Energy codes Fail

[conarb]

NEW YORK — Home efficiency measures such as installing new windows or replacing insulation deliver such a small fraction of their promised energy savings that they may not save any money over the long run, according to the surprising conclusion of a University of Chicago study.

The study, which used data from a random sample of 30,000 low-income Michigan households that were eligible for an Energy Department home weatherization program, found that the projected energy savings were 2.5 times greater than actual savings. As a result, energy bills didn't decline nearly enough to eventually pay for the initial cost of the upgrades.

"The problem is that the real world is screwy," said Michael Greenstone, an energy economist and head of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. "The models project much larger savings than are realized by homeowners."

The study, conducted by Greenstone and University of California at Berkeley economists Meredith Fowlie and Catherine Wolfram, has not yet been reviewed by a panel of peers. And energy efficiency experts who were shown the study say the authors' broad conclusions about energy efficiency in general aren't justified after a study of a single program in a single state focused only on low-income households.

But Greenstone says he is finding similar results in a second study of middle-income homes in Wisconsin. If his findings are correct, they could undermine the rationale for billion-dollar federal and state efficiency programs and call into question a long-held understanding that making existing homes and businesses more energy-efficient are among the cheapest ways to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

Instead, it seems the engineering models that predict how much energy is actually saved are wildly over-optimistic. "We are primarily relying on engineering estimates," Greenstone says. "That's a reasonable thing to do in the abstract but they need to be validated."¹

And this from the most radical left-wing institution on earth, the University of California at Berkeley. This doesn't even address the biggest scam, solar panels, they are going up all over here and I ask people to call when they get their year-end "true-up" bill, so far everyone is paying more than they paid before they installed the panels when you add lease payments to the year-end bill.

Note the bolded text, this is outright fraud just like the climate models proved wrong when CO2 levels doubled and average temperatures actually went down, mathematicians can easily falsify their models to obtain any result that the government wants, just like Jonathan Gruber did with Obamacare, stating that he did it to trick the "stupid American voters".

¹ http://www.startribune.com/home-efficiency-upgrades-fall-short-don-t-pay-study/309367761/

 

[jwilly3879]

It has been known for a long time that replacement windows were the worst energy saving improvement you could make but yet it is a booming business. People will choose new windows over air sealing and increased insulation because it is something they can see and touch even when the payback is 20+ years. Air sealing is the cheapest, most effective energy saving measure with the shortest payback. We did some homes years ago that reduced air infiltration by 70% with a 4 year payback but they still wanted new windows.

 

[conarb]

Air sealing is the cheapest, most effective energy saving measure with the shortest payback. We did some homes years ago that reduced air infiltration by 70% with a 4 year payback but they still wanted new windows.

But this study is showing that air sealing is failing, plus we have found out that people are getting sick in sealed up homes, California is now going to be requiring that ASHRAE 62.2 ventilation required be tripled which requires fans to be constantly blowing, in jobs were air sealing only is being done the additional air ventilation is not required, facts are now showing that the constant running of fans to meet the requirements consume more energy than the air sealing was supposed to save.

 

[jwilly3879]

These were very old homes and even after air sealing still leaked quite a bit, down from 14 air changes per hour to 6.

 

[conarb]

This study was in Michigan, they are currently doing another study in Wisconsin, I have never been in either state but assume they have mostly older homes. After our Yosemite hantavirus scare removing insulation from homes was big business, those I've talked to who removed it report no difference in their utility bills, but this is a moderate climate.

I think an contractor doing any energy upgrades should be required to guarantee the results and put up a bond guaranteeing those results so people defrauded had some recourse.

I think the biggest issue here is the fraudulent mathematical models that were used by the government to perpetuate this fraud, just like the faudulent mathamatical models used by Jonathan Gruber to sell "the stupid American voters" on Obamacare in his words, I sure hope they prosecute Gruber.

 

[MASSDRIVER]

Brent.

 

[jdfruit]

Energy "engineering" is a very precise calculation of base conditions that vary up to 75% plus or minus from the average. We know there is cause/effect for insulation, windows, higher efficiency appliances, etc. but we don't know how to accurately measure. Then there is the human interface factor that rationally cannot be computer modeled. In computer jargon "garbage in equals garbage out" and that's what we have right now. Don't have a snarky photo like Brent's, use your imagination.

 

[MASSDRIVER]

These were very old homes and even after air sealing still leaked quite a bit, down from 14 air changes per hour to 6.

But that is changing the premise. Or the promise. Whatever.

