The Future of Home Performance is All-Electric

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Mike Collignon: Day to you all. Welcome to another edition of our Thought Leader Webinar series. The Thought Leader webinars are part of our larger housing 2.0 program. And the content for that program is based largely on same rations. Latest book, housing 2.0 A Disruption Survival Guide. Now, the program itself empowers building professionals to design and construct higher performance, healthier, more sustainable homes in a fraction of the cost.

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Mike Collignon: You can learn more about this entire program by visiting Green Builder Media Housing two.

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Mike Collignon: Now, while there are a variety of observances today, I wanted to highlight Space Exploration Day. Now, before you start looking for stars or distant galaxies, we're not going to explore that kind of space. Rather, we're going to the space inside our homes, and we're going to be talking about high performance and the role that electrification plays in that quest for high performance.

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Mike Collignon: Now, many feel it will be key to fighting the effects of climate change. However, for electrification to happen in a timely manner, it will have to take place on the customer side of the meter, which means that energy demand must be reduced. Now we've got building science consultant Steve Easley with us today, and he's going to use real world examples to demonstrate cost effective approaches to maximizing home performance and comfort.

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Mike Collignon: He's going to explore building enclosure best practices and products, along with new technologies for heating and cooling, HVAC and ERV controls. And he's also going to cover HVAC installation tips and heat pump water heater do's and don'ts. Now, who is Steve Easley, you ask? Well, he's an internationally recognized building science expert and educator. He has more than 30 years of industry experience performing thousands of job site quality surveys and presenting building science seminars around the world, including being on this very platform three times.

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Mike Collignon: His work focuses on increasing quality of construction, sustainability and performance, while reducing costly mistakes that lead to construction defects and callbacks. Steve's mission in life is helping industry professionals build and remodel structures that are durable, energy efficient, healthy, and comfortable to live and also to work in now. We have some great sponsors for this webinar, and I want to tell them I'll tell you all about them.

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Mike Collignon: The first is Mitsubishi Electric. Mitsubishi Electric promote sustainable building through the electrification of residential and commercial he and including products. Their mission is to advance technologies that reduce waste output, promote sustainable resource cycles while increasing energy efficiency and eliminating dependance on fossil fuels. Our next sponsor is Westlake Royal Building Products. They are the North American leader in the innovation, design and production of a broad and diverse range of exterior and interior building products, including siding and accessories, trim and moldings, roofing, stone windows and outdoor living for more than 50 years.

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Mike Collignon: Westlake Royal Building products as manufactured, high quality, low maintenance products to meet the specifications and needs of building professionals, homeowners, architects, engineers and distributors while providing stunning curb appeal with an unmatched array of colors, styles and accessories. For more information, please visit their website. Westlake Royal Building Products that's plural. Schneider electric is driving the digital transformation of modern homes with smart and sustainable energy solutions for ultimate comfort and energy efficiency.

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Mike Collignon: Their connected home ecosystem of smart energy management solutions provides digital control of energy use throughout home from the grid via their smart electrical panel to their connected wiring devices. This grid, the plug solution, makes the significantly easier to create smart solar power and backup power ready homes both now and in the future, and we have power shipped by NV energy.

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Mike Collignon: They have a program that helps residential and business customers conserve energy and save money on their power business. Power shift is a one stop resource to find energy efficient products and services. For more information, their website is N v Energy Powershift now. During the course of Steve's presentation, you can submit questions for him. Just use that questions box that is in the control panel of go to webinar, probably on the right side of your screen.

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Mike Collignon: I'm going to review those questions and I'll pose them to Steve during the Q&A time set aside after his presentation. All right Steve, how goes it, sir?

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Steve Easley: Pretty good. I'm ready to go. Are you ready?

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Mike Collignon: Have you back again?

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Steve Easley: You can hear me. Okay.

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Mike Collignon: Hey. Loud and clear.

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Steve Easley: Okay. I think I'll go ahead and get started.

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Mike Collignon: That's right. Awesome.

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Steve Easley: Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to today's class. One of the things that I want to try to get through today, or some of the big, you know, roadblocks, electrification and a lot of that is, as we said, has happened on the customer side of the meter. And when you look at the constraints that are going to be happening on the grid as we start moving to a more electric vehicles, it's just imperative that we figure out how to reduce these loads on the customer side of the meter.

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Steve Easley: So what I want to talk about today is kind of identify, you know, what I believe to be five really key technologies that will give us the most cost effective path to electrifying homes, really identify, you know, how variable speed heat pumps are very different in terms of efficiency, comfort, operating costs, as well as for cold climates? Most people on the impression that heat pumps can't operate in cold climates, and that's certainly true of the heat pumps of yesteryear and even some of the new heat pumps today.

00:05:33:17 - 00:05:51:23
Steve Easley: So but they do have cold climate heat pumps. And I want to get into some of the practical applications of that and talk about how they're different. We're also get into some of the building envelope methods that are certainly important to help us kind of flywheel through the peak times of the day. Many of the utilities in this country are moving towards time of use rates.

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Steve Easley: Certainly everybody out west is Arizona. All the utilities in California are moving to time of use rates, and some of those rates can be upwards of $0.50 a kilowatt hour. Be complete that. So being able to not have all those big lows during those peak times is going to have a lot to do with how much money people are paying to heat and cool their houses, and then also want to kind of a lot of the top design and insulation mistakes that lead to poor heat pump performance.

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Steve Easley: Fossil fuel furnaces can dump a lot of heat in the air in a very short period of time. And as we move towards electrification, which is the process of converting from fossil fuels to, you know, all electric systems, because that could be replaced by renewables. And in addition to that, it's a lot. Even if there are having natural gas power plants, it's a lot more efficient to control the emissions from one, you know, a few power plants than 40 million, you know, stoves and water heaters and furnaces.

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Steve Easley: So the concept of elections really important to understand how these technologies are different, because if we don't get these things installed right, it's going to get a black eye. Customers aren't going to be happy. And we're starting to already see that some parts of the United States. I always like to give everybody some resources. This is a book that we wrote on zero net energy homes.

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Steve Easley: We did this for the California Energy Commission, and you can download this from my website for free. You can buy it on Amazon for $30, but I certainly recommend that you just go to my website. You can download it for free if you go to CDs and click on articles and publications, scroll down and where it says Steve's articles and books, and you can download some of our books.

00:07:30:06 - 00:07:58:02
Steve Easley: And you can also download a lot of articles that I've written on some of the topics that we're going to talk about today. Also, what I'm doing a project with Green Builder magazine. We're building a home in Scottsdale, Arizona, and there's a number of videos that I produced there, and you can see some you can download some of the articles about the project and, you know, follow the project, but we're using some kind of unique technologies, which I'll talk about today, some of which, interestingly enough, I didn't know our sponsors for this webinar wasn't aware of that.

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Steve Easley: But in any event, you simply go to Green Builder Media, click on vision House, click on the Scottsdale project. There's no question that climate change is real. I mean, we saw the news today, a crazy amount of heat waves that we're seeing and fires across the globe. It's unprecedented in terms of kind of the disasters that we've seen happen more recently.

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Steve Easley: And when you think about it, you know, there's all this burning of fossil fuels is really catching up with us. And we burn 40 trillion gallons of oil since 1989, 6 million barrels of oil per day, 19 million in the US alone, over 30,000,000,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas per year in the US, 120,000,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas worldwide, and we add about 50 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every year.

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Steve Easley: And it takes about 1000 years for nature to remove it. And so our oceans are finally have been such a heat sink for this for such a long time. And it's I think it's really starting to catch up with us. And, you know, half the world's reefs are destroyed. And all this is due to the burning of fossil fuels.

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Steve Easley: There was an interesting study that was published in science magazine that found that just the leaks from the natural gas infrastructure could, could fuel about 10 million homes. And then Stanford recently did a study on gas stoves, or about 40 million in the United States. And they released quite a bit of methane, which is a really potent greenhouse gas, 80 times worse than CO2.

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Steve Easley: But anyway, these researchers found that there were quite a bit of gas leaks in the stoves, enough to have the same impact as about 500,000 gasoline powered vehicles. But what was really surprising in the study that they did more than three quarters of the methane emissions occurred while the stoves were off, suggesting that the fittings and connections and home gas lines, the cooktops and ranges are, you know, not tight.

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Steve Easley: So that's a kind of a scary thought. Also, if you look at the United States in 2021, there were over $20 billion disasters worldwide. There were over, you know, over $47 billion plus disasters, some of which was high as 75 billion. These are all from storms. And then when you look at since 1980, you look at the trend here.

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Steve Easley: Certainly this this is really disturbing. And this is why everybody's pushing hard and fast to move towards electrification so we can, you know, help curb the use of fossil fuels in 2020. 83% of the new homes had gas furnaces, 12% only had heat pumps. We'd like to turn that around 57% of existing homes or gas, and 10% of those are oral or and 10% of the homes of oral and propane.

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Steve Easley: So certainly in all existing homes, 67% are fossil fuels. And so we talk about electrification. We're not talking about just converting new homes to to gas, water heating to gas space conditioning to gas cooking or to from that to electric. You know, we're also talking about, you know, existing home being able to change those to electric as well.

00:11:08:05 - 00:11:37:07
Steve Easley: So bottom line is, you know converting all of these to electric, it has a big impact because about 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions are due to, you know, the built environment. Now if you look at a you know, in fact homes with all electric, you know, heat, water, heating and appliances, you know, that would save about two and a half point 5 million or, excuse me, 2.5 metric tons of carbon per year per house.

00:11:37:09 - 00:12:03:04
Steve Easley: So really helpful. So bottom line is the top five five solutions are ones which the variable speed heat pumps. And notice I said variable speed heat pumps for space conditioning and for water heating. I'm going to show you some examples of that today. Switch to induction cooking. You'll be alarmed to find out how what big polluters gas stoves are and then switching to heat pump clothes dryers.

