California is known for being, among other things, a “progressive” state. I won’t get into the nuances of exactly what that means other than to point out that California has some fairly stringent energy conservation laws and regulations. One of them is the Title 24 energy requirements, and the law focuses on the twin aspects of energy efficient design regulations, and compliance regulations. Energy efficiency is always a design objective for any home or remodeling project, not only to minimize the ongoing cost of utilities, but also because there is great concern about reducing our collective energy “footprint” due to the impact on climate and the environment. There is always a trade-off between the extra expense that has to be incurred up front to make a home energy efficient, and the expense one saves in utility bills which amortize this up front cost. Hey, if you spend so much making your home super efficient, but it takes 100 years to recover the expense, maybe that’s not such a bright idea.

In California, some of the guesswork about this has been regulated away. However, the way the state has done it is pretty cool (IMHO). Instead of prescribing how much insulation or what kind of roof you can put on your house, you design using a performance based approached. The state has a free computer program that will calculate the energy efficiency of your house, and you can make tradeoffs between energy efficient windows, reflective “cool roof” shingles, radiant barriers, insulation, etc.. to get within requirements. These requirements are specific to your geographic location and take into account the orientation of your house, the historical weather conditions, the length of daylight, elevation of the sun, and calculate your energy usage over an entire year in 15 minute increments (that’s  34,560 iterations). The reason I think this is cool is because I’m a geek at heart and this computer based modeling interests me. Fortunately, because I modeled my house, it was easy for me to get all of the measurements (surface areas). California also has a simulation for commercial buildings and, check this out, it uses a SketchUp plug-in called Open Studio, which is made by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

OK, enough of the geek stuff. The output of the program shows you how much energy you’ll be using, and it ALSO gives you an idea of what your heating and air conditioning requirements will be.  So, for me, I now can approach an HVAC contractor armed with some knowledge and make sure that they are sizing the units correctly.

As I mentioned above, another thing the program was useful for was to do some design tradeoffs. I had originally planned to replace all of my windows with vinyl high efficiency window. One thing that I noticed was that (a) these things are darned expensive to have installed (figure minimum $500 per window), and (b) it’s pretty difficult to get the right materials. Replacement windows are DIFFERENT from new construction windows, and while you can work your window opening to accept a new construction window, it’s difficult and expensive to do. None of the retail outlets sell replacement windows. I did some serious research and the only thing I came up with was to find some contractor who could buy the windows for you, and maybe you pay him a little bit and he puts your windows on an order he’s doing for somebody else. I swear, there must be some sort of conspiracy! So I had resigned myself to get a contractor to come in and do the stinkin’ windows. In the course of finalizing my plans, I had a professional inspector come in and give me the low down on the condition of my home because I didn’t want any big surprises (more on that later). He asked me about the windows, and when I told him I planned on replacing them, he strongly advised against it. Although I have single pane aluminum sliding windows, he said that all they needed was a good refurbishment, and that the energy savings were minuscule because of climate we live in. In addition, vinyl windows started to exhibit problems in as little as 5 years (in his experience). So, I went back to the energy simulation program, put back in my original windows, and darned if he was right. Hardly ANY change in energy efficiency. THAT saved me about $8000!

I won’t get into California Title 24 lighting requirements too much. I will only mention two things. (1) Incandescent lighting is an EXTREME wast of energy! An incandescent light should be re-named a light emitting electric heater, because that’s what it is. Go with high efficacy lights such as LEDs or Compact Flourescent (CFL). (2) California Title 24 requires that you have special fixtures that accept a specific light base (GU 24) for all permanent lighting (like all of those recessed ceiling lights I want to put in). This is because the regulators wanted to make sure that the owners wouldn’t just go out and buy typical screw-in lights when the “fancy ones” burned out. Unfortunately, the market for these special light bases and fixtures is limited (to new construction in California), so the industry has responded by making a whole BUNCH of high efficacy lights with the screw base (Edison). Now, I don’t have much of a choice in lights because of this response to the code by industry. It turns out that the new requirements for 2018 will allow screw in high-efficacy lights. BUT, I’m being permitted under 2010 requirements, so I’m stuck. My plan is to get a bunch of really cheap GU-24 CFLs to put into my lighting and have the inspector sign off, then when he’s gone, buy a bunch of GU-24 to Edison adapters and get the screw-in lights I really want.

So, to conclude, if you have a “geek streak” and are interested in learning about energy efficiency,you might want to consider one of the computer models that give you an accurate picture of what your energy improvements, and savings, might be. It makes it easy to compare energy upgrade costs versus utility savings, and it can give you some really good information when it comes time to discuss options with contractors. Since it’s a requirement in California, you’re either going to have to DIY, or pay somebody to do it. For me it was worth the effort to DIY, and I now have a good plan for making meaningful energy efficient improvements for my project.