>> Coming up on "Home Diagnosis."

>> Some things aren't always as they seem.

>> I, in particular, am very sensitive.

I can smell the basement.

>> Mia was facing not being believed.

>> There's a cat door in the door.

>> But no cats in the house.

>> We gave up a few years ago.

>> There's a greater problem happening.

>> You have confused spaces in your house.

>> We had to evacuate the house, the basement was flooded.

It was really a nightmare.

>> It can be a very big deal.

All that stuff is very vulnerable and you're not going to know this unless you scratch beneath the surface.

>> "Home Diagnosis" is made possible by CPS products, Provider of indoor air quality products and test tools.

FLIR, maker of infrared thermal cameras for home owners and building professionals.

And by Hayward Score and "Healthy Indoors" magazine.

And by generous support from these underwriters.

And by viewers like you.

Thank you.

>> Welcome to "Home Diagnosis."

Indoor air quality is one of the most vital elements of home performance.

>> And it's the hardest to sense without testing equipment.

>> In Princeton, we found a family where only one of them suspected that something was wrong with their indoor air quality.

>> Hi, I'm Corbett.

>> And I'm Grace.

>> Since we met we've been partners in everything.

>> In work, in life and in love.

>> Fast forward to now, we've created careers in home testing, building science.

>> And started a family.

>> We also built the Tiny Lab.

>> To get people thinking about their home's problems dynamically.

>> We use scientific testing to diagnose a house's problems.

>> Because more than comfort, energy or safety, it's about gaining control of your home.

>> And with two cats, two kids, and 200 square feet-- >> --we know this intimately.

[music] >> And today we're in beautiful Princeton, New Jersey.

>> We have a house from the 1960's behind us.

It looks pretty straightforward.

>> But we think that it might be playing a little Jekyll and Hyde.

>> So let's go test it and find out.

In Princeton, a lovely woman named Mia found us.

And she was so happy to have somebody who could do the kind of testing, because she's a woman who can sense more things.

Women have a little bit of a finer sense of smell.

>> She could smell things that her husband and her son were like, "I don't really smell that."

>> I think the main thing that we are concerned about, when we turn on the air conditioning or the heat I can smell the basement.

You know, it's... >> The basement doesn't smell great?

>> The basement does not smell great.

>> The interesting thing about Mia and her house is that she really exemplified this gender difference that we sometimes have in environmental sensitivity.

>> And I'm very sensitive to environmental toxins and scents.

>> Has the house elevated your sensitivity?

>> It has.

>> Mia could actually tell that the outside systems were inside the home.

>> What within the house do you feel like is the enemy?

>> The attic.

When we first moved in and we saw what the energy bills were, that's when we had our first, you know, "evaluation."

So they recommended windows and they recommended insulation in the attic.

So those were the first two things we did.

Whoever it was that came out said that we were hemorrhaging heat through our attic.

That there was no insulation at all left in the attic.

>> And they recommended more insulation?

>> Yes.

>> Did they recommend air sealing?

>> No.

>> Some of the main problems that Mia was facing was not being believed.

Frankly, that she had a problem with her house.

This is one of the reasons we love to do testing in a house.

Because the tests are the proof.

And then you can see it.

You can see the invisible dynamics become a reality.

>> I, in particular, am very sensitive.

My husband often says, "You know, if you would "just walk around with "a clothespin on your nose "everything would be fine."

>> Anytime we have somebody telling us specifically what they smell, that is a great indicator.

More detailed information on what the symptoms are from homeowners, the better.

>> We have put a lot of work into the house.

>> At what point did you feel like the house became the enemy?

>> The first few years we were very excited and very naïve.

And then little by little, you start to become very jaded.

And we gave up a few years ago.

So we're very open to recommendations if we could be persuaded that they actually would be effective.

>> Can you show us around your house?

>> I'd be happy to.

>> Mia had symptoms from her home.

She could tell that her home was affecting her.

And this becomes an issue because anything to do with respiratory, the airway and the breathing are the most important thing.

So if somebody's breathing is affected by their home, it can be a very big deal.

>> This is an example of something that we spent a lot of money on that did not remedy the problem.

There were two hurricanes within two years and each time we had to evacuate the house, the basement was flooded.

>> What a nightmare.

>> It was really a nightmare.

