Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

I love to garden, and I have had dreams of being a cook in my own place. For me the two ideas have long been intertwined, so creating a new site made sense.

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I was writing an email to an inspector who teaches a green building class with a few resources that he may want to share, then I thought it would be appropriate to share them here.

Why would you want to know about green building techniques? Maybe you are not going to be an energy rater or a green building verifier, but these building practices are becoming standard practice. On two phase inspections recently, I saw the techniques being applied to make the air tight seal which is common in green building. In fact, one builder was moving further towards this standard. It might be to your benefit to be ahead of the curve. Here is what I sent. These two sites and the book pack a lot of information.

http://www.buildingscience.com has research papers and case studies on best building practices for homes in different areas. There is a focus on green building techniques.

http://www.wbdg.org is a site putting together the best practices for the construction of Federal buildings, but the information is shared with others to encourage better building techniques. Mainly there is a focus on larger building projects, but basics are applicable to home construction. Also discussions of new green techniques.

For inspectors interested in passive green designs, there is a book out which discusses how a home can be built in different climates. It is called The Barefoot Architect by Johan van Lengen. The first part of the book is probably more refresher topics for most inspectors, the remainder of the book has good material on how to build homes. It is meant for a general audience, so it does not go into too much technical details.

Of course, I might want o promote my own blog. On my site Inspected Thoughts, I go over various items, but I have a section detailing green home conversions which may help you out. Shameless self-promotion I know, but you may enjoy the site.

A recent comment by me on Facebook prompted an acquantince to ask me to justify how I determine the average amount of time spent on an inspection. This was published on my blog, but I thought it may be good to share here.

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This past week the Houston Association Realtors announced its initiative to help Houston's HOPE program by listing those homes for sale on the MLS. I know many Realtors have been involved with this program, but it is nice to see this renewed commitment by the real estate community in helping to improve our neighborhoods.

HOPE focuses on rebuilding neglected neighborhoods while helping families into homes. The program is open to first time and low income home buyers, and there are additional incentives for teachers, fire fighters, and police officers. When you couple the money you could receive through HOPE and the tax credit for home buyers, this turns out to be an extraordinarily fantastic deal. One of my favorite aspects of the program is that it teams up with builders to produce green homes for these families. These are not homes where the builder slaps on the green label to make them attractive to buyers; the homes meet Houston's Green Building Initiative, which follows the guide lines established for building a green home as laid out in the ANSI 700 and the International Residential code.

If you wish to read my thoughts on the program in further detail, you can see what I have written about Houston's Hope program, which will provide you with more information about taking advantage of it.

I have been writing a bit about converting an existing home to include green features. I have seen where my posts on this topic inspired others to take my ideas to discuss on their own. I think that this is great. If you are not buying a home, you should consider how you can add green features; hopefully this past Earth Day may have inspired you. Yesterday, I posted an article that looks at the solar lights that can be used to brighten spots around your home at night. This post has already been read by quite a few people, so you may want to check it out. If you are interested in finding some of those lights, CSN Lighting has a good selection, with great customer service from my experience. Soon I will be buying the solar light that can be turned on and off for my garage. (I was working on taking some solar light panels apart to see if I could make my own, then I found one there, which will serve my needs in the garage and shed).

Have a little HOPE in Houston, and go green in your home.

I was performing a home inspection on the West side of Houston when I came across a method of creating air flow in rooms that was a bit unusual. I thought that I would share it with you as a continuation of part 3 of this series, but I am not sure that it really works too well. My simple test did not show much air going through it.

I noticed that there were a lot of return vents when walking through the rooms then in the hallway. Pictured below is two large returns in the hall, and then below that is a picture of a room. On the ceiling of the room, you will notice two vents that use a cover typical for registers. One is a register, while the other is meant to be a return.

Great, I thought. They have no ceiling fans in this house, so they are trying to get the air to flow by using ducts attached to the return plenum in each room. I noticed that one of the hall returns did not have a filter in it, and this should have been my first clue to its true purpose. I then go up into the attic. While wandering around, taking in the sights, I find two plenums above the returns in the hall ceiling, but something looked off.

I checked the duct work to see that the ducts from one return were going to the return plenum on the HVAC system, but the other plenum had ducts going to the returns in each room. I wondered if this could work. The drawing below is demonstrating what was meant to be happening.

The air goes through the returns in each room to the vent in the hallway. When the return in the hallway draws air, it is meant to suck air from this vent connected to the room returns. They could have hooked those ducts up to the plenum created for the return air since it was right there.

I took some tissue paper to the returns in the rooms to see if there was any air movement when the air conditioning came on. There may have been a little, but the tissue was not pulled by any suction, like it was at the actual return. This method may cause some air to move, but I doubt that it helps much. I would just take the fake return ducts, and attach them to the return plenum.