those houses today and the other thing you can do is upgrade to even better air filtration systems iq air makes a merv 16 system it's a huge box with great filtration the guys at aprilaire make some merv 16 systems there's a lot of things you can do like train clean effects that you can really add some great filtration to your hvac system if you've got a few more dollars to spend all right now what if you have ten thousand dollars to spend what would you do to your house now this is a category where you can make a really significant difference now remember i talked about duct sealing with aeroseal their sister company aero barrier makes a product that i've talked about before for houses under construction that you actually could use in a retrofit meaning a house that's new to you you bought this new house you're about to move in the house is empty you could do arrow barrier there now if you're not familiar here's the quickie on it it's a system where you put the house under pressure you put a blower door in you blow air in and they've got all these nozzles that will aerosolize this caulking in the air it's floating around when the house is under a bloat or under pressure as if we're blowing up a balloon you've got all these pinholes of air leaks around the house that caulking is going to start flying out those little pin holes everywhere and these little particles as they come out these leaks they're going to start to glom together and over time they'll actually form a full bead of caulking so to speak and all those cracks and crevices places where air is leaking out of the house and you can take a house that's pretty darn leaky and make it incredibly tight now again normally i'm going to do this under construction just before or right after the drywall phase but you can do it in a resale house as well as long as the house is empty it's going to cost a little more because we're going to have to cover all the finished surfaces all the flat surfaces in the house but it's an incredible system and it's going to be a little more expensive to do it then but really this will make a big difference we do not want air leaking into our houses both from an energy efficiency standpoint and from an indoor air quality perspective this is going to make a big difference okay now assuming you've already done insulation 2.0 the next thing you could do is actually consider replacing your hvac system and maybe even replacing your duct work now this is a big deal on this this can vary of course in cost but when you put a new hvac system in a new ductwork that can make a big difference when i remodeled my house about 15 years ago i had original 70s ductwork which was in terrible condition it had all kinds of garbage in it and by ripping that out and bringing new ductwork in and a new furnace i put a real basic system and i didn't do some top of the line system but i did do new duct work and good filtration and that's what you could spend ten thousand dollars on and potentially make a big difference on your house you could even potentially if you had some hot spots or some cold spots in your house transfer a standard system to a mini split system now i'm doing this at my current build under construction where i've got two areas they're going to be heated and cooled with a mini split head now there's options for these we could have a wall mount system which you're traditionally seeing as we think about mini splits that's a cassette on the wall that provides both heating and cooling oftentimes there's just one free online and one outdoor unit and that is going to provide all the heating and cooling necessary for that particular area of your house without any duct work that's a really nice upgrade the other thing that you can do with the mini split is actually a ceiling cassette or a radiator style unit as well i really like the mitsubishi brand but there's other brands out there in the marketplace as well like daikon or lg that make this equipment as well you want to look for a dealer that's used to using that equipment in your area that can be a really nice upgrade for a couple thousand dollars let's say in a bonus room that's always hot above a garage or maybe a master bedroom that you want to cool down when the rest of the house is is going to remain hot maybe even a garage space i'm doing a home workshop in my garage and i'm putting a mini split in there my garage is going to be fully insulated and air sealed to the best of my ability when i'm working out there for a couple hours i want a little bit of space conditioning that one-to-one mini split head is going to do a great job for me guys hopefully you learned something in this space don't be intimidated by this you know you can spend more than this but for a thousand five thousand or ten thousand bucks i think this is some really good advice comment below if i missed anything if there's something you think that i missed when it comes to these increments and what you might do to your house if you're not currently a subscriber hit that subscribe button we've got new content every tuesday and every friday and oh by the way new content six days a week over on buildshownetwork.com i've got four other builders and an architect shooting videos on my build show network their version of the build show over there i'll put a link in the description to sign up for our newsletter that we send every friday you'll get an email from me saying what's new on that website guys follow me on twitter instagram otherwise we'll see you next time on the build show [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 209,279

Keywords: matt risinger, the build show, build show network, building science, home renovation, cost of renovation, honeywell TP50WK, Aprilaire 2210, IQAir, Field Controls Air Purifier, Aeroseal, Aerobarrier, Trane Clean Effects, Mitsubishi Cassettes, budget upgrades, construction

Id: 5o_cq1r2tiY

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020