Weatherization, Efficiency Maine and you

FARMINGTON – Josh Wojcik would not buy a Toyota Prius.

Wojcik is the founder of Upright Frameworks, a Wilton-based company that specializes in energy efficiency construction. Wojcik and his crew canvas homes for the tiniest of leaks, seeking to garner every possible saving in heating costs. He would, therefore, seem to be a natural for the hybrid Prius, which sips gasoline with the aid of an electrical motor.

But he isn’t; the payback on the energy savings takes too long. And with weatherization, much like in a pulp fiction revenge novel, the payback is everything.

In 2002, the state Legislature passed the “Act to Strengthen Energy Conservation,” aimed at two fundamental facts about Maine; old houses and cold winters. The program was originally funded through a fee attached to electric bills around the state, but has become much better known over the past several months, with an infusion of federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money. The funds are made available to homeowners (and businesses, through a separate program) who are looking to undergo the process known as “weatherization.”

Your average home may look like a box, but a more accurate analogy would be a chimney. In the winter, the furnace system becomes active and produces heat which rises up through the house; passing through cracks, gaps, empty walls and so forth. The heat reaches the attic and filters through the insulation, rafters and roof, and is gone forever. Meanwhile, throughout the entire system, gaps in the external walls and foundation pull in the cold air from the outside. Weatherization, in essence, is slowing down the air exchange through the system (known in the business as an “envelope”), so the furnace isn’t required to heat as much air.

This is what Efficiency Maine, energy auditors and contractors like Wojcik are trying to sell to the public. It hasn’t been easy; Efficiency Maine had hoped to run more than 2,000 projects annually. Having completed a few dozen this year, the organization was far enough below its quota that it increased the potential rebate by $1,000.

“The last time someone told people they should do something with their house,” Wojcik said, “it was probably a realtor who said ‘invest in your kitchen,’ and then the market fell through. I think some people don’t feel safe investing in their home. It’s a little tough [to sell the concept of weatherization], but it’s real.”

People interested in Efficiency Maine, or weatherization in general, usually either call an auditor or a contractor. Efficiency Maine maintains a list of approved auditors on their website, located here. Others contact the contractor directly, and Wojcik said it isn’t unusual for the auditor and contractor to ask each other for a second opinion.

The energy audit is the first step, as far as Efficiency Maine is concerned. The auditor comes into the home and runs a series of tests, involving a device known as a “blower door.” Every window, door and other opening is sealed, with the fan-equipped tarp door installed at a major entrance. The blower door places the home at a negative pressure, exaggerating air leaks and infiltration, which the auditor then detects with a heat-sensitive camera and other tools. The blower door also gives the auditor a measurement of the air flow through the house at 50-pascal of pressure, in cubic feet per minute.

That measurement is an important part of what the auditor is looking for, and an important part of Efficiency Maine’s funding formula. Reducing the air flow through the house is the contractor’s job.

In 2006, Wojcik returned from New York, having worked as a budget analyst in the Mayor’s Office in New York City and as an advocate of the Mass Transit Authority. In 2007 and 2008, he began working on a plan for an ambitious business model; constructing new homes out of prefabricated, insulated panels, a new technology he had learned about a few years earlier.

Then, in the fall of 2008, the economy tanked. All of Wojcik’s customers backed out and it was the beginning of what he, semi-humorously, calls the “long, cold winter.”

He wrote a draft email to his former boss in New York City, which he says he still has somewhere. Instead of sending it, however, he began doing some construction work with his father, Tom Wojcik. This eventually morphed into weatherization projects and his company, Upright Frameworks, which now employs eight people full-time.

The biggest trouble spot, and therefore the easiest place to garner savings, according to Josh Wojcik, is in the attic. Even new houses often don’t have adequate insulation, and if they do it’s the wrong kind, or in the wrong place. Fiberglass (the cotton candy-looking stuff that comes in rolls), for example, doesn’t stop air flow, it just filters it and slows it down.

“It comes down to whether or not [the builder] knew what they were doing,” Wojcik said. “If they don’t do the stuff right, the house is probably a sieve.”

Weatherization of an attic varies from property to property, but it often involves capping gaps around wall openings, chimneys and wires and then blowing in cellulose insulation. Crews might also install an airtight hatch, rather than a simple board, to allow access.

After the attic, the next best place is usually the cellar. Foundations, particularly in old houses, often have tiny cracks between bricks and blocks. As hot air rises through the building, cold air is sucked inside to replace it. Additionally, the constant flow of air through the house from the basement may draw mold and other contaminants into the living spaces.

Wojcik’s crews often air seal a basement, using a blower door to detect breaches in the envelope. In more extreme cases, they may have foam sprayed along the walls up to four feet below the ground level. This dramatically reduces the air flow into the basement, and therefore throughout the entire system. In the case of a dirt floor, polypropylene plastic wrap is laid on the ground to seal any contaminants outside of the envelope.

After the attic and the cellar, the third-best place to find savings is usually the walls. Filling uninsulated panels with cellulose is a relatively easy call, but Wojcik noted that some upgrades need to be weighed against the potential payback. While Upright Frameworks does get the occasional homeowner seeking the mythical “zero carbon footprint” project, most homeowners are looking for a return in the near future, ideally two or three years and probably not too much further than a 10-year investment.

Efficiency Maine will pay up to $1,500 if the homeowner, auditor and contractor can show a 25 percent reduction in heating and hot water costs. Until August 31, another $1,000 is available for people that reach that threshold, in addition to federal energy efficiency tax credits. More money is available for participants who hit the 50 percent threshold, although that’s obviously a more intensive weatherization project.

Wojcik believes that most homeowners can hit 25 percent, especially if the home wasn’t constructed with weatherization in mind. The costs of the process vary; audits generally average somewhere between $500 and $700, with the retrofit costing somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000, depending on how comprehensive the actual project is.

Upright Frameworks is continuing to move toward Wojcik’s original business model, prefabricated building panels, with the Wilton Planning Board recently approving a temporary assembly point for the company. In the interim, the growing demand for weatherization retrofits is keeping crews at Upright Frameworks and other contractors’ companies busy.

Wojcik said that many customers just moved into their homes and are looking to weatherize them immediately, which is fine. His favorite projects, however, are the ones where the homeowner has already lived through a heating season.

“People who can look at their heating bill and see what they saved,” he said. “That’s the great part about this.”