So we did a tremendous amount of research on local contractors.

>> And she came professionally from an understanding of the home as a system.

That concept made sense to her.

So she understood that she had symptoms in the house that she was sensing and that probably there was some deeper complexity going on.

>> They showed us the plans, I had the township engineer look at them and he said, "This is an amazing plan.

"This is very high-tech."

>> She had actually had a whole bunch of work already done in the basement.

And yet, there was still some flooding issues.

>> Within a year, the basement flooded again.

>> There was still a lot of bugs.

And that is always an indication that there's a greater problem happening.

>> You'll see that there's buckling of water coming from the side of the fireplace.

>> Crawl spaces, like every part of the house, should be either totally inside, or totally outside.

This place is very confused.

Mia explained that we put insulation in the ceiling of this.

But there's a wide open hole into it from the basement, so clearly it's part of the house and also treated like it's not part of the house at the same time.

So, we want to determine scientifically what it is, to prove it.

>> So, this is the fireplace.

There was no cap on the top, so there's obviously some moisture that's coming from here.

This has been my solution, is just seal it off.

>> This home is an interesting conundrum because from the outside it looks fairly simple, but when you get inside you will discover that the geometry of the enclosure, which is one of the two most important systems that we always talk about, is very complicated.

In the Tiny Lab, we have, essentially, what is one big room with a loft built into it and then a separate bathroom.

>> So, the first thing that you notice when you step inside the Tiny Lab is when we close the door, this house is super duper airtight.

Since we live next to the Atlanta Airport, this is kind of a big deal.

>> Yeah, there's airplanes going over right now and you can't hear them in here.

>> And, obviously, we have two cats.

So one of the things we have in here is a litter box.

Where is it?

We're in 210 square feet of space and you can't smell our cat's litter box.

This side of the house is where all the stale air gets taken out.

So, we're in the bathroom.

Bathroom's need exhaust systems.

That is where this moist air is being taken out over the shower, but it's not a bath exhaust fan.

This house is tight enough that if you were to plug in a normal exhaust fan that you got off the shelf at a big box store, you would be doing a blower door test.

And you've seen blower door tests on the show before.

It's not something you want to do in a house every day.

It's putting a house on a treadmill.

That's kind of a serious test.

And down here we have this special feature of sailboats and tiny houses on wheels, which is a composting toilet.

That it has its own exhaust system built in that's only moving a little bit of air out, but it's constantly making sure that air is going down and out through the toilet and never coming back.

And right next to this continuously running toilet exhaust is the litter box, which is important because now all of the smells in here are also going outside, so there's no smells in the house that are going towards your face, they're all going away.

>> Now, if you come into my kitchen, I'll show you another really interesting aspect that we engineered into the house, because I like cooking with gas.

So we cook with propane.

And whenever you have flame impingement, you're going to be creating carbon monoxide.

So, on our cooktop, we actually have these holes right here.

And these holes bring air from a makeup vent up and out of our hood.

So, seeing is believing, but hearing is also believing.

I'm going to turn the vent hood on and the makeup air will kick on and start to go through the hood and the sound will actually depreciate.

>> We can demonstrate with dry ice.

These holes in the side are actually functional.

They are bringing the air up and it's all blowing out here.

This is a smoke pen and I can essentially just get it burning, blow it out and I can demonstrate that on low, which is where I want to be using it so that I can speak over the sound of this fan, all of everything that's happening on top of the stove is going outside.

That sound is the sound of that fan doing blower door tests on this house at the same time.

You can see over here, you'll watch this number go down as this hole in the bottom of our wall starts opening up and relieving the pressure.

So, this number is something that we can deal with.

It's not going to back draft my toilet, it's not going to cause moisture issues inside my walls.

>> And so now, if you come back over to the hood, it's still on.

It's so, so, so quiet, which is lovely.

>> Just as always, if you watch Home Diagnosis you know the number we're trying to get to is three.

>> That'll future proof the house against the building codes of the future.

But right now, in New Jersey, the state code is seven.

So maybe that's something that we can shoot for instead.

We get the blower door running and of course the number that we're seeing, since this is all about this house being not what it appears to be, is actually not a bad number.

That's fantastic.

>> As you can see, this number is below seven, so it's actually in compliance with New Jersey today, although this house is a 1962 house.

