Well, it's certainly not snowing here in Phoenix around this time of summer. With our infamous heat and unrelenting sunlight, our air conditioners are working overtime just to keep our homes at a livable temperature. That also means it's that time of year when you're probably spending a ton of money on your energy bills. If only there was anything that could be done...

Oh, wait! There is. A huge reason for heat gain in your home is the windows, which are always the least insulated part of any home. Think about all the houses you pass by every day with windows directly in the sun's rays, and no or minimal shading and covering. What a terrible fate! These people must be spending a small fortune to cool their house! 

Or maybe you see your neighbors with all kinds of window treatments! Some neighbors might have awnings. Some might have sun shades. Some might just have some shady trees or vines! Great! But how do you know where to go with all these options?

Well, luckily, here's a list of some window treatments that will help curb your heat gain... And, by extension, lower those bills, and make it easier on your AC unit, too! Feels a bit like Christmas in July, right?

If you live in Arizona like we do, your air conditioner is already getting a workout this week. Here are a few tips to make sure that your HVAC is running as efficiently as possible in order to keep you cool and comfortable in the high temperatures:

• Change your filters regularly.
• Run your ceiling fans.
• Install a thermostat with a “circulation or re-circulate” mode fan.
• Keep your outdoor condenser coil clean.
• Have a technician check your heat pump/AC system’s superheat or sub cooling

Most of what we have suggested doesn’t require a technician to come out to your house, many can be done by you with minimal or no tools. Keeping cool and running your air conditioning efficiently is key to saving money and staying comfortable during the hot Arizona summer months.
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However, if you think that your AC unit isn’t working like it should be, call Green ID at (602) 926-1650 today to schedule a $59 AC tune-up.

So you’ve heard about spray foam insulation, but you live in a block home. This makes you wonder, is it even possible to have spray foam in a cement block home? What about in an older home?
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The answer is YES!

The ideal way to install spray foam insulation in a cement block home is during construction. This allows our professional installers direct access to the empty concrete block cells that will be filled with the spray foam product.

However, even after construction is finished, or during a remodel or retrofit of an older home, we can get foam insulation into a block wall by drilling a series of holes near the top of the wall and filling the wall one vertical cell at a time.

Working from the inside face (or the surface most likely to be covered with a finish), contractors drill 5/8-inch or 7/8-inch holes into the face of the blocks about 4 feet up from the floor to fit an injection tube running from a “mixer” that combines a non-toxic liquid resin, a foaming agent, and air.

Once the foam starts to seep through the injection holes (indicating a full cavity encompassing several blocks), the process is repeated along the length of the wall every 4 feet, and then again along the top of the wall about a foot short of its full height.
Here is how that works: as one cell fills up, the foam will start to exit from the hole in the adjoining cell, signaling the installer to move the hose to the next cell and seal the hole that was just filled. One vertical cell is filled at a time, until the entire block wall is full of foam insulation.

Another option would be to fur out an interior wall with wood or steel studs and spray the foam directly into place over the face of the block wall and in between the studs. Be advised, this option would imply added material costs in the form of studs, sheetrock, etc…and it would result in a slight – although measurable – loss of interior square footage.

These are only two examples of how spray foam insulation can be retro-fitted to existing concrete structures. Spray foam is a highly adaptable material, and it can be used on nearly any project.

Here at Green ID, we have the needed experience and expertise to assist you with all of your insulation needs!

If you have any questions or concerns about whether our spray foam products can be used at your home, call us at (602) 926-1650.

Leaky windows and doors don’t just make your home drafty – they also make your monthly energy bill higher. Many leaks are easy to detect, but ones that are out of sight can be sapping heating and cooling out of your house and dollars out of your wallet.
Conserving energy at home is a great idea for many reasons. It cuts down on energy costs, and because most of the energy that we use comes from fossil fuels, using less is beneficial for the environment, too. A professional energy audit from Green ID will identify a home’s vulnerabilities for only $99, and experts say that whether an audit makes financial sense depends on how energy savvy you are.

In many ways, saving energy can be pretty simple. You can find dozens of different ways to conserve –such as turning up your thermostat in the summer or switching to more efficient light bulbs. But, most homes are so inefficient that even after you’ve done all of the easy home improvements, there are still dozens of ways to save money and energy.

Unfortunately, the improvements that save you the most energy over time tend to be expensive. Before you spend hundreds – or even thousands – of dollars on home improvements, such as buying a new furnace, installing insulation, or putting in new windows, it’s nice to know how much energy they’ll actually save. Just as important, you’ll want to know how long these home energy upgrades will take to pay for themselves and start saving you money.