00:12:03:05 - 00:12:30:24
Steve Easley: Yes, they make heat pump clothes dryers that take heat out of the air and use it to dry your clothes. And then fourth is something we don't think too much about. Is employing a real time IQ sensors for indoor air quality to control our air? Most of our our size based on Ashrae 62.2 2019 residential standard. And for a typical home that can be upwards of 3000 cfm.

00:12:30:24 - 00:12:55:22
Steve Easley: And so we tend to over ventilate homes. But having some of the newer technologies that we can take advantage of that actually monitor real time into our quality in your homes, and then control the air based on your true need for ventilation, not, you know, guesstimate like we see with with the standards and of course, making our building envelopes and home overall more more efficient.

00:12:55:24 - 00:13:19:22
Steve Easley: So why he pumps for heating and for water heating. Well they're 2 to 4 times the efficiency. They can have lower operating costs. This depends on what you're paying for. For gas and electricity there's certainly better suited for low load home because you can zone these. I'll show you some examples of that. You could get greater comfort. You know the compact in size for easy zoning.

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Steve Easley: You don't have venting issues and the air infiltration exploration losses associated with that, and certainly the life safety issues associated with vented appliances. And of course, obviously they have less environmental impact than gas or even electric resistance systems. Now, as I mentioned earlier, you know, the the beauty of fossil fuel furnaces is that they can throw a lot of heat in the air in a very short period of time.

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Steve Easley: The bad news is it's a fossil fuel furnace. So there are some big differences in the way that heat pumps work versus, you know, gas appliances. And so we make make sure that customers are prepared for the fact that the recovery times or can be longer discharge temperatures can be cooler than older furnaces. Now, the newer furnaces, not so much.

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Steve Easley: If you're using a 90% efficient furnace, the discharge chambers are going to be very close to heat pumps or temperatures at the register. So when we look at the components of a heat pump, it's pretty simple. It's just like an air conditioner back. A heat pump is just an air conditioner that runs in reverse. And so we have an indoor coil and blower motor.

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Steve Easley: And then we have an outdoor coil and compressor. And we simply all heat pump does is basically convert the it doesn't actually create heat, it just simply moves heat from one location to another. And the types of heat pumps that we have are air to air. That's the most common. We have ground source heat pumps where there's a coil in the ground.

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Steve Easley: We have water source heat pump where we pump water from the water table over over a heat exchanger. We also have domestic hot water heating, heat pumps and close ranking pumps. So when you look at the types of systems that we have available to us, there's three basic choices. And the choices that we make are really, really critical to speed and signal.

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Steve Easley: Heat pumps are not the type of heat pumps that we want to get. We want to make sure that we get a variable speed heat pump. And the way that these why these are so much more efficient is that like if we look at a typical heat pump, it might use for kilowatt hours of produce, four kilowatts of energy heat into a home, but it uses one kilowatt from the power grid, and then it takes the other from the environment.

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Steve Easley: There's quite a bit of heat in the air, otherwise it would be 400 and almost 460 below zero. That's absolute zero. That's what physicists estimate that all molecular activity stops. And so all temperature is is a measure of molecular activity. And so what a heat pump does is simply take the heat that's in the air and moves it to the inside.

00:15:59:01 - 00:16:24:25
Steve Easley: And it uses this process of a refrigerant. Now a simple example of that I want you to look at my thermometer here. And then I'm going to take and pour alcohol which boils in at 70 degree range immediately starts turning into a gas. So anytime I change something from a liquid to a gas, cooling occurs. And that's how a refrigeration cycle, if you look at that, my monitor is dropping very, very quickly here.

00:16:24:25 - 00:16:51:06
Steve Easley: And that's because as the alcohol evaporates off the probe, cooling is taking place. You know, and so refrigeration cycle works much in that same way. And it's important that we kind of understand the basics of this refrigeration cycle so that we can understand kind of how heat pump works and understand their strengths and weaknesses. Now we use, you know, he pumps every day and not really realize it.

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Steve Easley: Like for example, if you look at your refrigerator that takes heat out of that box and moves it into the room when you look at it, air conditioner, for example, it takes heat out of our house and pumps it to the outside. So if you look at the basic refrigeration process, we have a refrigerant that boiled at a very, very low temperature like -55 degrees.

00:17:11:15 - 00:17:35:12
Steve Easley: And so we have a very high pressure liquid. And when that goes into this expansion valve inside of our house, it immediately starts to change from a liquid to a gas like you saw with my thermometer experiment. Anytime I change something from a liquid to a gas, I take away heat. And so what happens is, is our blower takes 75 degree air from the room and then it, you know, goes across this coil.

00:17:35:12 - 00:17:55:09
Steve Easley: And as this refrigerant is going through this coil, it slowly changing from a liquid to a gas. And when that happens it takes on heat. So what happens is it chills the air inside of our home to 55 degrees and from let's say 75. And then the refrigerant takes that heat and simply it pulls it into the compressor.

00:17:55:09 - 00:18:18:11
Steve Easley: It compresses it to a high pressure vapor. And then of course, he always goes from warmer and colder areas. And as it goes through the outdoor coil, we have 85 degree air safe from the outside blowing across this, but our refrigerants at 150 degrees. And then it releases that heat to the atmosphere. So that's a refrigeration project. And so all that happens with a heat pump they simply reverse the cycle.

00:18:18:11 - 00:18:52:23
Steve Easley: So he pump is essentially just an air conditioner that runs in reverse. Now this process is much slower than your typical fossil fuel furnace. So our customers have to understand the differences on how they operate so that they're not disappointed with their performance. But the bottom line is you can get way higher levels of comfort from a variable speed heat pump than you can fossil fuel equipment, because you don't have these massive temperature swings that happen, you know, with typical fossil fuel equipment or even for that matter, standard two speed or single speed heat pumps.

00:18:52:26 - 00:19:17:20
Steve Easley: So when we look at the efficiency metrics that the Department of Energy puts together for us, and these standards have saved consumers about $1 trillion since 2017 alone, we measure the efficiency of gas furnaces with annual fuel utilization efficiency. We measure the efficiency of an air conditioner with seasonal energy efficiency ratio. We look at E.R. energy efficiency ratio as a steady state measure.

00:19:17:21 - 00:19:37:25
Steve Easley: And then we have coefficient of performance for heat pumps. And we also have heating seasonal performance factor. Those are the things we want to look for when we're buying a heat pump. So for example or an air conditioner for that matter. But when you're looking at most of the United States is going to require a heating and seasonal performance factor of a minimum of 8.2.

00:19:37:28 - 00:20:08:10
Steve Easley: And if we're in the southeast western region, that would be 8.2. So all the split systems are going to be a point two or higher, or 14 are typically or higher for the air conditioning mode. So the seasonal performance factor is what the Department of Energy requires manufacturers to publish about the efficiency of their equipment. So it's basically just the total heating season B2 output divided by how much energy the unit uses.

00:20:08:14 - 00:20:34:06
Steve Easley: So when you look at coefficient of performance, that basically means you know how efficient the unit is as well. Some manufacturers list this, particularly for heat pump water heaters. For example, I'm going to show you heat pump water heater that I have in my house that has a coefficient of performance before, but a copy of four simply means that for every one kilowatt hour of electricity that we use, that yields three kilowatt hours of heat.

00:20:34:06 - 00:20:53:08
Steve Easley: And it uses that refrigeration cycle to do this because air already has quite a bit of heat in it, even at zero degrees, outside air has quite a bit of heat, and it simply extracts that heat from the air, moves it to the inside. So again, coefficient performance is just the useful energy output divided by the energy input.

00:20:53:08 - 00:21:20:22
Steve Easley: And what's times 3.413 betas. What. So bottom line is the higher the copy the higher the air the better. Now we use Sierra VR to measure the efficiency of air conditioners. And that's simply again the output divided by the input. So for example if I have a four ton unit which is a 48,000 B2 for our air conditioner, and I divide that by the 40 800W it takes to operate, that it would have an air of ten.

00:21:20:23 - 00:21:42:26
Steve Easley: Again, higher is better. You always want to look for the highest number that you can afford. It is important to know for you people who live out West, that air is a better metric to measure the efficiency than Seer. As you notice, we start getting higher temperatures. The Sierra numbers all kind of come together. So higher air, for those of you that live out west is what you want to look for.

00:21:42:29 - 00:22:06:15
Steve Easley: All right. So this is really important to understand because how he pumps operate are different than traditional furnaces. It is important that we set customers expectation. Remember that the efficiency of a standard heat pump is very much related to the outdoor air temperature. The capacity in terms of its output is related to the outdoor air temperature and also altitude.

00:22:06:16 - 00:22:29:06
Steve Easley: So in other words, as the outdoor air temperature gets colder, its capacity drops for standard heat pumps. But for inverter driven heat pumps, that's not the case. I'll show you some examples of that. The and the colder the outdoor air, the longer the unit has to run to extract the heat needed from the colder air. And so the cold or the air, typically our temperature.

00:22:29:06 - 00:22:57:22
Steve Easley: What I'm talking about the lower the outdoor temperature. So historically people have said that he pumps, you know, while they work in cold climates, their efficiency and capacity drops off. So much for standard heat pumps that people really didn't use them because you had to have expensive electric backup strips, and those can be upwards of 10,000kW. And so when those backup strips turn on, it's pretty expensive to operate those.

00:22:57:23 - 00:23:23:10
Steve Easley: And so he pumps kind of got a bad reputation early on. But the technology has changed so much that, you know, it's not the case anymore with inverter driven heat pumps. So this is an example of what those elements look like. And they're typically inside your air handler. But again with the cold climate heat pumps, if you had those you would only want to have it for emergency backup heat.

00:23:23:11 - 00:23:42:11
Steve Easley: You wouldn't need them for supplemental heat like the heat pumps of yesteryear. Okay, so this is what a single and two speed heat pump. You know, basically capacity looks like as the outdoor temperature drops. So let's just say at roughly 50 degrees, we have 100% of our capacity, the ability of that to deliver the desired amount of meat.