>> Code is not about performance, code is about the energy savings.

>> One of the interesting things about code that we often forget about is code is passing.

If we were in high school, a C or a D is passing.

You didn't get an F, you didn't fail, but it's not an A+ either.

>> And there's not as much air leakage as we thought there was going to be.

But there still is air leakage and it's going to all the wrong places.

So, let's go do some zonal pressure testing.

>> All right.

When we pulled up to Mia's home, one of the things we expected to find was air leakage.

However we found the air leakage to be in different spots than we were really anticipating.

>> This is why an overall blower door test is just one number.

It's all of the gaps and cracks added up into one big whole.

That's not a super helpful number to help you fix the problem.

>> One of the easiest side tests to do with the blower door is zonal pressure testing.

It's actually one of my favorite things to do because you just take the little manometer and a little hose and you go and you throw it under all of the doors.

>> 12.5, that's a 25% connection to outside.

We take the pressure meter and we test what happens in different rooms of the house when we close the door.

Garage, 41.5.

That's an 80% connection to outside, which is pretty good.

But it still means there's a 20% connection into the house, which is a major safety issue because of all the stuff that you keep in the garage.

To find out where these leaks are, even those there's few of them, we want to seal those up because that is where the problem is coming from.

And the attic's exactly the same.

80% outside, 20% inside.

That means that there's communication to both outside and the house and we do not want that.

Black or white, inside the house or outside the house.

>> Corbett, what are you looking at?

Is it good times down there?

>> Yeah.

>> One of the defining characteristics of any home is its foundation.

But one of the things that can hide from you, if you're not looking for it, is a vented crawl space.

>> Vented crawl spaces are pretty notorious because they used to be the way we did things.

Science has since proven that it's just not a good idea 99% of the time because you end up with crawl spaces that look like this.

>> Ugh.

>> Dirt floor, piece of plastic over the floor loosely, chicken wire in the ceiling holding up fiberglass insulation.

There is no blockage for any of the moisture coming from the ground to get up into the house.

All that stuff is very vulnerable.

And you're not going to know this unless you scratch beneath the surface.

The plaster that her house is put together with, interestingly is more airtight than drywall.

This is not something that a lot of people understand.

But what happens is you have a lot of joints and junctions where two things come together.

So, where the two pieces of drywall come together, where the wall and the ceiling come together, where the floor and the wall come together, all of those are little air leakage points.

And you can basically have an air leakage network within the cavities, the hidden spaces in your home.

So, the plaster really helps to air seal the walls of Mia's house.

But the main place where we've got a lot of air leakage is through the top and through the bottom.

>> We're back in the basement and you can see this dryer vent goes straight out the house and right underneath the porch, which is an unfinished crawl space.

Now this is a moist hot air.

What's that going to do?

Attract bugs, big ones and those big bugs, they're going to come in here because there's nothing blocking them.

It's not creating a barrier and trust me, those little guys know how to come in.

>> Scott, thanks for coming.

>> Hey, how are you doing?

>> Scott Grife and SG Heating and Air Conditioning was a perfect partner for this house.

Whenever you have a problem with the four elements-- air quality, moisture, air flows and pressures or heat bleed, you're probably going to naturally think of an air conditioning or a heating person.

>> And SG Heating and Air Conditioning specializes in testing HVAC equipment, which is why Scott Grife was really a perfect contractor for this house.

Scott, from doing the testing we found out that the enclosure is not what it appears to be.

And we've got these rim joists and we've got these bugs.

One of the major problems for the homeowner.

So what are we going to do?

>> Well, you know air, moisture, and bugs get into the house through unsealed rim joists.

In this case, our homeowner's real sensitive to the idea of chemicals being used.

So what we can do is we can cut a rigid insulating product and fit it into each one of these gaps, sealing it completely.

It'll provide insulation, but most importantly an air barrier to prevent air infiltration.

And the insulation that's there, we can actually leave it there.

It gives us a little bit of added insulation.

But remember, insulation only works properly by trapping air.

If the air is moving through the insulation, it's not doing its job.

>> SG Heating and Air Conditioning also can do the blower door testing and the entire home closure test as well, so that hey understand how to affect the HVAC system and the enclosure at the same time, so that we can now tune the entire house to itself.

>> The house is a system.

>> We have a 30 year old system in a 1960's house.