Homeowners can check for infiltrations around windows, doors, and electric outlets, and can buy kits from home improvement stores to fill those areas. However, some things cannot be seen without specialized tools.

It is important to remember that deficiencies are not only present in older homes. In fact, new homes often have significant energy problems, largely due to the fact that new houses typically aren’t as solidly constructed as older houses. New homes can leak more air, causing health and comfort problems, and the quality of building components can be poor. Insulation is often very sloppily installed or in some cases, may be missing entirely.

With energy prices rising, homeowners are looking for ways to save money on their utility bills. Many homeowners will take measures on their own like caulking windows, adding insulation, and filling in leaky gaps. However, energy audits can identify energy leaks that are not so obvious or easy to find. Many energy auditing companies claim that identifying and fixing these hidden problems can not only save the homeowner up to 30% on their heating and cooling cots each year, but also on the potential expense of fixing things that don’t solve the problem.

Energy audits take all the guess work out of it. Many customers have gone down the road of trying to make their home more energy efficient by spending money on new windows, heating, and AC equipment, but oftentimes, these upgrades do not solve the problems and result in a reduced energy bill. A home energy audit can be compared to doing a diagnostic before fixing a car: you wouldn’t buy the parts first.

Buyer Beware

Not all home energy auditors are created equally. Energy Star recommends making sure an auditor engages in certain tasks and uses approved tools during the audit, including a blower door, an infrared camera, and a duct blower. A blower door is a fan that mounts in the doorframe and pressurizes and depressurizes the home to measure the amount of air leakage. A duct blower works similar to a blower door, but is attached to the duct system. Infrared cameras show surface heat variations and is used to detect heat losses an air leakages in walls. Though this sounds complicated, the good news is that Green ID does perform all three of these tests, and is approved by Energy Star, and works closely with SRP and APS as part of their energy saving programs. This means that using Green ID as your home energy auditor ensures that you are getting a comprehensive and professional audit. At Green ID, we do it the right way. All of our auditors are BPI certified and have several years of experience. And, these three tests are only a few of 41 different tests that Green ID uses when performing a home energy audit.

What to expect at a home energy audit

Typically, a home energy audit takes two to three hours, depending on the size of the home. Before the audit, our auditors will do an interview with the homeowner to get the history of the home and any problems or areas of concern. Once the audit is complete, the homeowner gets a detailed report identifying recommendations on what should be fixed or improved in the home and in what order these upgrades should occur in. This follow up will also outline any rebates available for the recommended upgrades.  The homeowner has the option to have Green ID fix the issues if they choose to.
The Department of Energy recommends making a list of any problems and gathering copies or a summary of the home’s annual energy bills before an audit to help auditors establish what to look for during the inspection.

Rebates and Tax Credits

In many cases, you can get money for specific energy improvements in the form of government rebates or tax credits. SRP and APS both have local rebates available for energy upgrades.

Call Green ID today at (602) 926-1650 to find out more about how you can save, and to schedule your home energy audit!

Solar screens are a good way to reduce heat and light during the summer. They can either be a roller shade or fixed panels installed on a window, patio, balcony, or porch.
Solar screens are made of polyester or fiberglass coated and finished with different materials, which makes them durable and stable. Screens come in many colors and can be matched nicely with the exterior color scheme of the house.
Solar screens are one of the most inexpensive, temporary solutions to protect from the sun, heat, and glare, and to get some privacy.

Advantages of solar shades

• UV protection
• Economical
• Durable
• Provides lots of insulation against outdoor temperatures
• Ability to reduce energy costs
• Reduce glare and heat
• Privacy
• Attractive aesthetic
• Can be easily adjusted to your preference or removed during the winter months
• Exterior screens have much better shading benefits than do interior screens.

Disadvantages of solar shades

• Partially obstruct the view outside
• Cause the home to feel darker (less natural light is let in)
• If the screens are not fitted securely, they can get damaged in a storm or other harsh weather conditions.
• Can be expensive, depending on the type of screen and the installation

Where to best use solar screens in the home

In order to make the most of solar screens in the home, it is important to use them in locations most suited to this type of window treatment. Any room that receives lots of sunlight, for example, will be a prime candidate for solar shades. Many homeowners choose to put shades on south-facing windows because these will receive the most morning light and the most sunshine throughout the course of the day. Solar screens also create privacy when used on bathroom windows, and they can help to grant privacy in large sitting or living rooms without sacrificing views of the outside. For completely unobstructed views, however, using shades may not always be the best choice. Solar screens can be used on almost any window type as well as on glass patio doors, French doors, or sliding doors.

