>> Coming up on "Home Diagnosis"... >> Today, we are testing the all-American home.

>> It's a production-built home.

>> The baby, during the day, he would take a nap, he'd wake up sweating.

>> They're all built fast, and as much as part of a machine as possible.

>> I couldn't take it anymore.

>> I've never seen that.

>> So this is just leaking a lot of air out of the home.

>> It is not a part of your home.

It is its own thing.

>> That might be the wrong thing to do.

>> First I've ever seen that one.

>> Our inspector, during the process, told us that it's on its last leg.

>> What does "on its last legs" mean?

Who knows?

Until you test, you don't.

>> "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.

>> Welcome to "Home Diagnosis."

>> When you have a growing family, you want a home that can grow with you, an all-American home, if you will.

>> But if the performance is not tuned in that home, then it serves nobody.

The building professionals that might help you might feel like it's a lost cause and you, at that point, won't know who else to turn to.

>> In Philadelphia, a family found us three weeks after moving into their future home, and they knew they needed expert help.

>> 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] >> Today we are testing the all-American home.

>> This house was built in the 1980's, and it has not been touched or renovated since it was built.

>> So it's almost like a historic landmark from 1989.

>> What is cool is that the homeowners, Joe and Courtney, just bought this place.

And within a week of living here, they realized that they needed us to come out and test it because it was not acting the way that they thought that it should.

>> And they plan on being here for many years.

So let's go meet John and Courtney, and find out what's going on.

>> This is the all-American home.

It is classic.

>> When we first drove up to Joe and Courtney's house, we made one assumption, because it was a production build home.

>> Production build means that it's one of a bunch of homes that were built, basically in the same timeframe, by one company.

They're all built fast and as much as part of a machine as possible.

>> And the good thing about that is there's affordability, but the bad thing about that is you have different subcontractors coming in everyday, and not necessarily communicating with each other.

Again, you always want to know what you're working with so you can control your home, and not let it control you.

>> Hi.

>> Joe.

>> Hey.

>> Thank you so much for having us here.

>> Thank you for coming.

>> Yeah, we're really glad you're here.

>> Can you tell us a little bit why you asked us here?

>> So we bought the house at the end of April.

Upstairs, right away we realized, I turned the air on and it wasn't cooling.

I shut all the vents off downstairs, just wasn't working.

We had to have ceiling fans going in every room.

The baby, during the day, he would take a nap, he'd wake up sweating.

>> The heat definitely is my biggest issue.

I mean, even trying to get ready for work or blow drying my hair, and I'm sweating.

And I couldn't take it anymore.

>> We, the home buyers in America, have been asking the construction industry to give us the fastest, cheapest stuff possible for decades.

So that's what they've kind of specialized in.

So when you want something more, you have to know how to ask for it.

>> Downstairs in the basement I've started finding there was water trickling out of the air conditioning unit.

I was like, "oh, "what's going on here?"

So, but yeah, every room you walk in you'd either have to open a window, close a window, close doors, to try to get the most air.

And it came to this point.

>> Awesome.

Well, we're so glad that you did not start spending money on replacing stuff before you had the testing done.

So we'll find out for sure what the issues are, and how exactly to fix them for you today.

Can you go ahead and give us a tour of the house?

>> Sure.

>> All right.

Lovely house.

>> Thanks.

Sunken living room.

The fireplace is one of the main things I liked in the house.

It's a wood-burning fireplace, which I love during the winter.

But obviously you always have the draft.

I feel like you've gotta have the fan on in the warmer days, but at night I'm sleeping with a blanket.

>> Tell us about your kitchen.

>> This is our kitchen.

We have made some improvements in here.

We bought all new appliances.

Obviously this lovely wallpaper hasn't been fixed yet.

[laughter] But yeah, you know, it gets a little hot in here.

We have a gas stove, so it does-- you know, it gets warm when you're cooking and things like that.

>> Joe and Courtney's biggest concerns had to do with comfort, sound, and also desiring to create more space in their home with the three seasons room.

>> So out there is our three seasons room.

We would actually like to make that four seasons.

It's Joe's favorite room.

>> I love it.

>> Football in the winter, and hopefully baseball in the summer.

>> This three seasons room, can we make it a four seasons room?

That would be nice.

>> It gets-- if the windows are closed out there, it's like an oven box.

>> Then also the comfort issues in the bedroom and the kids' room as well.