Have you seen this kind of thing in this neighborhood?

>> Sure, and this isn't the first furnace that was in the house.

This furnace has been replaced.

The furnace is way too big for the house.

>> Hmm.

>> Not only that, the duct work was originally designed for heating only and they've added air conditioning to this furnace.

So we have undersized duct work, oversized furnace and an air conditioning system which needs more duct work to work properly.

You need much less air flow for heating than you do for air conditioning.

And you need much less furnace than this to properly heat and cool this house.

>> An interesting thing about HVAC systems is, basically, they are the heart of a house.

And if you have a heart transplant, but you're attaching the heart of an Olympic athlete to corroded arteries-- >> Which is the duct system, in this case.

>> It's going to do no good, right?

That Olympic athlete's heart will still have a heart attack.

And the same thing was happening in this home, is the duct work was not working.

They were basically corroded arteries.

>> As Mia said, she's been offered tons of opinions down through the years, but no one has offered her actual proof about what is happening.

Since this flue is carrying the combustion gases to outside, we are very concerned about the combustion safety of this system.

And that's why we're going to start combustion testing.

When you see things that are too small, that take too many turns, that are boxy and don't actually elegantly flow the air through the house, then you wouldn't know that this system is not going to perform as designed.

Fire away, Grace.

[machines whirring] Two main categories of tests that we're trying out here.

What is in this gas that is going through the chimney?

And is it actually leaving the house?

So, we're going to be able to test the draft with this pressure probe.

>> One of the easy ways you can see, on your own HVAC system, if anyone's ever tested the pressure, is to go down and look for a tiny, little hole that has then been taped over.

If that hole exists, then the Pitot test has been measured.

>> So, we want a negative number.

As the furnace continues to heat the chimney up, it's going to get bigger and bigger.

That's a good thing.

What happens when we test the content of the gases?

When you started testing, after you were a contractor for a number of years, did you immediately know what these gauges were trying to tell you?

>> I started testing in the days when we used chemical dumbbells and we had to flip them back and forth and test.

And the results that you got were delayed by ten or fifteen minutes, from what was actually going on with the flue.

>> Wow.

>> When we got these electronic combustion analyzers, it was magic because we could make adjustments and see what was happening on the fly.

>> What's always challenging about diagnosing any house is that it's a complex system.

>> This is why we have lots of equipment.

If one thing is telling us one number, there are always other pieces of equipment that can verify that number or contradict it.

>> So, temperature wise, it's okay that the chimney is receiving a bunch of heat.

But carbon monoxide wise we are just about to break through, yep, 500 parts per million inside the chimney.

>> What about these attics?

'Cause we tested and found out that they're kind of inside and kind of outside and kind of insulated and a little bit air sealed.

>> Well, you know, the attic is open to the outside.

>> Right.

>> And we want it to be completely separated from the conditioned space, which is inside the house, because air movement through the insulation reduces the efficacy of the insulation.

>> Right.

>> Once we get it all sealed up, then we can redistribute the insulation, make sure we have the right levels.

>> And so, then that attic space will be inside the house, outside the house?

>> Completely outside the house and separated from the conditioned space.

>> Which is what we want.

>> That's what we want.

>> Some things aren't always as they seem.

For example, this garage.

>> Is not one that you can park a car in.

Every garage is a place where people store things that they don't want their family to breathe in.

>> You're going to put paint solvents in there, gasoline for your lawn mower.

>> Your car.

In this case, it doesn't fit.

It's so short you have a hard time fitting the lawn mower and the trash cans in here.

So don't judge a book by its cover.

We're worried about air from the garage communicating just passively into the house.

It's going to suck in and distribute throughout the house all these things in the garage.

>> And there's no filter out there for an HVAC system that can protect you from that.

And so, Scott, in this tiny garage that doesn't even really fit a car, we've got some major safety concerns.

>> Yes, we do.

So, testing revealed that there's communication between the garage, where we're storing garbage, where we have lawn mowers with gasoline, and the house.

The door has, uh, gaskets around it to help prevent air infiltration.

But there's no door sweep and there's a cat door in the door that's allowing air to penetrate.

>> But no cats in the house?

>> No cats in the house.

>> We're looking for all the hidden pathways and in this case, Mia's house had a perfectly obvious, visually verifiable pathway between the garage and the house.