Is was not said that if you seal the house tighter than the USS Ohio, and install double pane windows, that you will see these gains.

No no no. The assertion, the promise if you will, was that window replacement and insulation will save you these vast amounts of money. That's just not possible. Smart rocket surgeons somewhere probably all ready knew that, but when window and insulation manufacturing concerns lobby for subsidized use of their product, thou shalt not hear further from the learn-ed smarties. All you hear is vinyl and spun glass is strong medicine.

Now it would have been a different story if they were forthright and told people they were going to get a marginally quieter home and maybe save a buck and a half on the meter per month, but unless you do all this other sealing crapola (putting your very health at risk, mind you) it ain't agonna pay out.

Brent.

 

[ICE]

Once a bureaucracy is created it sets priorities. The first priority of every bureaucracy is to further itself. It must grow and swell the budget. To do that progress must be made. That means messing with the rest of us.

Notice how fast the energy code got legs. The energy bureaucracy is a government agency on steroids. If all the money spent on rebates and flat out gifting of our money were tabulated folks would be amazed.....for a few minutes and then they would be focused on something else....for few minutes.

The people in this country are so easy to lead by the nose and fooled by the media. We just don't pay attention to what is going on unless we hear about it in the media. Take for an example the recent big news that Obama used the N word on an Internet podcast. People missed the fact that the podcast was the WTF with Marc Maron. The preident of the USA went on a podcast named "What The Fock" and nobody noticed....nobody noticed because nobody told us to notice

 

[conarb]

Some examples on windows:

I was arbitrating cases for the state license board on defective window installations. I believed manufacturer engineering data and ascribed the problems to faulty installation, so I formed a corporation to install the windows correctly:

1) Permitting a couple of new homes my Title 24 consultant disregarded my 0.35 window specs and did his report on the then 0.75 state maximum, when I asked why he said that unless you get below 0.20 it doesn't do any good at all.

2) The state sent me over to San Francisco on a woman's complaint, she was freezing in her house with new dual pane windows, I had recently taken a PG&E course in windows so I called the instructor standing at her leaking windows, he said: 'Of course she's going to be colder, San Francisco is a cold foggy city, she's blocked out her solar heat gain." I said: "Shouldn't people in San Francisco be told that?" He said: "Of course not, we can't go dividing up the state into micro-climates, if everyone in the state from cold San Francisco to hot Fresno changed their windows we could save 2% statewide".

3) I replaced the windows in a home in Moraga for a retired PG&E electrical engineer, after one year he called asking me to come over, he presented me with a large spreadsheet showing month by month gas and electric consumption, everything was factored by the US National Climatic Data Center so yearly temperature differentials wouldn't influence the result, he showed absolutely no differences.

4) I had replaced the windows on a cul de sac in Walnut Creek, all the neighbors got together and hired me to do the whole street, on a sunny Saturday I drove to the street and started knocking on doors asking if their bills were any lower? All had the same answer: We love our new windows, the house is so much quieter." I said: "But what about your PG&E bills?" Their answers ware all that there was no difference, I finally started asking: "If there is no difference why are you glad to see me, why aren't you throwing rocks at me?" They just said they were happy and their houses were quieter." I finally decided that it was the woman that wanted them because they wanted white windows and they used the rationalization that they would pay for themselves to get their husbands to go along.

5) At this point I was distressed thinking I was just as bad as the con men going around slapping cheap windows in so I called the Daylighting Institute at the Berkeley Lawrence Laboratories since they wrote the book on it, Steven Selkowitz, the Director, was in Washington DC forming the NFRC so I set up a meeting with the Acting Director, the late Dariush Arastech, I brought an engineer friend with me since we lawyers always get ripped up in technical areas. I brought the aforementioned information with me including the electrical engineer's spreadsheet, we basically got nowhere, but I did get some information from the group of engineers sitting around the conference table to indicate that their funding was coming from The DOE, Cardinal Glass, and other members of the window industry, if they adopted some of my suggestions they would lose their funding, that means they would lose their jobs. Whenever the government starts making grants to achieve a desired result fraud occurs, this report surprises me with economists from Cal, this is the equivalent of UCSF Professor Lisa Bero's Commonwealth Club exposé of the fraud in the statin drug studies, I assume Bero and the two economists from Cal are tenured or they would be terminated, government grant money is the largest source of income to all research universities now, Stanford included.

6) At this point the Germans and Canadians started making frames to take triple pane windows, I started importing them and was getting 0.18 windows and started to do some good, the last house I built had $330,000 worth of German windows, maybe they'll pay back in a couple of hundred years.

