Lawson Home Services hates to bust poor work by building contractors, but sometimes it's the plain and simple fact. This home, in Millsboro, DE, was built just 6 years ago in 2017. The home features many vaulted and raised ceilings creating a complex attic above. Once built, these attics are difficult to access. That's why it's important building contractors "Do it right the first time". Going back and trying to fix insulation flaws in these homes can be expensive. Lawson's energy auditor found an inordinate number of insulation flaws in this home, as you can see in the pictures below. These were taken in December when it was cold outside. The orange areas of the images show where the insulation is effective. The blue areas show where the insulation is ineffective, possible missing entirely. The contractor of this home did a very poor job in these areas.
Solution
An energy audit is a valuable first step in identifying flaws that affect the comfort and energy efficiency of your home. One page of the audit lists the potential measures to address the flaws in order of priority, as you can see in the list show in one of the pictures below. Another page shows the overall energy use of the home. There are many pages to this detailed audit, well worth the $50 cost to the homeowner ($25 for first responders and military personnel), with most of the actual cost being subsidized by Energize Delaware. But this program may not be around in the future. So jump on this opportunity right away, before it's too late.
There is a lot of information accompanying each of the pictures. Take your time and learn about energy audits, and construction flaws that drastically affect the comfort and energy efficiency of typical homes.
This beautiful new home in Millsboro, DE looks great from the outside, but has many issues with insulation that was poorly installed, and in some places was not installed at all.
This graph shows the energy use of this home. The green show the energy use for things that run in this house more of less consistently every day, mostly the refrigerator, and lights. The yellow is the energy used for production of hot water. We can see how thin it is, because the hot water heater in this home is very energy efficient.The blue represents energy used for cooling, and the orange for heating. Delaware homes typically use more energy in a year for heating than for cooling. In this case the home uses more energy for heating than it should. It didn't take our energy auditor long to figure out why. Just look at the infrared camera pictures that follow.
Blue areas show where the contractor failed to install the insulation effectively (or perhaps not even at all). This often happens in homes with complex raised and vaulted ceilings which were all throughout this home.
There is so much insulation missing here the entire wall is cold because of the cold air descending like a waterfall from the uninsulated wall sections near the ceiling. This is truly very poor construction.
this is the insulation in the attic. 10 " inches of cellulose generally has an insulation value of approximately R35, which isn't bad. But Lawson Home Services typically installs 17" of blown cellulose insulation for an insulation value of R60.
The HVAC contractor on this job wasn't very thorough. The problem is that tape tends to lose its stickiness over time resulting in HVAC leaks causes your heated/cooled air to end up in places where it does no good. In this case the tape doesn't even cover the seam very well.
These short walls in second story rooms within the sloped roof areas are known as knee walls. There is a small triangular attic on the other side of this knee wall where the temperatures match that of the outside air. In the summer the temperatures in these areas can reach 150 degrees. Often these are not well insulated and can result in very cold rooms in winter, and very hot in the summer.
This is one page of the detailed energy audit report given to the home owner. It shows a prioritized list of the measures recommended for improving the energy efficiency and comfort of the home. It also shows the costs and discout incentives provided by Energize Delaware, as well as the expected time in years the measures will pay for themselves with the energy savings. After that the savings result in money staying in the homeowner's bank account, instead of continuing to be paid out to the utility companies.