00:23:42:12 - 00:24:04:29
Steve Easley: But what happens as the outdoor temperature drops, the capacity of the unit drops off dramatically. So it's maybe 25% of the capacity at five degrees that it would have been at, let's say, 45 or 50. And so that's why traditionally people haven't used heat pumps in the colder climate. Also the supply temperature as an impact of outdoor temperature.

00:24:04:29 - 00:24:28:29
Steve Easley: So let's say 55 degrees, we might get discharge temperatures at the register of around 125 degrees. But check this out on a standard heat pump. Look what happens to the discharge temperature at the register when the outdoor temperature tries to drop. So by the time we get down to roughly, let's say, you know, 25 degrees, you're looking at this as substantially lower than your body temperature.

00:24:28:29 - 00:24:48:29
Steve Easley: So what happens is, is that if the if the air coming out of the register is colder than your body temperature, it's going to feel cool, even though it's still plenty capable of heating your home, it's going to feel cooler. Now. The discharge temperatures of the inverter driven cold climate heat pumps are much, much higher. And so they don't suffer from some of those issues.

00:24:49:00 - 00:25:14:13
Steve Easley: So the advantages of a variable speed is you don't need a auxiliary heat for that. You might want to use it for backup in the colder climates, but in the warmer climates you wouldn't need that. They can supply 110 degree discharge temperatures, you know, down to about 38 degrees. Single and stage and two state systems can only give you about 89 degrees max at those temperatures.

00:25:14:15 - 00:25:42:00
Steve Easley: By using variable speed compressors, you can avoid adding, you know, the big 40 or 50 breakers like you see in a traditional system, because you can use multiple condensers, you know, that have much lower Andros. And also with if you don't need auxiliary heat, the size and the amp load of your air handler drop dramatically. And so that's a real plus.

00:25:42:02 - 00:26:02:14
Steve Easley: All right. So let's take a look at a cold climate heat pump compared to a standard pump. And this is a this is a curve from the equipment. That's what I'm using in my own house by the way I'll show you some examples of that. But looking at a traditional heat pump let's say we're at 47 degrees. We're 100% of our capacity.

00:26:02:15 - 00:26:31:25
Steve Easley: As you can see, as we start getting down to close to ten degrees, our capacity drops off dramatically. But a cold climate and this is two different sized units, by the way, the reason you're seeing that can maintain 93% of its capacity at these very low temperatures down at, you know, you know, 13 degrees below zero. So there's no reason why in this day and age, now that we can't switch to heat pumps, because you don't get the the comfort penalty and you don't get the capacity penalty.

00:26:31:29 - 00:26:58:01
Steve Easley: In fact, you actually quite a bit more comfortable with these systems. So understanding some very important customer feedback, things that we've learned over the years about is important. So setting customer expectations is really key to reducing potential callbacks. And the traditional heat pumps have always said that it takes too long to heat up my house. Compared to a gas furnace, the discharge temperatures are lower, so it feels like this blowing cold air.

00:26:58:01 - 00:27:25:19
Steve Easley: And sometimes the bills are higher than people thought because in some cases natural gas is substantially cheaper than electricity, so getting our home as efficient as possible. It's really important to help curb those costs. It's also the complaints people have had is that the higher airflow and lower temperatures, sometimes people have had some issues with that longer recovery time than fossil fuels, the leaky building.

00:27:25:21 - 00:27:53:09
Steve Easley: So if I have a big league air leakage in my home, it greater impacts recovery time because the system has to work harder ductility and that cancellation has a greater impact. So it's really important that we make sure that we get our enclosure tight and well insulated. But our ducts, if possible, are located in conditioned space, but at the very least insulated to at least hour eight and then Eric Seal and then getting the enclosure right.

00:27:53:10 - 00:28:14:13
Steve Easley: So making sure we have good levels of insulation and we do a good job of air sealing is really, really important. So one of the things that I'm doing in my project, I'm going to be doing, you know, scrape on installation on the exterior walls, I'm going to be using these low pressure kits. They're made by DuPont. They're called froth packs.

00:28:14:13 - 00:28:34:16
Steve Easley: And so I'll put two inches of foam on the inside the air seal, and then I'll bounce off the rest of that with with blown fiberglass for economics. But the spray foam here has an R value of about 6.1 per inch. So you get a really high value. And on the exterior I'll be using my my drain ramp and whether to barrier.

00:28:34:16 - 00:28:54:29
Steve Easley: And I'm going to go over that with our ten exterior insulation. You may wonder what these fasteners are. These are called our tube seal fasteners. And what they do is, is that they have a way to compress when you screw them into the wall. And that way you don't get any leaks around the fasteners. And then I'm using a Latin type product.

00:28:55:00 - 00:29:20:17
Steve Easley: I'm going to go on the outside. So I have this. This is a range screen labs which have this heavy duty lab that you have bed to stucco into. But up against the exterior insulation we have this rain screen material. This basically separates the the seco from the foam sheathing here by about a quarter of an inch. And you'll notice it has these grooves that run down the back so that I get plenty of drainage.

00:29:20:17 - 00:29:43:20
Steve Easley: So that way I can put exterior insulation on the outside of my house and not worry about water getting behind it and getting trapped. So that's just a quick overview of my my building envelope there. Now, as I said earlier, no matter what type of heating cooling system you have, you definitely want to seal your ductwork. But certainly with with heat pumps, it makes much more makes it just as much sense.

00:29:43:23 - 00:30:20:00
Steve Easley: Here you'll notice all the black marks in this fiberglass insulation, or whether joints and the duck work has not been sealed. Now, the codes now all require that ductwork be not only insulated, but air sealed and tested. And so it's really important part of that here, for example, you see that there's no insulation on the ductwork. And so if I had say, you know, even 100 degrees flowing to this ductwork, and this is like this is in a crawl space, this metal just radiates that heat to the into the crawl space.

00:30:20:00 - 00:30:42:09
Steve Easley: And that means that my heating discharge temperatures are going to be cooler. So sealed and insulated is really, really important. Not like you see here. And even the airflow is really an important part of this. So the type of registers that you select are really important. These are just awful. They really block a lot of the airflow. They increase the static pressure.

00:30:42:11 - 00:31:05:11
Steve Easley: I thought I had a picture of one that would work better than this, but I might later on here. But anyway, I'll show you an example of what one could look like. So these are inverter driven. Heat pumps come at a variety of different formats. So this is a multi position air handler. This is where this can be put in any direction to be horizontal or vertical.

00:31:05:13 - 00:31:27:09
Steve Easley: And it is more like a traditional air handler that you have in your home. Another type of system that is a ductless system are these. This is you've probably seen these before, these mini splits and then more newer systems. This is what I'm putting in my home. These are these cassettes. And I'm putting eight of these in my house selecting completely zone each room separately.

00:31:27:09 - 00:31:49:23
Steve Easley: And so what these cassettes they can mount in the space that's only eight inches tall. They can be upwards of 18,000 used per hour, maybe a little bit bigger and smaller too, for that matter. But the way these work is that you don't need ductwork with them. It has a line set that goes to a compressor condenser, and the heat pump is basically located in this very compact space.

00:31:49:23 - 00:32:11:09
Steve Easley: And then it has these vanes in here that move up and down and left to right, so you can distribute that air across the room. And so each of these rooms will get its own unit. And that way you can vary. You have customized the temperature in each individual zone. And most importantly you're not heating cooling spaces that you don't need.

00:32:11:10 - 00:32:30:20
Steve Easley: And maybe wondering what this ductwork is. This is the ductwork from my ERP. So my ERP will supply fresh air into the room. And then this will pick that fresh air up, condition it to whatever temperature I want and then broadcast out to the room. Another nice feature about these units is because the fan is in the ceiling like this.

00:32:30:21 - 00:32:55:25
Steve Easley: You don't need ceiling fans, and so you can just have the unit run to move air if that's all you want to do. Or you can provide whatever amount of heating cooling you want. Now these also come in larger configurations. This is a four way unit here that broadcasts there in four different directions. And even as an IR sensor on it, that will actually detect heat signatures inside the room and directly airflow where it needs to go.

00:32:55:25 - 00:33:21:26
Steve Easley: So that's some pretty slick technology. Other options are we can have these ducted systems, and these are more like you would see in yesteryear in commercial buildings. But now they make them for residential. So you could take one of these units. And these are about roughly 3ft to 4ft wide on the sides of the unit and about, you know, four feet deep roughly, and, you know, roughly 8 to 12in tall and depending on the size of the unit.

00:33:21:26 - 00:33:41:12
Steve Easley: But then you can add your ductwork and you have your return air duct. And it makes it a lot easier to put these in condition spaces. And again, these are very compact. And so the beauty of these inverter driven heat pumps is that we've got lots of different options to select. So you can design the system to fit almost any application.

00:33:41:14 - 00:33:59:18
Steve Easley: And the beauty of this is, is that when you're looking at a traditional non inverter style system, and what we mean by inverter is that it has the ability to run out of variable speed. And so the beauty of this is the unit will know what your set point temperature is. It will know what the outdoor temperature is.

00:33:59:19 - 00:34:24:20
Steve Easley: It will know what the indoor temperature is. And it will automatically vary the speed of the compressor so that you get really consistent temperatures like you see here on the right at minimal power consumption. Because remember, because it's variable speed, it runs at a lower speed. That means it uses less way less energy. The other really important thing advantage to this is that means you're not so worried about oversize equipment.

00:34:24:23 - 00:35:07:05
Steve Easley: You know, whoever would have thought we'd seen 100 plus degree temperatures in in Seattle, whoever thought we'd see 104 degrees in London or 100 degrees in Paris. So, you know, the sizing systems that we have because of climate change, you know, this kind of solved that problem because if you do oversize, you know, it just runs at a lower speed, whereas a traditional system, it just starts on and off and it has one amp draw, you know, and consistently now you have higher amp draw when it starts that, you know, traditional compressor draws about four times the amp, traditional, you know, unit where variable speed doesn't fall into fall for that.