Choosing an openness level for solar screens

One thing that many homeowners do not realize about solar screens is that they come in varying ranges of light filtering and privacy. Since these shades are made from a mesh, the size of the holes in the mesh will dictate what is called the openness factor, or amount of natural light let in. Typically, the range of openness factors starts at 1 percent and goes up to 12 percent. At 1 percent openness, a screen will look almost black from the interior. It grants complete privacy and does a fantastic job of keeping the home cool, but it is the most detrimental to the view. Moving up to 3 percent reduces the dark color of the solar screen, but still provides almost complete privacy and sun protection. Shades with a 5 percent openness are among the most popular as they still offer relatively clear views without direct sunlight, but 10 percent is also a popular choice. Homeowners looking to buy their solar screens from a retail company rather than a custom-designer might find that most shades are available in 5 or 10 percent openness.

Factors that can increase the cost of a solar screen

There are a variety of factors that can increase or decrease the cost of solar screens. Size is the biggest influence on price, and large shades designed for doors will be much more expensive than the standard sized shades made for most windows. For the most part, the openness factor of screens does not factor into the price. The most expensive solar shades will be those that are custom-made to fit a particular window or door. These shades will have to be measured in advance and then manufactured by hand, which drives the price up substantially.

What homeowners should know about installation

With some DIY experience and the right tools, many homeowners can install their own solar screens. However, leaving it to the professionals ensures a sleeker fit and better insulation. One thing to think about before installing or even purchasing shades is whether the will be mounted inside of the recess of the window or above the frame itself. Whenever possible, installing shades inside of the window recess is a good idea that looks fantastic and blocks out the most sunlight.

For more information about solar screens, or to get started with installing them, call Green ID at (602) 926-1650 today!

Insulation can have a powerful impact on many aspects of your home and even though it plays a vital role in a home’s comfort it is often not placed correctly or up to expectations within a home. Things like insulation thickness and placement are often not up to Energy Star’s requirements of R-38. Making sure that insulation is up to standard increases your comfort and decreases your monthly expenses!

In Arizona especially, it’s very important to have insulation that is properly installed. Proper insulation can assure you that both your warm and conditioned air is staying inside the home and not seeping through the walls. Because having a home properly insulated means that the home is better able to hold hot or cold air inside the rooms it means that you won’t need to as much energy to maintain a comfortable and stable temperature. Decreasing your energy consumption in this way is an easy way to decrease your carbon footprint and your monthly bills! A properly insulated home also cuts down on the amounts of allergens and pollutants that would otherwise be able to come from outside of your home.

​Insulation gives you the opportunity to maximize your energy usage, payments on monthly bills, and comfort within your home. It is often a fairly simple task to correct the existing insulation that’s already there whether that means adding to the thickness, replacing it, or adding to bald spots. Make sure your insulations doing the most it can for your home.

Making green upgrades to your home can majorly increase your comfort. Unfortunately, comfort and quick paybacks don’t always go hand in hand. Upgrades like window replacements, garage insulation and increasing insulation levels to assure they’re up to the R-38 standard, are all upgrades where the most cost effective solution may not align with your lifestyle conditions. For example, replacing single pane windows in good condition is not cost-effective but the price paid for one south or west-facing window may be well worth the cost if it cools down a hot office or reduces traffic noise at night. It’s clear that in some situations the lifestyle conditions may outweigh the cost or payback of upgrades.

Insulation changes are another popular upgrade that homeowners choose to make. Adding insulation can often times give homeowners greater temperature control in their home but not every home is the same in terms of insulation. If a home has already met a R-38 Energy Star standard adding more may still save you money on utilities but only by a small margin opposed to adding insulation to an aged home where the insulation has sank. In the later example the upgrade would most likely save the home owners much more on their utility bills. Often the more important issue is finding out how the insulation installed.  A 5% defect in the installation will cut the R-value (its effectiveness) by 50%.

​All considerations for upgrades can be discussed with an energy auditor who will give you their professional and unbiased opinion of the most cost effective upgrades you can be making in your home. It’s important to get a professional opinion when making investments that could save you money and increase your comfort. 

