www.heyokasolutions.com

Starting From Home Challenge 2009

Request for Participation

Issue Date: May 31, 2008

Due Date: Prior to September 15, 2008 4PM (Eastern Time)

Technical Questions must be received in writing no later than August 15, 2008.

(Please submit technical questions to [email protected])

Introduction

If we as a society are to achieve the sorts of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that climate scientists tell us are needed to prevent catastrophic climate change, we . . . need to tackle our existing building stock, including houses. – Alex Wilson, Environmental Building News.

New homes are complex structures, systems that function on the interaction of hundreds of components, constantly seeking to degrade, constantly struggling to keep out the elements and shelter and protect the occupants.  A new home, however, starts with a “clean slate”.  What goes into it and how it is assembled can be carefully planned in advance.  It is usually designed with a “typical” occupant in mind.  But compared to existing homes, new homes are the proverbial “piece of cake”.

The 126 million existing homes in this country cover a vast spectrum of ages, designs, locations, materials, maintenance rigors, and, perhaps most important of all, occupants.  If we are to have a serious impact on reducing the energy load of housing in the U.S., we must address the issues of existing housing.  We have the technologies to reduce the loads of homes by 70% to 90%.  We have the knowledge of how that can be done, although it is not simple to do.  If such dramatic weatherization is performed incorrectly, it can destroy the building.  Tight, energy efficient structures are not always forgiving.  The Starting From Home Challenge is an exciting intercollegiate and interdisciplinary competition that encourages the development of building science programs to propagate existing, state of the art knowledge and seek to expand the knowledge base.

Homes last for hundreds of years, occupied by dozens of occupants.  Although the fundamentals of building science remain true, new technologies and new realities are posing new, unresolved questions.  And like all the technologies of our age, the pace of change is accelerating.  As described by Linda Wigington of Affordable Comfort, Inc., home construction has been based on three false premises:

v     Predictable energy and water cost and supplies;

v     Predictable weather events and climate stability;

v     Value neutral energy consumption, treating it as a commodity with no moral consequences to consumption.

To address these issues effectively we need strong, inventive minds that can creatively reach conclusions based in solid fundamentals but with new connections to address the new realities.

The Starting From Home Challenge reaches beyond the technologies of building science.  The house and the occupants in it are a system.  When we drive a car, we constantly interact with the car and its environment.  We know the speed from the speedometer.  We know our fuel consumption from the gas gauge.  We have stickers on the windshield to tell us when to change the oil and when to have the car inspected.  Before homeowners habits change they must be made aware of what is happening in their homes – how much water they are using, how much oil or gas, how much electricity.  Only when they are aware will their habits change.

The 11 individual challenges are based on three fundamental principals and goals:

1. Reduction of the energy loads of existing homes.  On the narrowest scale, significantly reducing the energy loads of the homes involved in the Challenge is the essential bottom line.
2. Education of the participants and the homeowners.  To keep the homes operating properly, the occupants need to understand and appreciate the systems nature of the structures they live in.  That understanding will spread to their friends and neighbors.  The students involved will learn and question and challenge the program and its fundamentals to grow and develop.  Their knowledge and their discoveries will spread beyond the Challenge for years to come.
3. Promotion of the concepts.  To widen the impact of the Challenge and have the greatest impact on our national energy independence and our long term impact on the planet, the concepts engendered by this effort need to be promoted beyond the boundaries of the Challenge and its participants.

The Starting From Home Challenge will test proficiency in a wide range of skills. It is a team event, in which the diversity of abilities comes from the composition of the team rather than a single individual. Engineering students will work with students from other disciplines such as sociology, psychology, marketing, communications, graphic design, analysis, and computer science to do the troubleshooting, communicating, dreaming, and building this challenging project requires.  The first Starting From Home Challenge will take place over the course of 2008 and be judged at the Affordable Comfort Conference in Kansas City in April, 2009. 

