March 2008 Archives

How energetic is your home? Ours isn't. Ours is old. Nearing the century mark, this year's extreme winter did quite the number on our exterior. One hundred plus inches of snow will do that. You may be familiar with ice dams. Well...there's ice dams, and there's there's gutter busters. We had a gutter buster:

I found that walking home from a long week of work on a Friday night. Guh. Shortly thereafter, we noticed water damage to the walls in the closet directly under the roof with the now defunct gutter. I carefully peeled some pieces of plaster off, and saw the sun! Yup, no insulation whatsoever in the closet. More plaster started to fall away on its own.

I was comparing energy consumption with friends who noted that their bills were half of ours with twice the house. Hmmm...something's not right here. So I took the last years worth of our energy bills and compared them to the national average. We scored a 2.8 out of 10. Ouch. I followed some links and found a home energy efficiency inspector. We met this morning and talked about all sorts of issues with our house. He had two tools that were quite revealing.

The first was a thermal imaging camera. The results were like results promised by X-ray goggles promised in kids' comic books. We could see studs, beams, and the immense lack of insulation in our second floor. The only way you can see the beams is b/c they are a different temperature than the insulation between them. On our second floor, our beams were lost, and the lathe behind the plaster showed through. Meaning: No Insulation Whatsoever. Ugh.

His second tool was a big blower that he put in our front door. He used that to put a 50 Pa pressure difference between the inside and the outside. At that pressure difference, every minute there was 3800 cubic feet of air blowing out of our house. With all that air blowing out, laws of physics say there has to be air to replace it. With the fan on, air was streaming into our house through "thousands" of holes. We could feel drafts throughout the whole house; windows, doors, wall outlets, and the gaping hole in our closet. Turns out, the target for a house is to get lower than 1000 cfm. A recent award winning house in Wisconsin reached less than 300 cfm. We've got a long way to go.

So now we turn to removing the old siding, blowing in insulation upstairs, and then layering more insulation to the outside and reside the house. Throw in a new porch at the same time and it'll be a busy summer. Looks the like reroofing project is on hold.

Bottom line, when purchasing an older home, get a home inspection that includes thermal imaging. It may cost a bit more, but worth it.

It felt good to be out again. The sun was slowly fading, as were the snow banks. My watched beeped, and I was off. Running for the first time in two months. Then my watched beeped again and I was walking. I kept switching, a minute at a time for a total of 20 minutes.

It was a series of events that brought me to where I am. In January, I sprained my ankle. And my stubborn side decided not to see a doctor. (No need to rub it in, Ms. IronWil.) It was hard to bike, and even harder to swim. Running, of course, was out of the question. The planned-to-be-written workout remains planned-to-be-written. Work got really busy. I was spending many late nights there, skipping any kind of workout that I could've fit in. When you're working late, you grab food when you can from where you can. Add to that more work and less working out.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, in the fervor of a spring day and new bike parts, I decided to jog a bit on my way home from the bike store. And later that night my ankle throbbed with pain. My desire to workout was growing, but my body wasn't accommodating. Thanks to friends in the business (the physical therapist business), they helped me understand that my fibula bone had slid forward off the talocrural joint (ankle).

You see, when "I sprained my ankle," what I'm really saying is that I damaged my anterior talofibular ligament. And, from what I have deduced, the weak, injured ligament allowed my fibula to slide forward. And when I tried jogging it, I aggravated it, and thus, the pain. They're recommendation was to "mobilize" it by gently nudging it back into place. After a couple nights of that, and things seemed to be back on the mend. Fast forward through another busy week of work, a last minute work trip to Dallas yesterday and some more spring like weather. All that and my gut has begun to press against the inside of my pants with a little too much gusto.

The watched beeped for the last time, and I started walking again. No pain. It felt good enough that I just might try this again. Nice.