Local real estate agent outfits own home with energy efficiency retrofits

Knocking on the front door and looking at one of the few windows that lined the front of the house, I didn’t know what to expect. Trees and vegetation surrounded the house, with ferns lining the covered walkway to the front door and leafy vines crawling down from a second story porch. As the homeowner opened the door, I wondered, with so much shade and so few windows how could any light enter this house?

Stepping inside, I was shocked to find a living space illuminated by indirect sunlight. The entire south wall of the living room was lined with dual-paned French doors, while four large skylights lined the vaulted ceilings. Standing in the living area with the wet nose of the family dog in my hand, I noticed that despite all the windows and light in the room, the house was surprisingly cool. In fact, it felt as though an air conditioner had recently been shut off.

To learn more about how you can retrofit your home, plan to attend a Home Heating and Cooling Make a Plan Workshop on January 27 at the Davis Senior Center. Register now to assist Cool Davis with planning.

Sitting down with Claire Black Slotton, the owner of the house and local real estate agent, I was told that the couple rarely turned on the air conditioner. The comfortable temperature in their house was the result of multiple energy efficient retrofits that her and her husband installed in their home a year ago.

When Claire, her husband Darell, her son, and her dog moved into their house in Village Homes three years ago, it was already considered energy efficient. Claire noted that all the houses in Village homes were built with passive solar in mind. “They’re all oriented to the south with the eaves coming out far enough so that the summer sun doesn’t come in to heat the slab, but the winter sun does come in … it’s a passive form of temperature control.”

But Claire and her husband wanted to do more.

“We really care about the environment and we’re trying to live as lightly on the land as possible.” Claire has been an ardent environmentalist ever since taking a social studies class with her high school teacher, Shirlene Bearskin. “I was already a hiker and a camper and stuff, but she really opened my eyes.” After high school, Claire went on to obtain a degree in renewable natural resources and began to dabble in solar cooking. She continues to use her solar cooker to make applesauce from the granny smith apple tree in her yard. “It’s an incredible cooking utensil,” Claire confided in me as she sat in front of a rack of canned applesauce. “It’s a slow cooker. This one gets up to 225 degrees, so you can cook anything in there that doesn’t require high heat.… Nothing burns or scorches.”

With her experience in real estate and knowledge from her renewable natural resource degree, Claire knew what energy efficient upgrades she wanted done in her home before contacting a contractor. A year ago, she finally decided to hire a contractor to go through with her plans.

Paying attention to the roof paid off

One area of the house she paid particular attention to during the renovation was the roof. Walking onto the roof from the patio off the master bedroom, Claire pointed to the protruding eave and emphasized its thickness. “We insulated the roof with a foam board that’s about three inches thick, and we added a reflective roof,” she said. She went on to tell me that before the renovation her roof was lined with black ceramic tiles that absorbed and trapped heat. By removing the ceramic tiles and replacing them with reflective shingles, heat from the hot summer sun is reflected rather than absorbed, resulting in a much more comfortable internal temperature.

In addition to adding reflective shingles, Claire also installed a radiant barrier and completely replaced all the insulation in her attic to further prevent heat from entering her house. This radiant barrier is exactly what it sounds like, a reflective material that lines the inner part of the attic to reflect radiant heat and reduce the amount of heat absorbed into the attic. Claire’s efforts to reflect heat and prevent heat from coming in were palpable as I walked through her house.

It was around 4pm on a hot summer day when I interviewed Claire, and the interior of her home was only 73 degrees, with no assistance from the air conditioner. Since the renovation, her home has remained a comfortable temperature, even on those sweltering triple digit days. “I think it’s gotten to 76,” she told me. “We do turn on the AC occasionally, but it’s very rare. If it gets to 76 inside, it’s usually at 5 o’clock in the afternoon.” Before the renovation, Claire’s home would get warmer earlier in the day and her family would run the air conditioning from around 2pm until 6pm.

Now, they use their air conditioning system so little that Claire decided to do away with her upstairs AC system altogether and replace it with something different. She noted that when they moved in, “We had one system for both floors.” As part of the renovations, “We disconnected the upstairs from the whole house system and put in a separate system for the upstairs, which is much more efficient. It’s called a mini-split.”

Walking outside the house I could see the outer part of the mini-split unit resting on the roof. A mini-split is a ductless air conditioning unit that Claire described as “the newest thing and it’s how lots of people are heating and cooling their homes now because it can control a very specific area instead of trying to heat or cool the whole space.” By using a highly zoned and more energy efficient method of cooling, Claire and her husband are able to maintain a comfortable temperature in their bedroom without a conventional cooling and heating system.

Whole house fan keeps it cool

The family also keeps the house cool without using the downstairs air conditioning unit through the use of a whole house fan. Climbing up the stairs that lead to the master bedroom, Claire pointed out the section of the ceiling where the fan was installed. She purchased the whole house fan a year ago as a part of her larger home renovation project. She said that “[the house] did have one when we bought it, but it was a big, ugly, noisy thing. You can’t even hear this one.”

Whenever the air is cooler outside than it is inside, Claire throws open her windows and flicks on her ceiling fan before activating her whole house fan. She runs the fan overnight, for a total of 8 hours, noting that “It’s almost as cool inside as it is outside by the morning,” she said. While 8 hours may seem like a long time, Claire related, “I like to run it for a long time because it is cooling all the elements of the house. So, it’s not just cooling the air, it’s cooling the walls.”

All Claire’s efforts to make her home more comfortable and energy efficient have truly paid off. The moment I entered her house, I could immediately feel the results of extensive insulation, effective ventilation, new air conditioning approaches, and a reflective roof.

To learn more about how you can retrofit your home, plan to attend a Home Heating and Cooling Make a Plan Workshop on January 27 at the Davis Senior Center. Register now to assist Cool Davis with planning.

By Emily Estrada

Emily Estrada is from Livermore, CA. She moved to Davis with her 12-year-old cat, Calvin, to pursue a degree in Cultural Anthropology. As a Cool Davis intern this past summer, Emily worked diligently on home heating and cooling, assisting with focus groups and producing homeowner success stories for our blog and web page. After graduation this past fall, Emily plans on taking her knowledge of anthropology and applying it in a corporate setting.