00:35:07:06 - 00:35:34:06
Steve Easley: So the bottom line is in a traditional system you have these big temperature swings and inverter variable speed system. You just have very minimal temperature swings. So you have much higher levels of comfort, less noise. All things said, it's the way to go now. It's really important that we pay close attention to our installation issues. Like when you look at how you install ductwork, it can't be installed like this.

00:35:34:09 - 00:35:58:01
Steve Easley: No matter what system you have, you wouldn't want to do this. But certainly we want to pay close attention to that because the installation has a bigger impact on the performance and efficiency of heat pumps for traditional heat pumps, not inverter driven heat pumps, simply because the heat pumps typically have to run longer than fossil fuel equipment to, you know, because fossil fuels can dump a lot of heat here in very short period of time.

00:35:58:06 - 00:36:24:26
Steve Easley: But the penalties for that are what we're witnessing around the globe today. So my point here is, is that the beauty of of variable speed equipment is it doesn't have those same issues. So make sure that we seal the ductwork, make sure that the systems are properly charged. Make sure we have adequate airflow. Make sure that they evacuate the systems before they charge properly.

00:36:24:29 - 00:36:31:05
Steve Easley: And when you're looking at a yes.

00:36:31:07 - 00:36:55:29
Steve Easley: Let me go back here. Let's take a look at how the impact. I don't know when my slides are advancing. When you're looking at this is crazy. You hit a typical 2000 square foot house. Let's just say we have attic temperatures of 140 degrees, and our deck insulation and a typical existing home is going to be about our 2.1.

00:36:55:29 - 00:37:25:17
Steve Easley: Well, if you were to take and unfold all your ductwork that's in your attic and lay it out flat, it'd be the equivalent of about 40% of the surface area of your attic. And so if I have a typical 2000 square foot house, it's 140 degrees in the attic. Check this out. It just the amount of heat gain into my ductwork from my attic is about 30,500 BTUs, or about two and a half tons.

00:37:25:20 - 00:37:48:20
Steve Easley: Now, if I simply insulate my work to our eight, it drops that to 8000 BTUs or 0.67 tons. So bottom line is, if you can keep ductwork and equipment out of your attic, that's job one. Number two, if you do have to put it in your attic, you know, make sure that your ducks are sealed and insulated to at least.

00:37:48:23 - 00:38:25:11
Steve Easley: And if you can bury your debts below our 60 insulation, that's even better. But always air seal, always insulate that you could do what we call an attic where you take the attic insulation. It was on the attic floor and you move it to underside of the roof deck. Traditionally, this is done with spray foam. In the cold climates, use closed cell spray foam and the warmer climates like climate zone three and below you could use open cell phone this air seals, but also this space becomes within five degrees of the inside space, so you're not nearly as penalized as much for having your ducks in your attic.

00:38:25:13 - 00:38:48:21
Steve Easley: So charging the system is really important. One study that was done by Proctor Engineering Group, they found that 66 out of ten times the unit was not properly charged. You may say, well, what does charging unit have to do with the overall effectiveness? Well, if I'm 100% of charge, I'm 100% of capacity. But check what happens if I'm 25% under charge, like six out of ten times they are.

00:38:48:27 - 00:39:12:29
Steve Easley: My capacity goes from 175%. So that means if I had a 48,000 BTU per unit or a four ton unit, that's now going to be changed to a three ton unit or 36,000 of output, that's just awful. The same thing happens when you overcharged and you get 25% less capacity, but you pay 10% more on your power bills because of it.

00:39:13:00 - 00:39:33:06
Steve Easley: So bottom line is, you know, charging inappropriately. And that means instead of just guessing what it is, they typically would use a set of scales and then they would weigh in the amount of refrigerant. You know, they do these calculations on site and they can figure out exactly how much refrigerant is required. And they weigh that amount in.

00:39:33:08 - 00:40:09:10
Steve Easley: So if ten ounces is required, he knows exactly how much he's putting in. So he's not overcharging or under charging okay. And then sizing is really important for comfort energy efficiency and performance. So we want to base the sizing of these systems on actual loads not rule of thumb. So if somebody is saying, oh, it's so many 600ft² to the town or 400ft² to the ton, that's just insane, because you might have a house that has, you know, you know, 400ft of glass that faces west, and then their house might be the same floor plan and that glass faces north.

00:40:09:10 - 00:40:42:25
Steve Easley: So it's totally different heating and cooling load. So based on actual loads over sizing can also create insufficient humidification. That's another reason why variables the heat pumps are really superior is because they tend to run consistently. So you don't have spikes in indoor relative humidity in the summer months. Obviously, when these things short cycle, they tend to have shortened equipment life and has a bigger impact on on efficiency and operating costs.

00:40:42:27 - 00:41:07:27
Steve Easley: Okay. So typically we don't want to size greater than 10% greater than manual J current version. We want to use indoor design temperatures of no less than 75 degrees. We want to have indoor and outdoor coils that are actually matched. This has a problem in older homes. When somebody changes out their air conditioner, sometimes they don't want to mess with the inside of the unit because that's expensive and time consuming.

00:41:07:27 - 00:41:30:21
Steve Easley: So they just simply change the outdoor unit. And if the coils aren't match, you know the performance. Make sure that our backs are designed according to a manual D that's really important and that we make sure the bedrooms have return air ducts or grills or jump ducks, and we equalize the pressure so that when bedroom doors are closed, we have adequate airflow.

00:41:30:27 - 00:42:03:15
Steve Easley: Okay. So it has a big impact on installation, has a huge impact on the building envelope because if ducks are leaky, it causes positive and negative pressures across the building envelope. And average homes that are not air sealed in terms of the duct leaks are free to 400 cfm of leakage. So that wastes lots of energy. Now, this is something you may not be aware of because stuff is used almost universally in new construction, but how tight the duct work is stretched has a big impact on the friction loss.

00:42:03:15 - 00:42:25:18
Steve Easley: So for example, if I just have, you know, standard ductwork, I might have four times the friction loss. Whereas if I stretch that ductwork. So what you would want to do is use metal elbows and couplings. So you could fasten those to a truss or a framing member. Then you pull the duct tight so you get, you know, 25% of the friction loss.

00:42:25:19 - 00:42:43:03
Steve Easley: So it's really important to pay close attention to that. Also, every bend that you have has a big impact on friction loss. So if I have a duct it's ten feet long and I have two offsets like you see here, that duct has an equivalent length. That ten foot duct has an equivalent length of 50ft in terms of friction loss.

00:42:43:03 - 00:43:02:28
Steve Easley: So fewer bands. What a lot of people do now, they'll use flex stuck and then use metal elbows to reduce the friction loss that those those joints. And so making sure that it's properly installed and not crushed or crimped has a big impact on overall home performance. Now, I mentioned earlier about the type of grills that you use are important.

00:43:02:29 - 00:43:31:24
Steve Easley: This is just awful in terms of airflow. So these commercial grade grills, they're like egg crates. They have much more efficient airflow. This is a filter grill. So you can put the filter there to make it easy to change. But when you look at the friction loss of a of a grill like this, it's many times greater than what what you really want and what you're trying to do is roughly get in that two square foot per ton range of opening size for your return air ducts.

00:43:31:27 - 00:43:52:13
Steve Easley: Typically, what happens in homes the HVAC systems are or the equipment is oversize and the ductwork is typically typically undersized. That's why you want to. And this is what one of these supply registers look like. Same design. This is what I have in my house. And these are much more efficient in terms of being able to direct airflow and much less fiction loss.

00:43:52:13 - 00:44:11:06
Steve Easley: So these are several things you can do to get much better performance out of your system. Now this costs more money, but it's well worth it. Okay, so we install the deck, work metal elbows in places like this. We don't bend them around trusses because imagine what restriction and airflow is going to be there. Same situation here. And so these have huge impacts on overall performance.

00:44:11:06 - 00:44:28:01
Steve Easley: Here we have a 12 inch joist. We got a foreign sewer line compressing a ten inch dock. And the problem is once the drywall it's up you know all you know is is that you're not getting much airflow out of here. So this has a big impact on comfort. And one of the reasons why I like those cassettes, like I showed you that I'm using, is that, you know, there are systems.

00:44:28:01 - 00:44:52:11
Steve Easley: So you don't you don't have the issues associated with that. You got better zone control. There's an example of not pre-planning. And so, you know, the plumber comes along after the guy was there. And next thing you know, we've got you know compressed stuff for supports are important adequate as well. Very inadequate. So bottom line is duck run should be straight with no kinks or areas.

00:44:52:14 - 00:45:09:29
Steve Easley: Duct should have no more than 90 degree angle. Turns should be sealed with mask sealants flex. That connection should be fast and the duct ties and certainly follow title 24 standards. This is not the way you want to do it with a couple of sheet metal screws, right? And you'll be obvious when you see the black marks in the insulation, simply pull the liner over.

00:45:10:00 - 00:45:29:21
Steve Easley: You just want UL 181 BF tapes and then a mechanical faster pull the insulation over that use a draw band there as well. These are the types of tapes that we typically use. We don't want to use the the gray clock back duct tape because they just don't laugh. Now one of the things that's really important as new homes are tighter is to use ARVs.

00:45:29:21 - 00:46:05:19
Steve Easley: And these coverage ventilators have tremendous capacity to bring fresh air in and recover the energy that you pay the heat and cool out of your system. So, for example, I live in the Phoenix area, and the unit that I'm using, it will take out degree air at 110 degrees. It will recover what I've used to air condition my loads and is pretreated air to the house now is 83 degree air coming in instead of 110, takes a stellar out at 75 degrees and raises it to 105 degrees.

00:46:05:19 - 00:46:28:24
Steve Easley: So as you can see, rather than if I didn't have an EV, I would be bringing in 110 degree air and having to cool that down to 75 degrees. But with an ERP, I simply taken that air and is coming at 83 degrees. And so I've only got eight degrees of temperature dropped to have to deal with. And obviously they work equally well in the winter months as well.