The following set of priorities determines what the individual challenges should encompass.

v     Energy Efficiency: Improving the energy efficiency of the home and reducing the carbon footprint are key ingredients to the success of the Challenge and its legacy effects.  The Challenge will measure the starting and ending points of energy consumption of the home and use those numbers to establish the carbon savings.  How much added energy would be required to bring the home to the magic Zero Energy number and what approaches could be taken to get there?

v     Consumer Communications: Serious energy reductions in homes can only be achieved if the occupant participates and concurs with the changes.  They need to understand and integrate the changes in their homes into their lives.  They need to know what is happening through feedback.   And they need to be able to communicate their enthusiasm to others.

v     Comfort: There are technical metrics that can predict a home’s comfort such as temperature and humidity and indoor air and environmental quality (including sound).  There are also less quantifiable comfort issues such as the occupants’ reflections on comfort for their lifestyles and comfort with their home’s economics and maintenance costs.

v     Appliances and Electronics: We are ever more dependent upon our electronics to ease our daily chores and expand our horizons.  Devices are designed to stand-by waiting for our commands, adding to the home’s “plug loads”.  Some of this originated from vacuum tube based entertainment equipment.  Keeping the filaments warm for instant on became a feature.  The SFHC will seek to have the teams address these parasitic loads.

v     Water: Water is a precious resource that we use without thinking.  The SFHC will be challenging the teams to address the household water consumption without striking negative comfort issues with the occupants.  Washing the dishes once a week or bathing once a month might not be the most acceptable solution!

v     Hot Water: A great deal of energy is consumed delivering hot water to sinks and showers in the home and techniques have been developed to address that energy waste.  The SFHC will look for creative approaches to solving these problems in these retrofit applications.

v     Getting it done: Teams will be asked to document the energy required to “get the job done”.  If materials are ripped out of the home, energy is required to haul the waste away and treat it. 

v     Life Cycle: Quick problem resolutions can serve as “band-aids” that only address the symptoms and don’t come close to addressing the cause.  The SFHC will be considering every decision the teams make from a Life Cycle position.  A motor may be inefficient, but if it is in the living space does that offset the cost of heating the space?  In all seasons?  The inefficient motor may or may not last longer than an efficient one.  It may require more or less maintenance cost.  The SFHC will expect the teams to present clear rationales for their decisions.

v     Project Documentation: The Challenges will be performed locally.  All of the information received by the judges will be received through project documentation.  The clearer and more precise the documentation, the better the case will be for the success of the team’s work.  There are industry standard approaches to many of the problems that the teams will face.  But this is a developing field and taking an innovative approach is encouraged, but it will be up to the team to prove that their approach is better than and at least as accurate as an industry standard approach.

The 11 Challenges: The Starting From Home organizers have selected the following 11 challenges.  Although the Challenge has divided up the activities, the teams will be expected to regard all of them as part of the system and consider how they interact.  The teams can earn between 100 and 200 points in each challenge for a total of 1475 points.  Of the 1475 total points possible, 950 points are awarded based on objective performance measurements or task completion, and 525 points are awarded through subjective evaluations by a variety of appropriately selected experts.

For these improvements to work effectively of the longest possible term, it is vital that the home occupant understand them, understand how to use them, understand how to maintain them, and understand how to explain them to future occupants.  Unless the improvements have long term durability they will not be sustainable.

Challenge 1: Engineering  (150 points)- To determine the starting point for all the modifications the teams will need to establish the initial carbon load of the home.  They will model the home with energy analysis software using the reference program defined by the Challenge organizers.  They will be allowed to use different software – either commercially available or developed in-house – but they will have to demonstrate its effectiveness in comparison to the reference software.  They will describe their proposed changes and provide life cycle analysis of those changes to demonstrate the long term effectiveness. 

Challenge 2: Lighting, Appliances and Plug Load (125 points) – Getting down to the specifics of the electrical devices in the home, this challenge requires performing an electrical appliance inventory, determining how to get the electrical consumption to zero.  There are often small, parasitic loads that are hard to find.  With this information the teams will be asked to propose ways to significantly reduce these loads without compromising the comfort of the home’s occupants, and they will get extra points if they can actually imaginatively improve the occupants’ comfort and enjoyment.  The teams will be asked to justify those changes in terms of life cycle and impact on the environment beyond the home in question.