>> So this is our master bedroom.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> I'd say this is our biggest problem, as far as heat.

There's our air conditioner unit that we had to buy.

We do spend a lot of time in here, definitely, between sleeping and getting ready for work.

>> The baby-- >> Just hanging out, watching TV.

>> Yeah, the baby's-- obviously, we make the baby stay in here because the temperature's a lot cooler in here than it is in his room.

>> So, the whole reason you have heating and cooling engines in your house is because there are deficiencies in the enclosure.

Enclosure always wins.

It's the most important system.

So when we have these engines, we need to first calculate how big they need to be.

This is something that doesn't happen all the time.

Is there attic access in this closet?

>> In a way.

There's this opening, and I'm not really sure the purpose of it.

It leads above the garage.

But it's really annoying-- [creaks] it's really annoying because there's an attic fan in there that just runs when it gets really hot.

>> Really?

>> So I don't know the purpose of it.

>> Okay.

I don't know the purpose of it either.

I've never seen that in a closet before, so that's a very interesting thing.

I like that there's a screen on it to keep the raccoons out.

>> This is our son's room.

This another one of the big issues we have.

We have to always keep the fan on.

The camera we have for the baby, with the baby monitor, has a temperature gauge on there.

And at one point it was 78 degrees in here when it was only 70 degrees downstairs.

And vice versa on the cold nights, it got really warm up here.

Downstairs I'm with a hoodie and sweatpants on to try to regulate it.

>> So we have the comfort issues in the bedroom and the kids' room as well, and trying to figure out whether we should add air conditioning and heating to those rooms.

>> The unit itself is almost 30 years old.

The inspector, during the process, told us that it's on its last leg.

>> And then also the HVAC system, they were told, is "on its last legs."

>> What does "on its last legs" mean?

Who knows?

Until you test, you don't.

>> What I did notice is when we turn the air on, something over here was leaking.

We didn't know what it was.

It took the plumber three times to come out, and he finally figured out it just wasn't sealed properly.

>> The standard thing is, I'm going to come in, look at the box, the actual furnace or air conditioner, and say, "oh, yeah, it's old.

Take it out and put one in its place that is exactly the same size as the former one, and then call it a day."

That might be the wrong thing to do.

We'll see you in a few hours once we're done testing everything, and we'll let you know what we found out.

>> Perfect.

>> Cool.

>> Thanks.

>> A lot of this house is pretty standard for homes of this era.

But there were some really interesting things.

For example, this doorway to the attic over the garage, that's not normal.

Another beautiful thing about this house, is that it's original.

It even has the original HVAC system.

That means that unlike some of the other homes that we investigate in "Home Diagnosis," it has not been chopped up and added to over a long period of time, and made into this confusing mess.

We have a very simple issue that we're trying to solve.

And it's not a Rubik's cube that's been turned a million times.

It's only been turned once.

So now, all we have to do is take it back to where it really wants to be.

So now, the most important test for any house, the blower door.

We have set this up.

We know that for this 23,000 cubic foot house, we are looking for a specific number that's around 1,500 if this house were going to be future-proofed to meet all of the future energy codes.

To calculate the load needed in the summertime, how much air conditioning you need, or in the wintertime, how much heating you need to have, you need to do a blower door test.

[blower whirring] So now we can find out where the leakage is by zonal pressure testing and by infrared photography.

Infrared thermal cameras detect heat signatures.

When we run the blower door, the infrared reveals areas where air leakage is occurring.

Light colors are warm, dark colors are cold.

An image that looks like this means the house is far from airtight.

>> Joe and Courtney's house presented a unique opportunity for improvement.

They had a hole in the closet of their bedroom connected to their bedroom where they were sleeping and their two-year-old child was sleeping.

And that hole on the other side of it, was... >> The garage attic.

One of the major problems that's happening in American homes is carbon monoxide poisoning.

And this is a big deal, because we have a lot of auto-start features now on cars.

And one of the things I know my two-year-old loves to play with is... >> Key fobs.

But if you make sure that there's an airtight seal between your house and the garage, it doesn't matter what happens in the garage.

You could do whatever you want in there, and it will not come in the house.

>> Air leakage is one of the most common and serious home performance problems.

When we scanned the hallways of Joe and Courtney's house with the infrared thermal camera, we saw lots of air leakage pathways that weren't properly sealed during construction.