00:46:28:25 - 00:47:00:16
Steve Easley: So are a must. But how you control those XVs are really important as well. And so I'm using this system that's called overture and it's this little box I'll show you what it looks like that just mounts on the wall. And then this communicates with the cloud. And analyze a computer that analyzes the indoor air quality. And then it will operate my, my ERV as I need to and also could trigger bath bands and can trigger kitchen exhaust fans.

00:47:00:17 - 00:47:25:11
Steve Easley: And so this was an actual reading I took from my smartphone just yesterday. And you can see that my house, the relative humidity was, you know, 51%. My PM 2.5 was almost nothing. PM 2.5, those particles that are less than two and a half microns. And the reason why people don't like those is because when you ingest those particles, they can bridge the gap between your lung tissue and your bloodstream.

00:47:25:11 - 00:47:59:03
Steve Easley: So really breaks havoc with cardiovascular disease, asthma, things like this. So limiting the PM 2.5 is really, really important. You can see my VOCs total getting compounds very low. Their CO2 levels will high. Not sure why but it measures these and it will automatically operate your V to you know adjust for that. Now I don't have an ERP in the existing home that I'm in now, but the home I'm building I'll be using one of those a couple of those actually.

00:47:59:06 - 00:48:24:29
Steve Easley: But again they can control bathroom exhaust fans. They can control your your voice. They can control your range hood and much more superior way to, you know, not to have to over ventilate your home. Because remember for every cubic foot event we bring it in the house, we have to hear cool. And so having a system that can be smart enough to figure out when your IQ is good or bad is really important.

00:48:25:00 - 00:48:46:11
Steve Easley: Now, even have these wall switches that will also analyze this because it communicates with the mothership. And you can look at your, your your wall switches and you'll see a green, LED yellow or red light. You got to get an idea what's going on with your indoor air quality. Pretty clever. All right. So let's switch quickly to heat pump water heaters.

00:48:46:11 - 00:49:11:11
Steve Easley: And I'll take a whole bunch of questions here. And we're down on that in any big hurry. But bottom line is he pump water heaters. There are 2 to 4 times more efficient than traditional water heaters. So substantial savings by replacing certainly an electric water heater. And it can be competitive certainly with natural gas. So and that really depends on what you're paying for fuel.

00:49:11:12 - 00:49:43:05
Steve Easley: Now here's an example of an electric water heater that I replace my house I replace it with a here same same brand. And my old one would use about 4500W of electricity to heat my hot water, and had a copy coefficient about point 8 to 0.93. Check this out. The new one and heat pump only mode operates at copper four and only draws 400W, so 10% of the electric use and that equates to about a 75% savings.

00:49:43:05 - 00:50:14:04
Steve Easley: So over the course of a year, you might spend for an electric water heater well over $400, this could be a little bit over 100. So about a fourth of the cost. Now these are actual reports. That's from my smartphone from my water heater. And I want to show you this because in January. I used on average I was running about two kilowatt hours a day to eat my hot water for the two of us, and I used about about 79 kilowatt hours for the month of January.

00:50:14:05 - 00:50:39:14
Steve Easley: Check out June. I use only 40 and same two people. And the reason why is because the water heater, as you saw here, is in my garage and our temperatures here are in the high 90s. So basically my copy is crazy high because my garage is at 90 some degrees or even 100 in some cases. And so it's very easy to take that heat out of the air and put it in the water.

00:50:39:14 - 00:51:04:24
Steve Easley: Now, these heat pump water heaters also have electric strips. So that if you do have a situation where you need to high demand, the heat pump and the strips will run at the same time. But of course that increase it reduces the efficiency and increases the cost. The bottom line is 75% less energy, a fourth of the energy, and four times the efficiency of a gas or an electric water heater.

00:51:04:26 - 00:51:38:22
Steve Easley: So it does take a little longer to heat an electric resistance. Water heater can heat about 20 gallons in an hour. Gas can do that in about 15 to 20 minutes. A heat pump only mode can manage about eight gallons an hour, and sometimes even less if it's cold in your in your garage where this is located. So electric resistance basically turns 100% of the electricity in the heat heat pump, water heater can, you know, be, as I said, you know, four times more efficient than that.

00:51:38:24 - 00:51:59:22
Steve Easley: And when you when you're shopping for one, you want to simply look at this. This is the uniform energy factor. That's the Department of Energy requirement that all water heaters have. This label is pretty closely related to the coefficient of performance. So the one that I purchased was this at a UEFA four. And it was a little slightly smaller unit than this.

00:51:59:22 - 00:52:26:25
Steve Easley: But bottom line is crazy high efficiencies. And then the beauty of these things, you can control them all with your smartphone. They have a digital control panel on the front. So it has four different modes vacation, energy saver, high Demand and pump. Obviously, heat pump is going to be the most efficient mode that it can be in. And like I said, I'm averaged about a, you know, one and a half to two kilowatt hours a day for hot water use as opposed to four times that amount.

00:52:26:26 - 00:52:44:13
Steve Easley: There are obviously Wi-Fi controlled, but you got to make sure that you have it in this mode, because if you haven't in high demand mode, you're actually going to use more electricity than a conventional water heater. And so making sure you understand what these modes are. And again, you can control all from your smartphone anywhere in the world.

00:52:44:13 - 00:53:12:18
Steve Easley: So you can always monitor how much energy you're using. And that's nice. Locations have an impact on this. Typically if you don't have any doors, need a room that's roughly 700 cubic feet. If you assuming that you don't have any ductwork running into this, you can run ductwork to these. If you have a louver door. They have requirements as to what the size of these louvers are and how much you undercut the door if you don't have louvers in it.

00:53:12:19 - 00:53:35:16
Steve Easley: So what if all the manufacturer's instructions you can run ductwork disease so you can take, you know, air from the outside and duck there to the outside. So there's no penalty of you're not using air from your house or your garage. It just depends on what you want to do. Okay. That's what that looks like. Making sure that we install the property they need have plenty of room to breathe.

00:53:35:16 - 00:53:58:20
Steve Easley: There's one basement application. There's one where they mounted it too close to the basement wall. So it's not going to have good airflow. So that's really important. Make sure you have adequate space to change your filters above it, because these filters do have to be, you know, checked every, every couple of months making sure that you insulate your water pipes and use anti skull features if required by code.

00:53:58:22 - 00:54:26:11
Steve Easley: Also recognize that they do make more noise than a traditional water heater. Not much. I mean 50 db as you can almost you can hear it run, but it's in a closet. Even if you know in appropriate location, it's not going to hear much noise. But it's important that, you know, if you have one near a bedroom, might want to, you know, insulate the space and if maybe or put it in a place where it's not close by now.

00:54:26:12 - 00:54:52:18
Steve Easley: Finally, we're going to wrap up here pretty quickly, but I'm going to talk a little bit about gas stoves because they do they emit PM 2.5. They nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide, even formaldehyde. And this is what's really shocking when you look at cooking a full meal on a gas stove. It can release about 110 to 420 parts per billion of of two.

00:54:52:21 - 00:55:18:25
Steve Easley: Now this nitric oxide are not good for you. In fact, the EPA's outdoor limit is 100. But inside your home, you're raising it to you know, could be four times that. So this has a big impact, particularly on young people, because young people, their breathing rates are higher, they have higher levels of physical activity. They have a higher lung surface area to their body weight, and the respiratory systems are pretty immune.

00:55:18:25 - 00:55:49:09
Steve Easley: So what they found is that, you know, this has elevated respiratory issues like asthma, things of this nature, even cardiovascular effects and so forth. So, you know, cooking on a gas stove is not good. And in fact, when you look at just, you know, basic things that we do every day, you know, you're looking at gas appliances, they they just contain approximately 50 to 400% higher concentrations that are even, even that you would ever want.

00:55:49:11 - 00:56:17:17
Steve Easley: So not good. So the solution is induction cooking. It doesn't heat the stove and heats the cookware. And so for example here you can see that this is on. They cut this pan in half where it's on the on what you would call the burner. It's like totally cool to the touch. But what these induction stoves do, they excite the the molecules in a Ferris, you know, a Ferris pan like Ferris metal pan.

00:56:17:17 - 00:56:46:10
Steve Easley: And so aluminum would not work. You would have to have some type of iron type core cooking device or pan, but it excites the electrons there and generate some substantially more efficiency. There are probably 20% more efficient than your typical gas or electric range. Now, I won't say this that for a long time they've known that that, you know, these studies that, you know, two has been bad for health.

00:56:46:10 - 00:57:08:03
Steve Easley: And, you know, it can be a 50% increase in risk of respiratory problems in children and adolescents. So dump the gas though. Also make sure your range is properly sized. I'm going to show you this is a what what you want to have in terms of capture efficiency. A lot of the cheapy range hoods, they don't capture the front burner very well.

00:57:08:03 - 00:57:28:23
Steve Easley: So what you want to do is get a range hood that has a high capture efficiency like you see here. And it's really important to note that 40% of people you know, or more don't even believe that the range hood is needed. And whether you're cooking with gas or electric, it's really important to use your range. And then finally he pump clothes riders.

00:57:28:26 - 00:57:54:20
Steve Easley: What they do is they simply about 50% energy savings. I'm going to put a hybrid system in as some electric resistance and heat pump together, but in general 50% less energy. They are kind of pricey. You'll be 13 to $1800, but they are easier on your fabrics. But essentially what they do, they just use a heat pump. And what it does is it takes the heat out of the air to evaporate the more clothing.

00:57:54:21 - 00:58:10:22
Steve Easley: So pretty clever, you know, and they call your house at the same time that they take the heat out of your clothes. So I know I've covered a lot of material here in a short period of time, so I'd love to, you know, take some questions.

00:58:10:24 - 00:58:14:11
Steve Easley: How many folks.

00:58:14:13 - 00:58:47:10
Mike Collignon: All right. Thank you, Steve. And we are going to get to some of these questions. Now we've got we've got a few of them. So first we're going to start off with our friend Mike from southeast. He wanted to know if you could talk a little bit about the importance of first weather rising existing homes and ducts before switching to a heat pump, because he's concerned that the homeowner could be disappointed with the cost and the comfort performance otherwise.

