Striving For '0'

Striving for 0

Family works to squeeze best energy rating from their Cape Cod

October 17, 2010

By: Jim Weiker

Jeff and Sherri Wilson hope their Athens home will produce more energy than it consumes when they finish its "deep energy retrofit."

The Wilsons plan to finish the first phase of the project this fall. The Wilsons put a new layer of insulation and siding on their home, creating 10-inch exterior walls. Jeff Wilson is documenting the renovation on HGTVPro.com. The Wilsons have done much of the work themselves.

ATHENS, Ohio - The most remarkable thing about Jeff and Sherri Wilson's house is its unremarkable appearance. The two-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot 1940 Cape Cod sits inconspicuously in a neighborhood of similarly modest homes on the east side of Athens.

A year ago, the Wilsons began converting the home into something rare: a house that consumes less energy than it produces. They aren't there yet, but they're close. Their highest electric bill this year has been $20; their lowest: a $9 credit from AEP. Their highest gas bill last winter was $58, and they expect the upcoming winter bills to be far lower.

The transformation, which former TV host Jeff Wilson is documenting on www.HGTVPro.com, is still under way. But Wilson, who can rattle off green phrases with the force of a true believer, already sees his house as a model for much of the United States. "Ninety-six million homes in the U.S. are more than 20 years old," Wilson said. "What we really need is a way to attack energy efficiency in these homes in a different way."

A close look at the Wilsons' home reveals the different - and radical - way the couple approached energy efficiency. The home features unusually deep window sills, the product of the Wilsons' decision to wrap the home with another skin.

The couple did not come to the decision lightly. When they moved to the home nine years ago, they expected the move to be temporary while they planned their dream home, an ecological tour de force. But as the couple's two girls, now 12 and 9, grew up, the family discovered the value of living within walking distance to schools, libraries and stores.

"We always figured we would live off the grid someplace," Jeff Wilson said. "This was a big change for us. We realized our perfect home is here. But we were stuck with this drafty old house - cold in winter and hot and humid in the summer." Wilson's research into retrofitting an older home led to a revelation: There's more value in making older homes energy-efficient than in building super-efficient homes on green fields.

"When you look at the cost of energy in building a new home, it's far more cost-efficient to retrofit older homes," said Wilson, a video producer whose Hollywood looks have landed him hosting jobs on HGTV and the DIY Network. Instead of building new, the couple decided to perform what Jeff Wilson calls a "deep energy retrofit" on their house.

Their first step was to find out just how inefficient the home was. The Wilsons hired Andrew Frowine, owner of SaveGreenUSA in Peebles, Ohio, to do a Home Energy Rating Service analysis on the house. The home scored an 87, better than a standard home score of 100 because of some replacement windows and insulation the Wilsons added a few years ago.

But the score was far from the 0 the Wilsons want.

"Jeff was a very energy-aware homeowner, and they had done a lot of little things to seal up the leaks in the home," Frowine said. "But his home would not be considered a tight home."

With the results in hand, the couple started renovations last fall. The project included tearing down an old single-car garage and building a new one-and-and-half-car garage with a 350-square-foot second floor that will serve as a master suite. Framers were hired for the addition, but otherwise, the Wilsons did most of the work themselves.

After the addition was erected, the couple started wrapping the original part of the home in a new envelope. They tore off the aluminum siding and nailed 2-by-3 studs onto the original redwood siding. Between the studs, the couple blew foam insulation, which Jeff Wilson prefers to fiberglass insulation because it forms an air seal when it hardens. (For their addition, the couple used both foam and fiberglass insulation in the exterior walls.) After layers of oriented strand board and building sheathing paper, the couple completed the wrap with engineered wood siding.

The couple laid a similar skin on the roof, nailing 2-by-4s directly over the roof shingles and spraying foam between the new studs. On top of the studs, they placed oriented strand board with reflective sheeting on the underside, which keeps heat from building in the attic. The new building envelope is the most dramatic step the couple took, but it's not the only one or even the most expensive.

A solar-energy system, with roof panels linked to the AEP grid, initially cost $32,000. But, the couple got $11,000 back from a state grant and will get $7,000 back in a federal tax credit. In addition, they expect to earn $1,000 to $1,250 a year selling solar renewable energy certificates.

Otherwise, the project involved several other energy-saving steps:

• Replacing the original single-pane wood windows with triple-pane vinyl windows filled with krypton gas

• Using white rubber reflecting surface on the roof of the addition

• Replacing an old wooden front door with an insulated fiberglass door

• Adding a whole-house ventilation system to keep fresh air circulating through the home

• Replacing a hot-water tank with a tankless system that heats water as it is being used

Despite the Wilsons' dramatic steps, they know they could have done more. For starters, they made at least one concession to aesthetics. They used a rubber roofing shingle meant to resemble slate instead of more efficient white shingles. They also considered a geothermal heating and cooling system but backed off because of the $20,000 to $30,000 cost. They likewise passed on structural insulated panels for the addition because of the cost.

Even with those compromises, the project wasn't cheap. They estimate the cost at $100,000: $45,000 for the addition; $35,000 for the retrofit; and $20,000 for the solar system (before the federal tax credit). About half the cost was offset by sponsors who donated products.

"Most people might not think spending that much on a $150,000 house is a good idea," Jeff Wilson said. "But we thought: What can we do to make this house last another 70 years?" Frowine agrees that most people will find the Wilsons' expense excessive. But he admires the couple for energetically demonstrating what can be done with an older home.

"With Jeff, part of his mission is he wants to establish a bar, a standard to which people can strive toward," Frowine said. "He's not saying, 'You have to get to this level.' He and his wife and their family are trying to set an example of what can be done with an older home, with a regular family with kids."

The Wilsons will be done with this phase of their renovation when they finish the shell above the garage this fall. The next phase: Insulate and finish the basement. But even with those phases completed, they won't reach their goal of producing more energy than they are consuming until they replace their gas appliances with electric that can draw on their solar-power system.

"The perfect goal would be to make the house energy neutral tomorrow," Jeff Wilson said. "But the good goal is to work toward that."