With the report I posted we now have some real world studies, not just my anecdotal stories, and this isn't just windows, it's air sealing and insulation. This reminds me of a story of from the great depression, Maynard Keynes came to Washington to visit with FDR and propose a solution to our depression: Start digging holes and burying gold, people will flock from all over to dig for that gold and you will have full employment. The government throwing billions into energy efficiency is the modern day equivalent of digging holes and burying gold, it's nothing but make work policy, it's also redistribution of wealth from those who pay taxes to those who get hired participating in this fraud.

 

[MtnArch]

Back in college I took a calculus class. One day in class the professor went over some of the homework problems - and on one of them I had the right answer but not the correct formulas. After class I went to the prof, asked him to check my work because it didn't match his, and after looking it over he said "I don't know how you did it, but what you did works!" That was the day that I learned that you can make any numbers work that you want to - it's just a matter of adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing/etc. until you achieve the desired result.

 

[mtlogcabin]

Until you can count how many times the front door is opened and closed throughout the day or the amount of time it is left open by the kids analyzing energy bills proves nothing one way or the other.

My electric bill averaged $32.00 per month with 2 adults in the home who where gone all day. Now it is $75.00 to $80.00 per month with 4 adults and 5 kids. The only thing electric in the house are the lights and the washer and dryer. My propane consumption went up through the winter by 250 gallons simply because of the front door would be my guess since it was a milder winter for us.

 

[mark handler]

Nine of 10 New York building plans fail basic energy code test

Joe Anuta, Crain's New York Business

1n 2014, the New York City's Department of Buildings began auditing thousands of architectural plans for new and renovated office and residential buildings. The results have been staggering: nine of every 10 have failed to meet the energy code, a set of standards that have been on the books for more than 30 years but are only now being enforced in earnest.

In some cases, the Department of Buildings has even stopped nonconforming projects in their tracks.“We're very serious about this, and are trying to educate the industry on what is required,” said Gina Bocra, chief sustainability officer at the Department of Buildings, which set up a permanent audit unit about eight months ago.

“Buildings are the largest source of energy consumption in our city, and how we conserve energy is key to making progress on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.”As laudable as the motivation might be, some people are fretting about the potential costs of compliance in terms of time and money. Looming additions to the building code over the next year only fan the concerns.“The energy code can be an effective way to increase efficiency if it remains flexible, but the more mandatory and prescriptive any code is, the more difficult it is to build a building that complies — particularly in New York City,” said Angela Pinsky, a senior vice president of management services and government affairs with the Real Estate Board of New York, which is currently consulting with the city on code changes. Several changes already are under consideration, including a potential requirement for developers to purchase pricey sensors that regulate building systems depending on how many people are present, and another that might require rooms to be more airtight. The effort began under Mayor Michael Bloomberg last year, when he assigned auditors to pore over 212 randomly selected building plans to ensure that lighting, heating and air-conditioning systems, walls and windows all met code standards. That pilot program was part of his 30/30 goal of cutting carbon emissions here by 30% by 2030.This year, under the de Blasio administration and Ms. Bocra, the training wheels have come off, and the team has audited more than 1,200 applications, with plans to eventually quadruple that number annually. The new scrutiny might take some in the development community by surprise. The first energy code was set in place in the 1970s. Subsequently, the city passed its own version but rarely enforced it.Not surprisingly, sustainability advocates have hailed the city's new initiative, and noted that the high degree of noncompliance uncovered thus far shows just how crucial the new audit unit will be.“No one knew what was going on before because no one was checking,” said Russell Unger, executive director of the Urban Green Council. “It is very easy to proclaim some policy or write some law, but the hard work comes on the other side when you need someone to implement it.

see next post

 

[mark handler]