>> It was the cat door.

>> So, what we need to do is we need to seal the door properly, put a door sweep in to prevent the contaminated air moving from the garage into the house.

And then what we're probably going to do is open up the ceiling of the garage and we're going to dense pack a chemical free insulation.

And it's going to be an air barrier.

>> And that really works with the homeowner's chemical sensitivity.

>> Yes.

Once we finish our work, we're going to do zonal pressure testing and we're going to make sure that the work we did keeps the garage totally separated from the house.

>> Yeah.

Things aren't always what they seem.

Mia and her home gave a different first impression then after we investigated.

>> We're so happy to have used scientific testing to prove what was causing the symptoms she felt.

>> And remember, even if you've been in your home for decades, you can still have its performance tested.

>> Especially if it has something to do with your breathing, take that seriously.

So, we have good news for you.

Your house actually complies with the state energy code for air tightness.

>> That's the good news.

>> That is-- >> I'm waiting for the but-- >> Well, no, what we found is a bunch of opportunities for improvement.

>> Every home can potentially just discourage and frustrate a home performance professional.

>> It generally has to do with the things that are built into the house.

The things that were designed in.

So, the first thing is that you have confused spaces in your house.

It is really important that all of those spaces are clearly defined.

They're either totally inside the house or they're totally outside the house.

You want one very dark line, so that everything is black and white.

Mia's case, is the fact that the house is so complicated, shape wise, there's no fixing that.

You can't fix the fact that the house is built this way.

The air in your basement is absolutely being breathed throughout the rest of your house.

>> I know.

>> You can not stop that from happening.

So that's okay, because what we're going to do is make the basement totally part of the house.

We want to make sure that all of that gets totally air sealed away from outside, so that the bugs and the air aren't able to come inside.

And that's easy to do.

And they can use, in fact, environmentally sensitive materials, so that they're not using any spray foam down there.

Your basement smell that you were concerned about, the pressure, the blood pressure in your system, which is called static pressure when it's for ducts, became outrageously high.

>> Yeah.

>> It's three times higher than what that furnace is capable of dealing with.

>> I have said these ducts do not work, we need to get new ducts.

And everyone has said that's the most expensive solution.

You basically have to rip out the whole inside of your house.

>> So, this is what kills us.

>> The duct system, that's hard to replace because that's a lot of stuff that they did.

>> A lot of contractors are so afraid that you won't pay for it, that they keep sticking cheap Band-Aids on things, which just make another problem worse, right?

You put a Band-Aid here and then you've got a consequence of what happens here.

>> If it had been done right in the first place, that would have been so beautiful.

But sometimes you are dealing with designed-in flaws.

And we have to figure out ways to affect the home performance so that we can give the client what they're looking for.

Aside from the fact that air is not being delivered.

Your furnace is creating an incredibly high amount of carbon monoxide.

It was exceeding 600 parts per million,.

>> Okay.

>> Um, 400 is lethal.

>> Okay, so how come we're still alive?

>> Because the chimney is miraculously still working.

>> Okay.

>> And you have already told us-- >> That chimney is working?

>> That chimney.

>> Doesn't seem to work as well as it should be.

People have told you that it should be condemned, right?

I say that before you use that for heating ever again.

Go ahead and rip it out, and let's go ahead and do it right.

Now that we've given you the proof of what is going on in the house, you can work with SG Heating and Air and get the enclosure and the HVAC system taken care of.

When they do the air sealing, you won't have to worry about what that attic insulation is made out of because you are not breathing it.

>> People told Mia she was crazy.

And, frankly, she was beginning to believe them herself.

After being fed up with conventional wisdom, she hired us to give her the tangible evidence she needed to support her suspicions.

Now, if you're worried that your home isn't as healthy as it can be, be sure to hire a home performance professional and get your own home diagnosis.

[music] [music] >> Home Diagnosis is made possible by CPS Products, provider of indoor air quality products and test tools.

FLIR, maker of infrared thermal cameras for homeowners and building professionals and by Hayward Score and Healthy Indoors magazine and by generous support from these underwriters and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

>> Home Diagnosis is all about education.

>> Learn more about your own home's performance with our new online course for homeowners and our Proof is Possible booklet.

You can find both at homediagnosis.tv.