00:58:47:12 - 00:59:07:29
Steve Easley: Well, Mike, gradually, right. In fact, I encourage that 100%. I obviously I didn't ask that in my talk, but that's job one. Absolutely. Because remember, he pumps have a longer recovery time and just simply because and remember the cold of the temperature is the longer the recovery times. So less so with inverter driven product. But still that's an issue.

00:59:07:29 - 00:59:28:24
Steve Easley: So it's really critical that weather is your home. Get the air tightness as much as you can. You know, make sure that you have add insulation as much as you possibly can afford. You know, if you can check your windows, certainly seal your deck organ, insulate your ductwork. I can't emphasize that enough because we've actually had that happen.

00:59:28:29 - 00:59:51:11
Steve Easley: You know, in the Bay area where I used to live, they had these policies where they had people basically put moratoriums on natural gas, and people would put in some of these technologies, and they weren't happy because they didn't get installed. Right. They didn't whether I's the home. And so it was really important to, you know, give your house a checkup first.

00:59:51:13 - 01:00:15:05
Mike Collignon: Okay. Awesome. So we had a couple of questions about the cassettes that you hit on. And so I want to run through some of those questions with you. Now Steve, first Dan had a question. Do those cassettes require drains and pumps to get rid of the condensation?

01:00:15:07 - 01:00:24:13
Steve Easley: They do. I'll show you an example. I'll go back to that square by knows what we're talking about here.

01:00:24:16 - 01:00:48:06
Steve Easley: So yes they do. They have this kind of cool thing about these things. They do have a common drain, because anytime you have warm, humid air going across a cold, you're going to get condensation. And so what they do is that they have a it's about a half an inch diameter clear line that has a pump. And you simply run that to a drain somewhere and you know, so yes, you do.

01:00:48:08 - 01:00:56:19
Steve Easley: It does require but a drain line. But it is the good news is the pump is built into the system.

01:00:56:22 - 01:01:12:00
Mike Collignon: Okay. Staying with the cassette theme, our friend Ali, who I know had a couple questions. Does the cassette require a dedicated two two, two, 20 volt line?

01:01:12:02 - 01:01:36:12
Steve Easley: No. The cassette is powered from a wire that comes from the line set. So you simply run your your line set to your outdoor unit, and that control wire provides the power to run a very efficient blower. So and it's really important on these systems that you don't splice those wires because there's a number of signals that go across there.

01:01:36:12 - 01:01:54:27
Steve Easley: And if you cut the wires and splice them it doesn't work so well. So be sure that you no one these are continuous runs, but you know, you're looking at line sets that, you know, run, you know, 80ft. I had some runs that were 80ft and.

01:01:55:00 - 01:01:59:26
Mike Collignon: So could you use the existing ceiling fan wiring for the cassette.

01:01:59:28 - 01:02:25:11
Steve Easley: No you don't need you don't need any high voltage wiring. It's all powered from the condenser outside. So if you if you look at a traditional air conditioner, you'll see that you have a line set that runs from the indoor outdoor unit to the indoor unit. With this, there is a cable that comes with the line set, and it's all powered from the from the compressor.

01:02:25:11 - 01:02:35:22
Steve Easley: So you don't have any electricity that runs to this except from the outdoor unit. So it doesn't require any other wiring other than what the wiring that the system comes with.

01:02:35:25 - 01:02:37:18
Mike Collignon: Okay.

01:02:37:20 - 01:02:55:19
Steve Easley: And the remote is. I'm sorry, I'm going to say this. There can be controlled by a thermostat. So if you wanted to have a traditional thermostat on the wall that you wired in, you certainly could. Most people just use the remote control, and there's a little saddle that mounts to the wall, and you simply take the remote control and tell it what you want it to do.

01:02:55:21 - 01:03:03:23
Steve Easley: You can also operate from your smartphone, too. So, you know, the days of traditional thermostats are really unnecessary.

01:03:03:25 - 01:03:11:25
Mike Collignon: So one follow up question then from Ali. So he's asking is it a split system then.

01:03:11:27 - 01:03:24:20
Steve Easley: Absolutely. So the business end of this. Well both ends of the business end. But actually you might let me go back. I'll show you this slide here quick.

01:03:24:22 - 01:03:46:17
Steve Easley: We look at these all these systems are basically the same in the sense that you have an outdoor unit. And then you have this line set that has the refrigerant in it, and you have an indoor coil and then you have the blower. So all this happens in a heat pump is you have a reversing valve here. And this reversing valve reverses the cycle and heating mode.

01:03:46:17 - 01:04:04:15
Steve Easley: And then in cooling mode reverses the cycle. But this refrigerant is what care either takes the heat from the outside and moves to the inside, or takes the heat from the inside or moves to the outside. And the reason that you don't need any additional power for these concepts is because you don't have this big air handler has a very small blower in this.

01:04:04:16 - 01:04:16:19
Steve Easley: If you go back to this, this is all contained inside this cassette. So you can basically we'll pull away the night thought.

01:04:16:22 - 01:04:17:23
Mike Collignon: That's okay.

01:04:17:25 - 01:04:23:14
Steve Easley: Yeah. So that's it. But it is a split system. Yes. You have an indoor and outdoor coil.

01:04:23:17 - 01:04:26:01
Mike Collignon: Awesome.

01:04:26:04 - 01:05:01:20
Mike Collignon: So our friend les who you know he's got a question a couple of questions. One, he wanted to make sure to mention that the federal standard for Seer and increases on January 1st across the country. And then one of the question he had, which was we're talking about water heating now, what electric water heating solution have you found for either tiny homes or individual multifamily units that have limited indoor space?

01:05:01:23 - 01:05:29:21
Steve Easley: Well, about the only. They do have some electric tankless systems, but keep in mind that those are electric resistance. Now this is better than gas, but it's not going to be cheaper than gas. Typically, because most places we use natural gas to generate electricity. So most places gas is cheaper than electric. However, if you can do a heat pump system, you know that that certainly would be typically is going to be less than natural gas that they do have.

01:05:29:22 - 01:05:56:21
Steve Easley: I mean, they do have electric system, they don't have great output. But the water heater that I have in the home that I'm living in now temporarily is a heat pump water heater that I showed you. And that's a 40 gallon system. And it takes up about roughly two square feet of space. But you have to have a room that, you know, obviously has a 700 cubic feet or otherwise.

01:05:56:22 - 01:06:01:07
Steve Easley: It just it's not perpetual motion. Right. So. Right.

01:06:01:09 - 01:06:18:13
Mike Collignon: Well, and you just mentioned something, Steve, that was brought up in one of the questions that was sent in by Brian. Can you share your thoughts on some incremental improvements involving some of these technologies while you occupy the home?

01:06:18:16 - 01:06:43:16
Steve Easley: Well, yeah, I mean, you can retro fit almost. That's the beauty of all these different types of cassettes. I mean, you've got four way cassettes, you've got a one way cassette, you've got mini splits, you know, they're all basically the same technology. You've got, you know, multiple air handlers. You've got these, you know, ducted systems like this.

01:06:43:16 - 01:06:58:19
Steve Easley: So a lot of these things would work in existing homes. Absolutely. And what's really remarkable about these systems is they're credibly quiet. That's the thing that most people really love about them. They're very, very quiet.

01:06:58:22 - 01:07:11:00
Mike Collignon: Right. So we're going to go to an interesting question from our friend Fernando down in Puerto Rico. And I love when he joined us all the time.

01:07:11:02 - 01:07:41:00
Mike Collignon: He says that most houses that implement rooftop PV in Puerto Rico rely on gas stoves to keep the PV system costs affordable. So other than induction stoves, he's one enough. There's any other options on how to address this challenge so that electrical stoves could be implemented with PVS. And he's basically saying, hey, is there such a thing as a heat pump stove for the tropics?

01:07:41:02 - 01:08:04:15
Steve Easley: Unfortunately, no. But they do have portable induction pads. You know, they're like, if you ever watched like the cooking shows or sometimes on the Today show or one of the morning shows, they'll they'll have one of these induction things that are roughly about 12 by 12. And you plug it into the wall and they have they have 110 version of I don't have versions of that.

01:08:04:15 - 01:08:23:12
Steve Easley: So you wouldn't have to have necessarily a big 220 volt, you know, induction range. You could buy one of these portable induction cook. You know, Pat okay.

01:08:23:14 - 01:08:36:12
Mike Collignon: Starting with heat pumps for a second. We've got a couple of questions on on the heat pumps Judy wants to know, can you talk about refrigerants that are used in the heat pumps and their global warming potential?

01:08:36:14 - 01:09:02:07
Steve Easley: They're not good. They're getting better. The goal is, is to try to get a heat pump. And they do have them that can run on CO2. But I will say this, I think I have a I'm going to try this, try to go to another presentation here. Do.

01:09:02:10 - 01:09:15:12
Steve Easley: I show you a chart here that will answer your question exactly. Sure. I hope I still have it.

01:09:15:14 - 01:09:24:16
Steve Easley: Here we go. Perfect. So this is where we've come. Hang on. Let me do this.

01:09:24:19 - 01:09:28:17
Steve Easley: Okay. So.

01:09:28:20 - 01:09:50:13
Steve Easley: When we look at your typical refrigerants, this is global warming potential. And so the GWP of CO2 is one. And this kind of shows you where we're at. Like if you look at what we big switched when we went from our 12, you know that was a big that was 10,900. Now we're not for ten. We're down to 2000.

01:09:50:13 - 01:10:09:15
Steve Easley: But and if we go to some of these other refrigerants like our 22 and some of the others, so they're working on it, I don't think I think in the next ten years we'll probably see potentially CO2 versions of these more commonplace. So hopefully that answers your question.