>> I think the craziest problem that the homeowners were feeling was the temperature difference up in the bedrooms.

>> Normally when we test a home, we're testing for all the hidden holes that we're not seeing.

>> It wasn't just that they had a creepy troll door in their closet.

The reason they couldn't control the temperature in any of their rooms was because the entire home was shockingly leaky.

>> This is the kind of place where people would think top floor is hot in the summertime, "I need more air conditioning."

this is not an air conditioning problem.

>> No.

>> This is an air leakage problem.

>> Yes.

>> They can downsize their air conditioner and furnace if they actually affect the enclosure the right way.

>> So what's the testing of the furnace looking like?

>> Well, since the inspector told them that these things were on their last legs-- we got the air conditioner, we got the furnace, we got the water heater-- we want to know how well they are actually working, not just an opinion.

We want to test them.

And then also, we wanna find out how the system that they're plugged into-- because, of course, if we just replace this box, which is what they were going to do-- >> Right.

>> --it might be the duct work that's the problem.

This house is a beautiful example of the relationship between the enclosure and the engines, the two things that make up the performance successes of the house.

So we can just find out right now what's going on.

>> So we drilled this hole.

>> Bingo.

Yep, we're going to test the draft pressure to make sure the chimney's sucking properly.

Put the combustion analyzer into the throat of the water heater.

>> Okay.

>> We're gonna keep this guy on.

We know from the testing that we performed on this house, that the air ceiling is not very continuous.

There's holes in it.

So the readout is that it's sucking all of the combustion gases up into the flue just fine?

>> Yeah, totally.

>> Just fine?

>> It looks like everything is fine.

But also, the engine side is all of the HVAC.

The conditioning, the heating, the cooling, the ventilation fans in the bathrooms and the kitchen, et cetera.

The air conditioner is running now, and we can actually test the air flow right up through this thing.

>> Okay.

>> So let's go ahead and do that.

And this furnace also is looking great.

It's performing exactly the way that it should.

When we look at the relationship between these two items, they need to be tuned themselves, and they need to be tuned to each other.

>> And if they went for bigger, what would happen?

>> Bigger would be a disaster because it's already a high pressure system.

The veins are too small for the heart that's already here, so if they bought a bigger air conditioner, bigger furnace, it would actually be a worse problem.

>> Joe and Courtney have a growing family too, so by downsizing that HVAC system, they're going to be saving themselves money.

>> Pete, I'm so glad you're here.

>> Oh, me too.

Glad to be here.

>> Awesome.

This is a great house for opportunities.

There's a lot of stuff to do inside, so let's check it out.

Pete sanders is awesome.

He is a guy from a huge family.

He has a lot of experience, and he has a home services company, which does electrical, plumbing, and HVAC, which is a great combo.

They've added in, to wrap all those together, home performance testing.

We're in the mechanical room in the basement, and this was obviously the main reason that the homeowner thought they had a problem.

So we tested this stuff, and although it's very old, it does actually still work, which is kind of amazing.

>> Yeah, unfortunately when you have a house like this, where the majority of the ducted system is within the wall cavities, it becomes very intrusive to access it.

So what we customarily do, everything we can get to without significant intrusion, we'll address.

Here, for example, we have a very restrictive air flow through this plenum on top of the furnace.

We've got a coil that's probably restricted, and the air flow is reduced, causing the static pressure, and not enabling that air to get to the rooms they're intended to go to.

>> Sanders home services is one of the big reasons we even came to Philadelphia on the proof is possible tour, and he's gonna help out Joe and Courtney.

>> What do you say to people when they complain about having a system that's small, which is actually correctly sized?

>> It's unfortunate sometimes, and I see it as a contractor, when you propose a system that's properly and adequately sized to condition a space, sometimes the consumer is skeptical.

And our goal is to reduce the equipment size.

And we want to put only what's necessary to properly condition the space.

I am very familiar with this house.

I actually owned one in 1987.

>> This hatchway in the closet?

>> First I've ever seen that one.

>> The mystery hole in the closet was very interesting, and it's a telling feature of a home where something was going to happen, and then they decided not to do it.

>> Maybe there was going to be something magical back there, like a safe or something like that, but they cut the hole and didn't finish the job.

>> We certainly want to get that sealed up.

>> Great.

>> So Pete, time to get up in the attic.

All right, so the first thing that we noticed about this attic is that we've got a lot of batt insulation, and it's a pretty low level.