Challenge 3: Water (125 points) –The teams will be asked to perform a thorough water use assessment.  They will need to evaluate how water is used both inside and outside the home and if there are opportunities to improve on the use, again without compromising the comfort of the occupants.  The teams can look for ways to enhance water use through rain water collection or the use of grey water, for example, if local codes allow such things.

Challenge 4: Hot Water (150 points) – The teams will be asked to assess how hot water is generated, delivered, and used throughout the home.  They will be asked to find ways of improving on those systems considering the costs and life cycle analysis of engineered plumbing or tankless systems.  They will also need to consider how the hot water systems integrate with other systems in the home such as the location of the water heater and its effects on indoor air quality.

Challenge 5: Comfort (150 points) – Teams will be asked to measure the psychometric comfort of the homes before and after changes.  They will also need to measure IAQ issues, consider the impact of attached garages, chemical storage, ventilation systems, and sound levels.  Teams will also consider issues such as walk-off mats, central vacuums, and other sustainable approaches.  And since these are occupied homes, the homeowners are likely to have opinions on how comfortable their homes are before and after changes are made.  The teams will need to take those opinions into account in making any changes.

Challenge 6: Feedback and Consumer Education (200 points) – A great deal of energy can be saved simply through consumer awareness and education.  Judges will look for teams to provide homeowners with the means to understand how their systems are operating.  Immediate feedback can redirect the homeowners’ needs for systems and when and how they use them.  This will include not only electrical consumption but will look for ways to inform homeowners on water, gas, and oil usage.  Judges will also look for approaches to educating the homeowners on energy efficiency and system maintenance so that the changes will have a long term affect.

Challenge 7: Percent Improvement (100 points) – The Starting From Home Challenge is seeking deep energy savings in the order of 70% to 90%.  The organizers recognize the difficulties of achieving those lofty goals, but this challenge addresses the simple, mathematical improvements compared to the starting point established in Challenge 1: Engineering.  Different homes in different locations with different occupants will have very different answers to this challenge.  The judges will be looking at improvements in water, electrical, and other fuel usage.

Challenge 8: Market Viability (150 points) – The Challenge organizers are looking for the widest possible adoption of the ideas generated.  The improvements themselves have to have market appeal.  This challenge affects the long and short term comfort of the occupants.  It can be measured by the improved market appeal of the home on the real estate market and with banks.

Challenge 9: Efficiency of Delivery (100 points) – Teams will be required to log the amount of energy required to make their proposed changes to the home, a way of considering the embodied energy in their improvements.  This challenge is a means of making the teams aware of efficiency and organization, limiting the “go-fer” mentality of many job sites.  Teams will be rewarded for creative approaches for tracking this information.

Challenge 10: Cost (100 points) – One of the goals for the Challenge is to determine the depth of improvements that can be achieved for a limited budget.  Therefore the budget for the 2009 SFHC is set at $15,000 in cash or in kind (or any combination of the two with the total capped at $15,000) that each team will be responsible for raising and can spend on the home.  The judges will be seeking documentation on how that funding is used and creative ways for the team to recoup those funds – selling the carbon credits, for example.  The use of the money should be in ways that typical homeowners outside of the Challenge could duplicate.  The judges will also be looking for how the team communicates the budget information to the homeowner.

Challenge 11: Durability (125 points) – Unless the improvements to the building are built to last, these efforts will be wasted.  This challenge underlines that fact that water is a major component in building durability, and although it is difficult with an existing house to address external water and structural moisture control, there are always creative ways for teams to approach, assess, and address these issues.

The Challenge Organizers

AFFORDABLE COMFORT, INC. 32 Church St., Suite 204, Waynesburg, PA 15370 www.AffordableComfort.org

ACI, a (501(c) (3)) non-profit organization, celebrated 20 years of training building and housing professionals in 2006. Founded as the Affordable Comfort Conference in 1986, our roots are in defining the best way to make homes energy efficient, without harming the residents and the building. With diligent attention to building science, testing and diagnostics, this systems approach has evolved into the field of home (building) performance, the foundation for creating sustainable, green communities. Everyone, including the residents, has a role in making a home perform as it should.   ACI’s mission is to advance the performance of residential buildings through unbiased education. Its vision is for every family to have a green home that is energy efficient, durable, comfortable, healthy, and safe, and every community has access to and values skilled home performance services.