01:10:09:17 - 01:10:34:12
Mike Collignon: Okay. Why don't we get to a question from Joseph. He say invites nature in heat pump system. Both the indoor and outdoor units run during the heating season, and power usage for heating seems to be higher than where there's only like indoor furnace running during the heating season. So how much savings do you see during the heating season?

01:10:34:14 - 01:11:03:19
Steve Easley: Well, that really comes down to the efficiency. If you're looking at comparing it to electric resistance, you're looking at tremendous savings because these things are typically have copies of anywhere between 2 and 4. And that's geothermal systems can be even way higher than that. Geothermal systems can have, you know, serious upwards of like in the 20s. So if you're using electric resistance, these are going to be roughly half to a fourth of the cost.

01:11:03:24 - 01:11:23:14
Steve Easley: Comparing it to natural gas is really hard because it just depends on what you're paying for natural gas. Some parts of the country, natural gas is expensive, like California, for example. It's, I think like $1.50 a m but in other places in the country is half that. So it really depends on what you're paying for. You know, when you're looking at fuel comparisons.

01:11:23:14 - 01:11:34:24
Steve Easley: But just keep in mind that if you have all electric heating, a heat pump is always going to be half to a fourth as much to heat your own.

01:11:34:27 - 01:11:37:15
Mike Collignon: Okay.

01:11:37:17 - 01:12:01:11
Steve Easley: From Brian I had the first was just saying the first home I built, the first time I ever built in 1978. I put a heat pump in it and, you know, it basically was started to become there was no value in running that heat pump when the temperature got down below ten degrees. And that's because the backup strips used, I mean, the heat pump ran so long that used about the same amount of electricity as the strips did.

01:12:01:11 - 01:12:14:03
Steve Easley: So it didn't make any sense to, you know, operate the heat pump, those colder temperatures. But nowadays with the cold climate he pumps, you get that efficiency all the way down to -13.

01:12:14:05 - 01:12:46:03
Mike Collignon: Okay. So continue with the heat pump questions because they are running their foreign in here. And this is great. I love all the questions that we're getting from our audience. Brian's question is with heat pump options can be quote outside component B in an attic because he's hoping to insulate the floor of the attic and then therefore allow the attic to get hot.

01:12:46:05 - 01:13:08:27
Steve Easley: Well, you would have to remember the the efficiency is directly a function of the outdoor temperature. So on a sunny day, if you're adequate warmer then it would have a higher, higher copy. But the question is two questions. To answer that one, check with your local coats to make sure that you can have a unit up in your attic space.

01:13:09:05 - 01:13:38:21
Steve Easley: And number two, you would want to ensure that attic has adequate ventilation because in the summer months, your efficiency would go way down and eventually the attic would get so hot that, you know, remember, the is hotter, the outdoor temperature, the less efficient, and the less the lower the capacity the system has. So in the summer months, if you had that condenser up in your attic and it was 100 and, you know, 40 degrees, its efficiency would be really, really bad.

01:13:38:21 - 01:14:02:17
Steve Easley: Its capacity would be really, really poor. So what you would want to do if you had a condenser in your attic, you would want to make sure that it had plenty of ventilation, and maybe even use some small type of fan to make sure that you're constantly circulating outdoor air through that attic. Okay, but in the winter months, if you had a lot of sunshine, the attic temperature increase, the copy would increase.

01:14:02:17 - 01:14:06:21
Steve Easley: And so that could be a good thing.

01:14:06:23 - 01:14:17:09
Mike Collignon: And I think it's important to point out here, James from Mitsubishi chimed in to say that it's not rated for the plenum.

01:14:17:12 - 01:14:21:10
Steve Easley: So okay, we elaborate more on that.

01:14:21:12 - 01:14:27:07
Mike Collignon: That was that was about his comment. There was no not rated for the plenum, but.

01:14:27:09 - 01:14:49:10
Steve Easley: Probably heel, heel, heel. I'd like to I'd like to explain what he said that a little bit more. Yeah. But also that is important point. You want to make sure that that would that would work with the manufacturer's recommendations to I mean, when it comes down to warranty and things that nature, make sure that you don't install the unit in environment where the manufacturer says that's not a good idea.

01:14:49:12 - 01:15:26:19
Mike Collignon: Yes, yes. All right. Let's go on to another question here. We had Fernando from Puerto Rico earlier. Now we've got Todd who's living up in Ottawa, Canada, and so love the international participation. He's planning on heating a small well-insulated home with a multi split system for supplementary heating. Is it recommended to add resistance heating to multi units or add a resistance post heater on the system?

01:15:26:21 - 01:15:47:14
Steve Easley: Well, that's something you probably want to engineer. I know your temperatures up there get pretty chilly. One of the thing you want to consider. You know the reason why you might want to have some type of backup heating system is because if the system ever goes south, you know a component breaks or something like that. You don't want your pipes freezing or, you know, that would be bad.

01:15:47:15 - 01:16:09:23
Steve Easley: So I think what you're saying is, is that, you know, if you're going to do you I guess I thought that the only way you could do it is maybe do some type of supplementary heat on a couple of them with an ERP, because if you're using, like the cassettes, you know, they don't have backup resistance heaters in them.

01:16:09:26 - 01:16:19:21
Mike Collignon: And Steve, I've got a bit more context from James at Mitsubishi. He says they're not fire rated for being enclosed in an attic.

01:16:19:23 - 01:16:27:08
Steve Easley: Oh good point. Well, that's why I said I said. Be sure to check your local codes. But yeah. And so if they're not fire rated then that'd be a big no no.

01:16:27:11 - 01:16:28:08
Mike Collignon: Yeah, yeah.

01:16:28:09 - 01:16:46:19
Steve Easley: Thank you. Thank you for weighing in on that. It's nice when the manufacturers tune in to these because I think it helps, you know they have a perspective on this that, you know, because they warranty their equipment. And they also understand a lot of the safety issues associated with their particular equipment. So thank you for that.

01:16:46:21 - 01:17:11:07
Mike Collignon: Yeah. Yeah we appreciate that James. Because Steve's exactly right. Yes. People would would I know you would love everybody to use Mitsubishi equipment James. At the same time, I know that Miss Vichy wants people to use it properly and well and not improperly and have problems. So it's it's a great dialog to have here. I wanted to get to a series of questions from John.

01:17:11:09 - 01:17:27:16
Mike Collignon: He's down in Florida. He wants to know, first of all, are there any review sites, websites for finding the best make and models for some of these green technologies? Anywhere that kind of does reviews on this stuff?

01:17:27:18 - 01:17:54:02
Steve Easley: Well, I tell you, the for hot water for water heaters, that is standard North. I think it's the Northeast Energy Alliance. They have a standard a heat pump standard. So if you just Google that and they have tiers one through five and you would and they list all the manufacturers that meet these different tier levels. So for example, you know you probably want to get something with something a tier tier 3 or 4 as opposed to 1 or 2 higher is better.

01:17:54:04 - 01:18:15:04
Steve Easley: And so that's I can tell you that about the about heat pump water heaters. So that's good advice as far as the maximum manufacturer's equipment, you know, the most, you know, if you look at Mississippi and Daikin and you know, I think they're they make probably the best equipment I've had extremely good luck. This will be my third.

01:18:15:07 - 01:18:36:21
Steve Easley: It's a system that I've installed in different parts of the world. And I've had really good luck with their equipment. But I'm not aware of anybody that other than just Google reviews, but I'm not aware of any, any organization that actually, you know, has been testing or rating these in terms of consumer satisfaction.

01:18:36:24 - 01:18:59:18
Mike Collignon: Okay. Well, so similar type of question instead of products. We're talking about human beings. And obviously we have one here John, that you can reach out to. But how do you find a good green remodeling consultant. Because he's trying to upgrade a 1960s coastal Florida home.

01:18:59:21 - 01:19:30:18
Steve Easley: Well, that's a good question. I mean, I start with BPI certified contractors. You know what you want. What you want to find is a home performance contractor and a good place to start that you might you might check with the Energy Efficient Building Lines Association. And so check with them. They might have a list of contractors that I think my suggestion maybe somebody else is listening in has some thoughts on that too.

01:19:30:21 - 01:19:31:21
Steve Easley: And then.

01:19:31:24 - 01:19:54:20
Mike Collignon: One other question. We didn't touch on this too much, Steve, but I know that you have got some knowledge in this field. He's wanting to know what's the best roofing material to kind of harmonize with a green rebuild, given that he's down in Florida. I've got to think one, you know, that has a fairly reflective roof, a light colored roof is going to be one of the things you're going to want to look for.

01:19:54:20 - 01:20:01:07
Mike Collignon: But also being in Florida, you've got to deal with resilience.

01:20:01:09 - 01:20:24:10
Steve Easley: For sure. Well, I can tell you that what I'm doing is I'm doing a stone coated metal roof. I'm in Arizona, obviously, so everybody out west seems to be using concrete or concrete tile. And the reason why I'm not keen on that is because our peak times are, you know, in early evening and California, for example, their peak times are 3 to 8 or 4 to 9.

01:20:24:11 - 01:20:43:20
Steve Easley: And so the home picks up all this heat all day long just making down on that concrete tile roof. And then that's a huge amount of thermal mass. And then it just radiates that heat back into the attic, which is where most people of duct work is, and equipment. So these high mass risks are really the kiss of death for people that have time of use, electric rates.

01:20:43:22 - 01:21:07:21
Steve Easley: So I'm doing a stone coated metal roof. They also made standing scene and it's ventilated. It has it has like a three quarter of space underneath it so I can get air circulation. And so I don't, you know, end up with that penalty. Certainly lighter colored roofs tend to operate about 40 on average, about 40 degrees cooler than darker colors.

01:21:07:24 - 01:21:47:23
Steve Easley: And resilience is obviously in earthquake country is excuse me, a hurricane country is certainly an important part of that. That's why a lot of people in your part of the world, in Florida, they'll use a couple inches of spray foam, even one inch of spray coastal spray foam on the bottom of the roof deck. The University of Florida did a study on this a few years ago, and they found that you increase the uplift resistance by 300% by just a one inch coating and closed on that glues the roof deck to the bottom of two through your trusses, not to the bottom of the trust, but to your trusses.

