Fix More Houses!
Which do you think would have the bigger impact: Building better new houses or fixing existing homes? Well, let’s do the numbers. In 2024, building departments across the US issued just shy of 1.5 million building permits for new homes (single family and multifamily). On the existing homes side, we had just shy of 150 million homes in 2024. So should we build better homes or fix more houses?
It’s not just the numbers of new versus existing homes that matters, though. Homes are built better now than they used to be because building codes have improved. So, older homes have more air leakage, less insulation, leakier ducts, and more moisture problems. My take, then, is that since there are more existing homes and more problems in those homes, we need more people working on existing homes.
As Mike Rogers used to say, we need to fix more houses!
Existing home problems
I’ve written a gazillion articles about the kinds of problems you find in existing homes. But let me list four of the most common trouble spots here. At the end of the article, I’ll provide links to some of my most relevant articles for each topic.
Way too much air leakage. Making a house more airtight is one of the best things you can do to fix a house. It solves problems of comfort, durability, moisture, indoor air quality, and energy efficiency.
Bad duct system. Oh, this can go wrong in so many ways. Maybe it’s a a ductopus with bad air flow that leads to comfort problems. Maybe it’s a disconnected duct (photo below) or lots of duct leakage wasting energy and making you uncomfortable. Or it could be poorly installed flex duct. Sometimes the fixes are straightforward and relatively easy. Other times, you’ll need to hire a professional.
Missing or inadequate insulation. This is almost certainly true of your home. The Insulation Institute commissioned a study that found 89 percent of homes are under-insulated. I’ve been in a lot of attics, basements, and crawl spaces and don’t find that number surprising.
Nasty vented crawl space. I’ve been in way too many of these. The photo at the top of this article shows one—and that wasn’t even the worst part. If you allow a crawl space to be connected to outdoor air and ground moisture, it’s going to be nasty. Bugs, spiders, snakes, feral cats, raccoons, possums, banshees, werewolves, and goblins all love spending time in crawl spaces. The best thing to do with them is seal them up and consider them conditioned space—or at least semi-conditioned. (See my pages on crawl space encapsulation for info on the benefits, features, science, and methods.)
The benefits of fixing homes
Improving those things can make a huge difference for the people living those homes. One of the first things a lot of people think about is reducing your energy bills. Yeah, that’s definitely one thing that usually happens when you make a house more airtight and better insulated, improve the air flow in the duct system, and kick the banshees out of the crawl space. But in my book, energy savings are usually less important than the other benefits.
The biggie is healthfulness. In my contracting days, we encapsulated the crawl space in one Atlanta home, and the woman who hired us told me afterward that her daughter’s cough went away. Airtightness is one of the seven steps to good indoor air quality (IAQ). So is controlling moisture.
Fixing ducts also can help with IAQ, but you have to be careful. You can create IAQ problems by sealing ducts if you don’t also consider how the air flow interacts with the HVAC system and other combustion appliances, especially natural draft water heaters. You could end up with backdrafting that puts carbon monoxide in the home. Please consult with a professional before sealing ducts.
Your comfort almost certainly will improve when fix the problems I outlined above. Air sealing reduces drafts. Insulation and air sealing together can bring the temperature of the floors, walls, and ceilings closer to the temperature you want the space to be at. That improves something called the mean radiant temperature, which is best explained by my article titled Naked People Need Building Science.
Durability also improves when you do these things. Uncontrolled air flow can cause moisture problems inside walls. Vented crawl spaces can grow mold and rot wood in crawl spaces. They’re also bad for HVAC systems (photo above). You spend a lot of money on a house and the equipment you put in it. Why not give it a nice environment to increase its useful life?
And then there’s the nice benefit of noise reduction. Air sealing and insulation help by blocking sound transmission. Doing a comprehensive retrofit to your duct system might mean you no longer have to turn up the volume on your TV when the system comes on.
Yeah, it’s worth it in more ways than one to fix a home. And that’s even without considering reduced energy bills.
How do you find a company who can help?
The first place I tell people to look is the website of the Building Performance Institute (BPI). Go to the locator link at the top of the page and select Find a Contractor…or use the link I just provided.
Another way to find a contractor is to search online for “home performance” or “home performance contractors.” They’re scattered around the country. Here are a few I know and would trust to work on my home:
- Balance Point – Grass Valley, CA
- E3 Innovate – Nashville, TN
- Eco Performance Builders – Bay Area, CA
- Ecotelligent Homes – Farmington Hills, MI
You also can ask potential contractors some questions that might tell you about their approach. (I say “might” because some contractors talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.)
- Do you use a house-as-a-system approach?
- What testing do you do during the assessment? (Blower door and duct leakage are pretty standard.)
- Do you do thermal imaging?
- Do you check static pressure before sealing ducts? (The answer should be yes.)
Also see my article, How to Choose a Company to Do a Home Energy Audit.
The history of “Fix More Houses”
This week I listened to the latest episode of the Building HVAC Science Podcast. Amanda Godward of Ecotelligent Homes was the guest, and she used the expression “Fix more houses” several times. And there’s a good reason for that. She was one of the home performance contractors trained by the late Mike Rogers, and that was his call to action: Fix more houses!