What does this stuff make you think?

Well, efficiency-wise it's not great, but in order to complete my job, it's awesome.

All I have to do, simply remove a section.

>> Hey-oh.

>> And there's a wall top right here.

>> Cool.

And so this is the top plate.

And so how exactly do you guys take care of something like this?

>> We're gonna lay-- put a layer of foam down over the top of the wall plate to seal up all this space where air can escape the house.

>> The rest of the insulation around here, is it going to stay?

Or do we need to throw it all away just because it's dirty?

>> As long as it's not compromised, it's totally okay to keep it.

>> We also have the attic fan up here, which we had to turn off.

Is that thing affecting the performance of the house, in your opinion?

>> Currently, yes.

It is possibly stealing air conditioning from below, since it's not an air sealed house.

>> Awesome.

And once we're done with this stuff, if the attic is air sealed and insulated away from the house, do we even need that thing running?

>> Not in my opinion.

>> Attic ventilation is actually for getting rid of moisture, not for getting rid of heat.

So lowering the temperature of the attic actually is not important if we don't care how hot the attic gets because we've got the house insulated and air sealed away from it.

>> All right.

So what we have here is a boot going through the house for the air.

You can see here the fiberglass has become an air filter instead of acting as an air stopper.

So what we have here is an actual disconnected duct in very poor shape.

And I'm looking down through the house, and clearly this is not doing a very good job.

Here's our old chimney.

This is what removed the carbon monoxide from the house.

But as you can see, it's not very well sealed.

They did put a piece of metal in as a fire stop, but I can fit fingers underneath.

There's space all over the place for air to get out.

This is just leaking a lot of air out of the home, and desperately needs to be sealed up.

But it's very important to seal it properly if it's going to remain an active chimney, because there are fire codes that are relevant to this type of setup.

>> When we started diagnosing the home, we had a couple different goals.

>> Generally always, our goals are our clients' goals.

So when they tell us what they are looking for, that's always what we're gonna do.

For example, they didn't say that "We want this to be "energy efficient first."

They said, "We want the house "to do these things."

>> Another goal that we had with Joe and Courtney and their home was helping to provide them with confidence.

And one of the big ways you can be more confident about your home, is being educated about it.

>> Some people think that you can't have perfect control over home performance.

We designed and built the Tiny Lab to prove that that's wrong.

Let me show you around.

>> The Tiny Lab is 30 feet long and 8 feet wide.

To make the Tiny Lab represent the home of the future, we knew we couldn't leave out any modern comforts.

We just had to plan the space carefully.

For instance, we had to think about sound.

There are a lot of hard surfaces in the Tiny Lab, and we knew echoes would be a problem.

We also needed to block the noise from outside, because we never knew where we might park the Tiny Lab.

We chose a cork floor, not only because it looks great, but it also dampens echoes.

But most importantly, the air tightness of the Tiny Lab is what really keeps the sound out.

>> It is built for the road.

That means it's designed to withstand an earthquake and a hurricane at the same time, on a weekly basis, as we tour around the country.

So, that means it's built like a tank.

It has lots of extra rigidity in the walls, in the ceiling, in the frame underneath.

It's got tires attached to it, which makes it kind of extra special.

We have to worry about axles now and springs and electric brakes, and all that kind of stuff.

But we have everything else built exactly like a house would be.

You'll notice we have beautiful wood, beautiful metal.

The reason the metal's on the front, it's moving in this direction, so anything that's gonna come along projectile-wise and hit my house, I want to make sure that it deflects.

>> The sloped roof of the Tiny Lab is aerodynamic for the road.

The ceilings within range from 7 to 11 feet high, providing enough space in the tail end for the dining loft above and the bedroom below.

The stairs to the loft double as our dresser because when you live in a tiny house, every square foot counts.

>> Now, as far as the walls go, you might think that I just slapped this metal and this cedar onto this plywood on the side of the house, but that is not true.

What we have here instead is hollow, solid.

The solid is where we connect through this onto the studs of the house, and in order to know where the studs are, I have to have a framing plan and know exactly how far apart they are from each other.

If water gets behind this, it is not the end of the world.

There is a drainage plane on the backside of this with a 3/8 inch gap that's allowing air to come up through and evaporate any water that gets into my wall assembly.

It's called a rain screen.

You can see that rain screen gap right here.