Here come the auditors

With a new phalanx of auditors at the city's disposal, Mr. Unger and others expect that designers and architects will pay more attention to the code because violations can hold up an entire project.That scrutiny even extends to construction sites, with the unit conducting more than 160 random visits this year — compared with zero under the pilot program— to make sure buildings were being constructed according to the approved plans. In one out of five cases, inspectors found problems.“We are trying to bring both the design and construction sides up to speed,” Ms. Bocra said, noting that the campaign is largely educational at this point because many firms were not consciously breaking the rules.But make no mistake: Flouting the energy code now carries serious risks for developers. The department is drawing up new fines and regulations that will apply specifically to the code. In a handful of cases, building inspectors have issued stop-work orders at construction sites. And in at least one instance, a random tip called into the department resulted in a developer being investigated and fined for building a structure that was not up to sustainability standards, even though the property had already been occupied. The new push comes as the state races to meet a looming federal deadline. In 2009, Albany received more than $123 million from the federal government in exchange for ensuring that 90% of new building plans complied with the baseline federal energy code by 2017. The city is part of that effort, and is taking steps now in the hopes that the Department of Buildings will be operating at fullsteam by the time that deadline arrives. Already, the crackdown shows signs of making that task easier. Several engineering firms have already volunteered to go through the Department of Buildings' gantlet a second or third time to prevent their plans from being held up in the future.“It's better for them from a liability perspective,” Ms. Bocra said. “We had applicants send thank-you letters.”Mr. Russell's Urban Green Council believes the stricter regulations — and the actual enforcement of them— are sorely needed to solve issues that keep the city's real estate industry too far from the cutting edge.

As an example, he cited a report from the council published earlier this year that showed many typical building walls in New York City are just a few steps up from medieval homes in terms of their ability to retain heat.“One would need to go back about 1,000 years to find buildings that regularly used as little insulation as these do today,” he said. Joe Anuta writes for Crain's New York Business (http://www.crainsnewyork.com), a sister publication of Business Insurance.

 

[tmurray]

Energy "engineering" is a very precise calculation of base conditions that vary up to 75% plus or minus from the average. We know there is cause/effect for insulation, windows, higher efficiency appliances, etc. but we don't know how to accurately measure. Then there is the human interface factor that rationally cannot be computer modeled. In computer jargon "garbage in equals garbage out" and that's what we have right now. Don't have a snarky photo like Brent's, use your imagination.

Being a former energy advisor, the other major component is how the occupant uses the building. This is probably why you are seeing a large discrepancy in projected vs. actual energy savings. A good energy model, designed for a specific family should be +/- 30%. Even that is a large bullseye to hit. Another thing I found was that most of my clients didn't know how to properly operate the mechanical systems in their homes. I'm not trying to blame home owners here, we would spend at least 2.5 hours in the most basic home speaking with the owners to see how they use their home and measuring and doing investigation of the existing conditions. We then went back to our office and did the modeling and in two weeks the owner would have the results by mail. Garbage in/garbage out is the other big problem facing the industry.

 

[MASSDRIVER]

Trying to model a chaotic system. To many variables for any kind of accuracy. Weather, behavior, tempature tolerance, different inhabitants over time, etc. You can probably do it on a large scale as the variables with avarage out, but not on a smaller scale where every variation has a larger percentage impact on the math.

Brent.

 

[tmurray]

Trying to model a chaotic system. To many variables for any kind of accuracy. Weather, behavior, tempature tolerance, different inhabitants over time, etc. You can probably do it on a large scale as the variables with avarage out, but not on a smaller scale where every variation has a larger percentage impact on the math. Brent.

Especially when we're talking about windows. The improvement is generally so small that other factors will cancel them out.

 

[Min&Max]

And this from the most radical leftFrom what I have observed if the organization wanting(paying for) the testing/study has expectations as to what the testing/study should determine, the people performing(getting paid) for the testing/study will massage the numbers until the desired result is achieved.

 

[Frank]

And this from the most radical leftFrom what I have observed if the organization wanting(paying for) the testing/study has expectations as to what the testing/study should determine, the people performing(getting paid) for the testing/study will massage the numbers until the desired result is achieved.

Like the global warming researchers "correcting" the raw temperature data until the predicted warming is found?

 

[MASSDRIVER]

Like the global warming researchers "correcting" the raw temperature data until the predicted warming is found?

Frank, I'm having a good day here. Don't get me started.

Brent.

 

[SCBO1]

Frank,

Don't mess with a guy in a framing kilt!

pc1

 

[Frank]

Frank,Don't mess with a guy in a framing kilt!

pc1

I also have kilts but he is heavily armed with a dangerous weapon.

 

[MASSDRIVER]

I also have kilts but he is heavily armed with a dangerous weapon.

Hammer fights are no fun.

Besides, you would win. I am only armed lightly with a 14 oz. titanium Stilleto.

As you know, it is the kilt that makes us gods among inspectors.

Brent

 

[conarb]

[QUOTE='Brent]Besides, you would win. I am only armed lightly with a 14 oz. titanium Stilleto.

[/QUOTE]Brent:

A half century ago I swung a 22 oz. Stilleto, eventually I bought a 28 oz. but it was too much for me and I gave it to a friend much stronger than I.

Are you proposing that we wear kilts when the revolution comes and we overthrow the police state?