Those of us who were lucky enough to know Mike miss him a lot. He was a force of nature and helped a lot of people who work on existing homes. The Building Performance Association (BPA) collects donations for the Mike Rogers Memorial Scholarship Fund to help more people go out and fix more houses. (I wrote a little about him in this article. Also, be sure to check out his blog, Mike’s Hikes.)
So there’s another reason to continue this important work. Fix more houses in honor of Mike!
Resources
Here are some of my articles covering each of the four areas above. Each of those articles links to even more articles and external resources, so you can dig as deeply as you want. And there’s also my book, A House Needs to Breathe…Or Does It?
Air sealing
The 3 Rules of Air Leakage (Plus a Bonus!)
This Hole May Be the Biggest Air Leakage Site in Your Home
Hidden Air Leakage Sites in Your Attic
Air Sealing an Attic Access the Right Way
Duct systems
4 Ways to Fix Your Duct System
7 Ways to Improve Ducts in an Unconditioned Attic
17 Steps to Better Duct Systems
The Basic Principles of Duct Design, Part 1
Insulation
Is Wind Washing Reducing Your Insulation R-Value?
Does Poor Installation of Insulation Hurt R-Value?
2 Ways to Get the Best Insulation in Your Home
Are You Confusing Insulation with Air Barriers?
Attic Stairs – A Mind-Blowing Hole in Your Building Envelope
Crawl spaces
Crawl Space Encapsulation Method
Should You Encapsulate Your Crawl Space?
4 Ways Moisture Enters a Vented Crawl Space
What Is the Best Way to Deal with Crawl Space Air?
The Medical Doctor, the HVAC Guy, & the Crawl Space
Final words
Fixing existing homes is a wonderful thing. We can make the people who live in them happier, healthier, and more comfortable. And we can make living in those homes more affordable, too. If you’re a homeowner who wants to fix your own house, I recommend hiring a company to do an assessment of your home’s current level of performance first. They have tools that you probably don’t have (blower door, duct leakage tester, etc.). They also can be well worth their fee in two really important ways. First, they can help you avoid problems that could make things worse in your home. And second, they can prioritize things for you.
If you’re a contractor, I salute you. You’re doing important work. And if you haven’t already, go listen to that podcast with Amanda Godward. She has something for you.
Now, let’s all do what we can to fix more houses!
Allison A. Bailes III, PhD is a speaker, writer, building science consultant, and the founder of Energy Vanguard in Decatur, Georgia. He has a doctorate in physics and is the author of a bestselling book on building science. He also writes the Energy Vanguard Blog. For more updates, you can follow Allison on LinkedIn and subscribe to Energy Vanguard’s weekly newsletter and YouTube channel.
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I’m a home performance contractor in upstate NY. It’s a tough business to be in. I mostly do ducted heat pump installs and retrofits nowadays.
Our BPI certifications earn us some leads from those who care, but it’s not many.
The problem with fixing more houses is a calculator. We find plenty of building performance tragedies, but the return on investment of fixing, or even just diagnosing them, is poor.
Most folks thinks they’re going to be in their house 5-10 more years. The average is 12 years. Payback for home performance work is most often over 10 years, so who could blame them for not doing anything.
Ironically, most folks think they need more insulation and overestimate its benefits. The insulation companies that don’t get into the calculations are the ones actually doing work.
A slick salesman is better for improving existing housing stock than an energy audit.
Hi Matt,
I’m not ‘in the business’ but I’ll tell yah it was impossible for me to find an HVAC contractor who knew anything about whole-house ducted heat pumps when I started remodeling my small, pier-n-beam, 60s ranch several years ago. Unfortunately, I came across Dr. Bailes’ blog and was completely hooked. But apparently, a low-flow, ducted HP for residential use is a rare thing down here because I couldn’t found an HVAC person who knew how to implement it (that I trusted). In fact, I couldn’t even get a full Man J analysis. If people in cooler climates were hesitant about using a ‘smaller’ system than what the dreaded rule-of-thumb calls for, in Texas we’re terrified! “Undersized”? ‘Are you kidding me, it’s August! My 3.5 ton can barely keep my 1400sqft house cool!’. Well, I exaggerate a bit. But I can say that down here we don’t see a lot of/ANY “home performance” type marketing, just “HVAC”. Trust me, I look for it all the time.
Good luck to you.
Hugo
Matt: As a former home performance contractor in Georgia, I know how tough it is. As with many things, location can make a huge difference. I experienced that in my business because I lived a no-traffic-problems hour west of Atlanta at the time, yet most of my jobs were in Atlanta. There was just more money and more interest there than in the small town where I lived at the time.
It’s also hard because of the way the real estate industry works and the financing available for home performance improvements. Payback is a poor way of estimating return on investment unless you’re paying cash. Here’s why:
https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/What-s-the-Payback-on-Home-Energy-Efficiency
But this is really part of a bigger problem: deferred maintenance. It’s easy to find money to do something new, whether it’s buying a house, building roads, or starting a business. It’s harder to find it when you just want to maintain or perhaps upgrade.