HEYOKA SOLUTIONS, LLC. 19 Howes Lane, Falmouth, MA 02540 www.HeyokaSolutions.com

Heyoka Solutions is a design and development firm located in southeastern Massachusetts. Its principals have more than 35 years of experience with residential product design, development, and market penetration. The company volunteers an enormous amount of time and resources working with organizations such as the Home Ventilating Institute (HVI), LEED for Homes, the NAHB Green Building Standard, ASHRAE’s residential ventilation standards, and teaching and writing about indoor environmental quality. Heyoka Solutions designs and develops products for home use that strive for optimum efficiency. By following a system dynamics approach from concept through manufacture and installation, Heyoka assures that the resulting environmentally friendly product optimizes the energy used along the way and will not offset its benefits by any associated negative by-products or processes.

The Indication of Interest must be returned to the address below no later than July 31, 2008.  This will enter the School Team in our system and allow us to provide updates.

If your team is chosen to compete, the complete registration form will be sent to you and must be returned to the address below no later than September 15, 2008 .

The Starting From Home Challenge

c/o Heyoka Solutions

PO Box 787

Falmouth, MA  02541

Schedule:

            Completed Intent to Compete form must be returned by July 31, 2008

            Registration will be sent out to selected teams by August 15, 2008

Completed registration applications must be returned by September 15, 2008 (4PM ET)

Final application approval and notification by September 25, 2008

Houses must be started by October 1, 2008

Houses must be completed by December 31, 2008

Project results will be presented at the National Affordable Comfort Conference in Kansas City in April, 2009 (Conference Dates:  April 27 – May 1, 2009)

Overview:  The Challenge is real work on real houses with real occupants.  Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, that means that the houses can’t be brought to the judges at the ACI national conference.  The teams will have to find ways to document their effort with photography and video and all those modern media tools.  The teams will bring that documentation to the conference and make their presentations in front of the judges.

During the months prior to the competition there will be requests from the judges for the team to provide updates on their progress.  Before the work begins, the teams will need to provide a description of what they plan to do and how they plan to do it and what they anticipate their results will be.

There will be three months after the work has been completed to accumulate some real results.  Because this is a very short period of time, teams may want to perform “co-heating” tests or use some other method to prove their results.  And it will be important to continue accumulating data in the months after the Challenge ends, ideally having some sort of reporting every year at the competition so the future teams and participants can see the lasting results of each year’s winner.  There is hope that we will be able to draw on these results in future competitions by adding another dimension to the Challenge that showcases and awards past renovations.

All of this effort centers around the homeowner, so it will be critical not only to select the right home, but it needs to be occupied by the right homeowner.

Home Selection:  For the Challenge to have real and reproducible results, modifications to the home will be limited to $15,000.  Ideally that would include labor and materials, so that the homes next to the Challenge home could make the same renovations with similar results.  But since this is a learning experience with volunteers involved, one of the individual challenges looks for ways to track the energy involved in getting the people and materials back and forth to the site.

Occupants:  The interaction between the energy efficiency improvements and the home occupant is crucial to the Challenge.  It is one of the more difficult components of working on existing housing.  But it has been made clear that making the occupant aware of their energy use can have a major impact on their consumption.  It is important that the changes make their life more not less comfortable.  They need to understand the changes and be able to maintain them and explain them to their friends and neighbors.  And they need to continue to look for other ways to make improvements on their home.

Equipment:  The team will need to have access to the proper equipment to test the home before and after the Challenge work has been performed.  These may include a blower door, a duct blaster, data loggers, and infrared camera.  The team will also need access to documentation equipment such as digital imaging equipment in order to put together their presentation.

Building Science Professional:  The team will need to be coached by a Building Science professional.  This person can either be a part of the School or an independent professional.  We have contact with many individuals in this category who are willing volunteers.

Professional Contractor:  The team should also work with a professional contractor.  This will make sure that the work performed is of professional grade, it will help to establish the communication link between the science knowledge of the School and the Building Scientist and the contractor, and it will resolve some of the insurance issues.  We will help with this pairing as well.