01:21:47:25 - 01:22:12:17
Steve Easley: Now, the weakest part of a home in a wind event is the garage door. The garage door blows in, price rises the house and rips the roof off. So what I would do, I would do a low mass roof of lighter of light color. I would probably do a non benedetti below with cloves, house spray foam and then I would, I could you get a riffing system that had a ventilation space in it above the roof deck.

01:22:12:18 - 01:22:29:25
Steve Easley: And then I would be ideal. And then I would use a really good high quality peel and stick membrane that goes down underneath my roofing system. So if I lose my shingles, I still have a peel and stick membrane that is going to provide me, you know, whether it's.

01:22:29:27 - 01:22:47:05
Mike Collignon: All right. A question from Bart, Bart's builder down south. If I remember right, I've communicated with him a few times. Are the CFM vent hoods for induction cooktops any different from gas cooktops?

01:22:47:08 - 01:23:18:10
Steve Easley: No, no, you definitely have more emissions from gas equipment than electric. Certainly. No doubt you saw that. But no, you would want to get if you go to the Home Ventilation Institute and they have formulas on there about, you know, how you size your your range hoods. And keep in mind that the further the range or the higher the range hood is off the top of the stove, the greater CFM you have to have in terms of its capacity.

01:23:18:10 - 01:23:45:25
Steve Easley: So it never use these microwave arrangements that are not in any rate should there's not been into the outside. But certainly HDI is a great place to get some good counsel on how to size that range based on what what you're doing. I mean, I think personally the codes, you can't have anything less than 100 CFM, and you're probably looking at something closer to 400 CFM was, in my opinion, would be something more of a more of a minimum.

01:23:45:29 - 01:24:02:07
Steve Easley: But keep in mind that capture velocity is is really, really important. And so the system that I'm putting in, that's what that video is. It has a really they are units have pretty good capture efficiency I should say not capture efficiency.

01:24:02:09 - 01:24:35:04
Mike Collignon: All right. Last question for you Steve. Then we'll let you go. And this is this is from me. If this is the world according to Steve Easley, what is what is the path to retrofitting existing homes effectively? Because it seems like incentives will motivate 5 to 10% of the market, but that leaves a lot of untouched homes. So Steve is king of the world for the day.

01:24:35:07 - 01:24:42:05
Mike Collignon: How do you how do you effectively retrofit existing homes?

01:24:42:08 - 01:25:05:07
Steve Easley: Okay. Well, number one, I start with the attic. And if I had a traditional attic with insulation in it and it's an older home but typical bat insulation, I would and I did this on a house I had that was a, you know, 35 year old home. I pulled all the insulation out of the attic was like our 19 basset.

01:25:05:07 - 01:25:23:23
Steve Easley: Over time, you know that from aldehyde binder tends to break down, the insulation starts to compress under its own weight. And I also had a bad issue in the attic, so I cleaned everything up anyway. So I pulled all the insulation out, and then I did a blower door test on the house, and it was 4460 cfm of Liege.

01:25:23:25 - 01:25:48:02
Steve Easley: It's a two story house, roughly 3300ft². So then I thought, well, what a great opportunity to air seal the attic. So I bought, you know, ten cans of spray foam. Home Depot I went around and I sealed all the interior plates. I sealed every attic penetration that there wasn't plumbing, electrical, HVAC, sealed all of that and then went back, reinstated it with our 38.

01:25:48:02 - 01:26:09:05
Steve Easley: And this was in California. So. And then I didn't blow it out. Just to see what impact air sealed the attic did well, went from 4460 to 2180. I cut the air infiltration rate, the entire house in half. And this is a house on a crawl space, you know, just by air sealing the attic. And my bills dropped pretty quickly to about $100 a month.

01:26:09:05 - 01:26:32:11
Steve Easley: And then. So then I air sealed my crawl space. And that's another great place to start. These are all things you can do on a cool day and pretty cost effectively. I think I did that for, you know, all the all the materials are probably less than $100. Then after that I would take a, you know, a serious look at my HVAC system.

01:26:32:11 - 01:26:57:06
Steve Easley: And because, you know, those systems are terribly inefficient. And I would take a look at maybe ways that I could retrofit to accommodate, you know, the new inverter driven heat pumps, the house that I basically tore down in the opinions area. I had a gas furnace, gas water heater. And replacing that, as you saw with the, you know, variable speed pumps.

01:26:57:06 - 01:27:19:03
Steve Easley: And I'm using a green, you know, heat pump, water heater. So great place to start because these these old equipment, not only is it terribly easily inefficient, you know sheer ratings in the ten range, but it's also the way that operates is not very efficient either. And so, you know, they size these systems for the hottest day of the year.

01:27:19:03 - 01:27:40:26
Steve Easley: And so that compressor in the integral and the what draw is based on the hottest day of the year. So when you have a single speed system and it kicks on and it's, you know, you know, 885 degrees outside and you want to call your house down to 75, you know, that's still drawing all that wattage, whereas a variable speed system can operate at much lower wattage.

01:27:40:29 - 01:28:02:11
Steve Easley: And so that's a great way to save energy. So weather seal where you can and then your HPC system. And then that would start with insulating and sealing your ducts through a deck plus test. So you would simply you know, you can many of the local utilities will let you borrow some of their equipment, you know, like in PG and East territory in California.

01:28:02:13 - 01:28:24:02
Steve Easley: They they loan out duct blasters and blower doors. So you can kind of quantify that. You can buy an infrared camera for $400. That's a great place to start kind of looking at your building envelope. But yeah, I mean, your ducks insulate your ducts, replace your equipment. And then next thing I would do is start taking a serious look at my windows.

01:28:24:05 - 01:28:49:06
Steve Easley: Windows can have a huge impact on cooling load for sure. The newer technologies, you know, they can, you know, block upwards of seven almost 80% of the sun's rated energy. So if you have, you know, high air conditioning bills, the low products I mean, like you look at Cardinals 366 classes Anderson Marvin mill guard pretty much all the a lot of the window manufacturers use their glass.

01:28:49:14 - 01:29:05:16
Steve Easley: The 366 is, you know, blocks 78% of the sun's radio and works in the winter too. So as the lowest you factor I'm talking I would say.

01:29:05:18 - 01:29:32:03
Mike Collignon: I'm talking to Steve. I'm talking big picture. How do you move this market? Because there's so many existing homes that are out there. The energy efficiency gains, you know, because like I said, incentives will only drive so many people. Some people might do it out of the goodness of their heart or because they'll actually compute that, hey, I can lower my bills, but I still can send.

01:29:32:04 - 01:29:55:03
Mike Collignon: There's a lot of homes that would just sit out there completely untouched, retrofitted, and continue to waste a whole bunch of energy. And given what we're facing with the climate, I don't know how long we can wait around. So I don't know how do you again, this is kind of a philosophical big picture thing here, Steve, but how do you move it?

01:29:55:06 - 01:30:24:07
Steve Easley: Well, I think it's education, honestly. I mean, people won't pay a dime for more for anything unless they think they're going to be better off. So in the absence of knowledge, you know, the typically the dollar is everybody's yardstick. So I think having an understanding I think I think honestly people are starting to wake up that these climate issues I mean, you can't deny that the last I mean, the last 5 or 6 years, we've seen dramatic increases in our temperatures.

01:30:24:10 - 01:30:44:03
Steve Easley: You know, whoever thought, I mean, you think Dallas has like 100? I think I have like, 100 days over 100 degrees overall. Something like that. Some crazy. Never like that. I mean, we're starting to see the impact of this. So I think people's comfort is starting to be impacted by this. And, you know, if you look at Europe, for example, those poor people, it's 80% of their population doesn't have air conditioning.

01:30:44:03 - 01:31:03:29
Steve Easley: So, you know, they just have or have need of it. And so these things start to change. I mean, whoever thought that they wouldn't be able to go champagne grapes and France, I mean, it's just I think people are starting to wake up to this and recognize that the solution to this is gonna happen sooner than later. And so I think but I think that comes with education.

01:31:04:01 - 01:31:28:29
Steve Easley: That's really, really does. And speaking of which, if you go to Pacific Gas and Electric, I do webinars for them, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, I do webinars for them, southern California Edison and their class is just like this. We have a number of classes and other people like myself are taking classes. So I encourage you to, you know, look at what some of the utilities are offering in terms of education as well.

01:31:29:02 - 01:31:49:18
Mike Collignon: And as I was once told by somebody pretty smart, tell a friend to bring them along. Well, hey, speaking of education, thank you, Steve, for sharing your time today with your knowledge and really appreciate it. On behalf of the audience and myself. Thank you. Thank you very much.

01:31:49:20 - 01:31:55:08
Steve Easley: Thank you. Well thank you. And check out the website and download the books.

01:31:55:10 - 01:32:23:18
Mike Collignon: And look, I really appreciate the audience asking all those questions. It's great. And I love when I see names. I know to always good to have friends around as well. Thank you also to Mitsubishi Electric, Westlake, Royal Building Products, Schneider Electric and power shipped by MB energy for their generous sponsorship of this webinar. Now, if you did enjoy today's webinar and I hope you did, you and would like to learn more about some of the things that we were talking about in other housing 2.0 strategies.

01:32:23:20 - 01:32:45:11
Mike Collignon: Well, you can register now for the third workshop series of 2022. It's a six part series, and the next series begins on Thursday, November 3rd. And you say, oh man, it's a long time away. Yes, it is, but that doesn't mean you can't register now. So Thursday, November 3rd, 12 p.m. Eastern time. That'll be the first one. And we will wrap it up before the end of the year, even before some of the holidays.

01:32:45:11 - 01:32:49:18
Mike Collignon: So simply go to Green Builder Media.

01:32:49:21 - 01:32:57:17
Mike Collignon: Two and you can find out more about it. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy and take care of everyone. So long.