Now here, we're not only protecting the underside of this house from road debris that might bounce up and injure the insulation here, but also on air sealing.

Now, I air sealed this entire house with membranes and tapes.

Why wouldn't I have used something like spray foam or caulk to seal the gaps and cracks around my house?

Well, I think I told you, I'm gonna expose this house to an earthquake and a hurricane at the same time on a regular basis.

Either of those would crack under that stress.

And so we used flexible materials that could take that abuse and deal with the flexing of this house.

Now because we're off grid, we need a way to generate electricity, which is what the solar panels are for.

We couldn't use a wind generator, even though I looked into it, for pulling at 55 miles an hour, doesn't work.

These are not on the roof.

That's because it would be better for them not to be on the roof.

As I told you, this is designed to pull at 55 miles an hour around the country.

We are traveling 13,000 miles to 34 cities on this tour.

And if these things were on the roof, they could potentially become detached, fly off, kill somebody.

They could get damaged by hail, et cetera, or they could cause air leakage because in order to attach these to my roof, I'd have to poke holes, more holes, in my enclosure, which you know I hate.

I'm all about the air sealing.

So, for those reasons, plus I can move these to a sunny spot, park my house in the shade, as you can see, and move them to take advantage of the sun tracking across the sky.

Everything points to building scaffolds so that they can live outside and be separated, decoupled, from the house structure.

Now you can see up top we've got a number of vents.

I have, actually, nine vents between my house and outside.

What these vents do is supply fresh air to the house, take stale air out of the house, make sure that all the combustion appliances like the water heater and the stove have enough fresh air to breathe, and then making sure that the pressures are balanced throughout.

Now, this is something that can happen on any house.

When you're doing an addition, a renovation, building new, you want to run what's called an energy model.

The energy model takes your house and puts it into a computer, and runs it through a simulation of weather all year where it's located.

>> From the gas stove to the ventilation system, down to the smallest detail, we knew just what we wanted the Tiny Lab to be.

We planned it over nine months, and built it in five.

Mistakes are a natural part of the construction process, and we made lots of them.

But we tested every day and took the time to fix them.

Now compare that to a production build, which is squeezed into 60 to 90 days.

There's no time to test your work, let alone address mistakes, which future homeowners will be stuck with for years to come.

We're always under the impression that our clients don't want to do everything all at once.

And that's not important.

You can take it in stages.

So when they had us out, we ran the testing to figure out what the whole list, the whole scope, is.

Knowing how to prioritize your list of recommendations, and also how to stage them so that you don't later have to undo something you did five years ago in order to do that.

For example, air sealing always happens before insulation.

Those kinds of steps are what a home performance professional can really give you with the test data and the modeling.

So the first thing to always get to is safety stuff.

The garage.

The garage is connected to your bedroom because of that little hatchway in your closet.

That's totally unnecessary.

We still have no idea why that's there.

It needs to be gone.

So we're just gonna seal that up.

Sanders is gonna take care of that for you.

Also, that fan that you were complaining about the noise-- >> It's always running.

>> --how the attic fan came on, and also the one on top, both of those can be gone.

>> After doing the testing, some of the metrics really revealed that several people had tried to do things in this house, but maybe not with clear thought, and certainly not with testing.

So now that Joe and Courtney have that testing, and they have their home diagnosis, they can start working on their plan.

>> So the next big space is the sunroom.

You explained that it's a three seasons room that you wanted to be a four seasons room if possible.

That space is the best defined space in your entire enclosure.

>> It is not a part of your home.

It is its own thing.

>> It happens to be made almost entirely of glass.

It happens to be not very well insulated, and it happens to be pointing west, which means it picks up a ton of sun in the summertime in the afternoon.

So what we can do, is instead of trying to make that room part of the house, which would be a mistake and it would take a lot of work too, we can just introduce a new HVAC system out there to handle that, and you would want a ductless mini-split.

Here in this case, we recommend putting a new HVAC system in that space, and that's the ductless mini-split, which we have in the Tiny Lab.

That approach of plugging in an engine to make your house do what you want it to do, is not anything to be ashamed of because the point is control, not energy efficiency.

When you're having your home diagnosed, the testing a home performance professional will do will give you a list of prioritized solutions, but you don't have to tackle everything all at once.

You can stop and take your time, and do what's important for you and your family.

Like our family in Philadelphia, whose first priority is tackling air leakage and protecting their growing family's health.

[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.