​Call it the Achilles heel of the HVAC industry, but AC contractors have all but ignored home performance even though it has huge impacts on the effectiveness of new and existing AC units. Air conditioning contractors are getting pushed out of their comfort zone with home performance. Now, not all AC contractors ignore the elephant in the room, but many small and large AC companies do. How do we know this? When you perform over 2000 home energy audits, you get to see all sorts of situations and get to fix all kinds of messes left over by HVAC contractors. Some homeowners have trusted AC contractors who are highly recommended and put on a well deserved pedestal but talk to them about home performance, the HVAC poster child can turn into the jealous step sister Drazella and can end up making themselves look like fools. We have seen countless homes that have had "energy audits" done by HVAC contractors and who were supposed to have done home performance work including duct sealing, air barrier sealing, air sealing and insulation realignment. I was shocked to discover duct board put in the wrong location to create a thermal boundary in the attic and the AC contractor charged the customer for this! Their home performance work was done all wrong.

Experienced air conditioning contractors are good because they know where the hiccups occur during an air conditioner install and how to avoid them, and they know what the most common call backs are and how to avoid them. Most of the time, doing the right thing requires a little extra effort on their part during the AC install. For most AC contractors, this is not the standard way of doing their installs, and just like learning how to swing a golf club the correct way verses the easy way, it takes them out of their comfort zone and most would rather just skip doing the extra effort verses spending a little more time, effort and materials to do it right. 
 
You definitely want to hear an air conditioning contractor tell you they do the following:

1. Charge the system with the correct amount of refrigerant after installation. This is not factory settings as every system comes with refrigerant already charged it. Many contractors just leave the factory charge and do not bother adding any more or measuring to find out how much more is needed and this is a big problem. If the distance from your outside condenser to the inside air handler is more than 15 feet, your AC contractor should be adding more refrigerant as the manufacturers only add enough refrigerant for 15 feet of refrigerant line.
 
2. Size the unit according to what your home needs, not based on the square footage of the house alone. This requires a Manual J calculation on the house so you should see your contractor or auditor measuring your windows and actually going in your attic to measure the insulation. A Manual J calculation is only as good as its inputs so you see your contractor taking some time to measure and collect data.  The last thing you want is an under or over sized AC system.
 
3. For package roof units, you want a side by side elbow, not a down draft and not an over-under aka twist elbow. This is a major no-no that most AC contractors are guilty of committing. Down draft and over-under elbows are cheaper and easier to install and require less labor and materials but are NOT best for your energy bills, comfort and the life of your system. If your AC contractor is really stuck in their ways or really lazy, they will make up excuses on why down draft and over-under elbows are OK to install, they may even believe what they are saying is true, but hold firm in your affirmation that you want a side by side elbow. Be careful because even if you are getting a new elbow, your air conditioning contractor could just be tying into your existing roof jack and not enlarging the return.  Ask for a side-by-side elbow, new roof jack and two plenums. It will cost more upfront and it is more labor intensive, but you’re energy bills will decrease and save you money over the long run.
 
4. Supply and return plenums
A plenum is a transition between the ductwork and the unit. If your furnace or air handler is in the attic, like most are in Phoenix, the plenum is likely a sheet metal box that has flex duct connecting into it and the other side is attached to the furnace. If your furnace or air handler is in the garage or closet, the return plenum is the framed box that it sits on and the supply plenum is the sheet metal on top. Plenums are important for proper airflow, allowing the unit to breathe and mix air in the box before it hits the evaporator coils. They are not always included in the cost of an AC but should be. It is extra work to install them but every home should have them.
 
5. A proper duct design
If your air conditioner is your heart, then your ductwork are the veins used for delivering conditioned air to all your rooms. When our arteries get clogged or too little blood is delivered our body tells us something is wrong. This is the same for our ductwork and your comfort. If your ductwork is full of leaks, kinks and improper sizing your home won’t stay comfortable even with the most energy efficient air conditioner on the market. Today flex ductwork is installed in Phoenix homes built after 1960 and flex ductwork is good because it’s easy to install, in fact, anyone can install it and so the best practices for ductwork design go out the window. Sure, it may pass inspection, but once the unit gets turned on you may experience one room that can never cool down to the temperature of the rest of the house. A bad duct design is to blame in many cases, not the air conditioner itself. AC contractors in Phoenix need to recognize that the ductwork needs to be checked for leaks and properly sized for each install.
 
There are several other must-haves when requesting specifics during air conditioner bids, but the list above are the basics to start you on the right foot. I would make sure all these things were done on my own home and Green ID technicians are trained to do a proper installation from Day 1 without cutting corners.