“Bugs, spiders, snakes, feral cats, raccoons, possums, banshees, werewolves, and goblins all love spending time in crawl spaces.” So true! But you left out scorpions and aliens. 😉
Yours, Larry
True! There were too many creepy crawlies and other scary things to mention, so I stopped early. Thanks for adding two more, Larry, but you left out tapeworms, ticks, mummies, hinkypunks, boggarts, krakens, doodle bugs, chupacabras, and…
It’s hard to disagree with what Allison points out: 1:100 ratio of new home permits vs existing homes.
However, as Matt observed, existing home retrofits are not booming, and it was also my experience when we did remodels. To make that 1:100 ratio worth its weight, we would need to be retrofitting 1 out of 100 existing homes and on paper it sounds possible, but in reality we’re far far from that.
Reasons? Human psychology, I guess. The ephemeral nature of an average US home ownership, i.e. the ever so magnificent mobility we and the few generations before us grew up with.
I would postulate that maybe the keeping up with the Joneses phenomenon would do more for home performance than anything else. New construction codes have to drive the requirements and there is so much work to be done to overcome NAHB lobby. These tighter codes will, already have created a dual standard of living: the new air-tight and comfortable home vs. the old drafty, “breathing” house.
Paul: There’s some truth in that, but I’d point the finger at systemic issues rather than psychology. See my response to Matt McLagan.
Hm, finding money is maybe a problem, but first the homeowner has to want to do improvements. It’s not that long ago (2005) that average duration of homeownership was 6.5 years! It’s improved now to 11.8 years. But people will spend first on a new better car than on air sealing job or crawlspace encapsulation.
I’ve had clients with PhD’s who told me they didn’t want better ventilation. I’ll add lack of education to psychology and building codes. That education needs to come early, it needs to permeate the culture. Without that home performance remains a niche.
BTW, most of the carbon reductions in the building sector are also in existing buildings. If we were paying carbon taxes, the economics for retrofits would look much better.
tom: True! That’s one of the ways that systemic issues result in ignoring problems.
Encapsulating crawlspaces is fairly low-hanging fruit; nothing in the way, improved conditions gives reasonable return on investment. But not many other projects. Not enough perceived return for the investment.
Answer – improve the incentive. Why is it that every other purchase has an expected reduction in value over time – except for houses? The real estate lobby. Make ALL houses comply with current building codes upon sale and that will change. Improvements will be made (or new construction will occur). Trades will prosper; best industry practices will be adopted widely (instead of hamlet-by-hamlet); energy use will go down; comfort/health will go up; durabilitywill go up. Change the incentives and behavior will change.
Thanks for promoting Mike’s call to action and his scholarship fund!
Home performance can be challenging but, as you’ve pointed out in several articles, it can very rewarding. Rewarding for us contractors and rewarding for our clients.
Honored to be the inspiration for your article and appreciate the shout outs. Thanks again!
Let’s fix more homes!!!
Hi Dr Bailes. I’m in the process of remodeling the basement and I’m having a tough time finding qualified home performance auditors. I’ve had a couple of audits and they are a joke. So there’s also the other side of the coin where finding qualified honest people in the home performance space feels very tough to me. Instead I’m reading your blogs, consuming lots of YouTube and doing things myself.
In fact, I’d like to get your book on kindle but the only thing Amazon has is a PDF like version. Is there a full digital version coming? I like paper but lugging it around during travel is not ideal.
I’m in Baltimore. There’s thousands of abandoned rowhouses here. Masonry rowhouses are incredibly energy efficient. 1200 square feet is the standard 3 br/1 bath rowhouses, though rich people had much larger rowhouses also. But the 1200 square foot standard inside of group with only three exterior surfaces isn’t going to take much to heat. These rowhouses all had skylights that opened with a pull cord and the skylight act as a a chimney in the summer letting hot air out and drawing cooler air in through open windows. unfortunately, not enough people want to live in cities or rowhouses.
As a enthusiastic home owner, I ran across a problem.
How to judge results from previous projects or years? Is the improvements, worth the trouble?
Nat Gas bills vary on days billed and monthly temperatures greatly.
After a attic stair cover and some extensive air sealing,
My following year gas usage was much lower. Only to find winter temps were much milder.
23 degrees_Feb. 2015 to 34 degrees_Feb. 2016.
What was the value of the air sealing. Difficult to Judge.
My solution, Track monthly temperatures followed by Therms used..
Over years my results 22% avg. annually therms saved. Shoulder months were wildly better.
A local Home Performance co. suggested replacing all my attic fiberglass with rockwool.
All I asked was the cost of a blower door test? I never got an answer.
I now equate Home Performance companies to Solar Installers.
Fixing older homes is obvious, But full of over promises.
Hope their reputations improve.
EU funded several demonstration projects to retrofit old MFam using external panels, heat pumps. HRVs etc in Horizon 2020 and Renovation Wave programs. We can learn from them but need to subsidize projects to build the market and work force