By Peggy Sturdivant

My daughter seconded an earlier comment that our cold house was “one step above camping.” But the upside of living in such a drafty house is that there was so much room for improvement when we committed to Seattle’s energy upgrade program.

As of Day 12 of the energy retrofit of this old house, the project was emerging as one the greatest successes to date for authorized contractor SustainableWorks. They had reduced air leakage by half, thereby lowering our future heating costs and reducing energy needs.

To recap, our latest adventure with the house began innocently at last September’s Sustainable Ballard festival. It progressed through the drama of the audit (without a way to seal the damper-less chimney from simulating 25 mph hour winds into the living room), through determining the scope of the work, acquiring a home equity loan, and a project manager’s walkthrough. Work started on March 28. (But not until we cleared pathways in the basement.)

The start day was a Thursday. Crew supervisor Zach Hoiland said they might be done the following Tuesday. In later weeks he was willing to admit, “I don’t know why I said that.”

SustainableWorks’ motto is “Conserving Energy, Creating Jobs.” Hoiland is certified as a Building Analyst through Building Performance Institute. Personally and professionally, he believes in helping homeowners to reduce their carbon footprint, thereby reducing reliance on fossil fuels. “The important thing is to do it right,” he said several times, unable to ignore fixes that he could see would do right by the house.

He and his crew of three were working at a formidable pace but this house built by a ship captain kept revealing secrets and areas not accessed for 90 years. Throughout the process I was fascinated by a second-hand course in older home construction and the relatively new field of building science: the analysis and control of physical phenomena on buildings.

Every dwelling needs to have the right combination for air exchange -- too much and it’s impossible to heat; too little and there could be issues with mildew or carbon monoxide poisoning. Optimal air changes in a house are about one-third per hour, or .35. The auditor rated this house’s air change as almost double that at .69 (very poor). As part of the city’s Community Power Works program we qualified for incentives available for becoming more energy efficient.

The infamous blower door test set our starting number at 5,500 cubic feet per minute of air circulating. The goal was to reduce that by at least 30 percent.

The plan seemed simple: blow insulation into exterior wall cavities, do lots of air sealing in the ducts, attic space, basement, house and step back. Well-trained SustainableWorks employees mounted ladders to temporarily remove pieces of siding, drilled and removed 2.5 inch round pieces of the house and then blew in a dense-pack cellulose material (like newspaper shredded into dust). The very first “blow” revealed that, despite visual inspection in the basement, our open wall cavities opened into the basement. Wearing Tyvek suits and respirators, the crew looked at the house anew.

The scope of work didn’t change much but the house became an obstacle course. They needed to rent scaffolding for the alley side. The 1920 siding didn’t budge without an occasional crack. The wall cavities and roof bays sucked in an unimaginable amount of insulation, a hose snaking up from the truck to wall crannies, accessed outside and inside. Another Tuesday came and went. “We’re getting serious now,” Zach said, as though the drilling, roof vents, foam board and tubes of clear caulk had just been a warmup act.

The crew stopped to take lunch, and the newest employee Vernon Hill simply asked for a bowl of water to heat up noodles in the truck. On the wettest day they worked until 6:30 p.m., just so they could finish with the scaffolding. By morning the paint didn’t look right, so Zach went up and re-painted the siding.

Finally it was close to the end of the tenth day. The crew went to the last target area: knee holes, or crawl spaces in the eaves. For the next two hours I heard horrible thuds, grunts, knee bones on wood in a mystery area between the living room ceiling and the floor upstairs, a full floor below the attic. A sound strangely similar to someone sneaking whipped cream from a canister as insulation pumped over my head. Then a near scream, “Get me out of here.”

They finally emerged in Tyvek suits, each looking like the Abominable Snowman, quieter than usual. The knee holes had a sub-floor where they found a trap door into an even lower crawl space with open bays between ship builder-size beams, needing to be filled. They sent in the smallest man (Angel Gerardo) with a spotter. Zach told me later, “We’re trained to work in confined spaces.”

After this the worst was over. The blower door numbers tested lower. Another day of smaller fixes, looking for the last leaks, “Like an Easter Egg hunt.” Zach didn’t allow himself to check the monitor for hours at a time, while my house stayed depressurized, cold. In the end it was Zach alone, weather-stripping his way to the target. He rechecked the target number. It was lower than he’d let himself remember.

“We had hit it by yesterday,” he said, and smiled. At 2,500 cubic feet per minute, this old Ballard house was beating the average for its volume; no matter what year it had been built. SustainableWorks had reduced the air exchange by over 50 percent, without any change in our costs.

On the 12th day of work, midday, it was suddenly so quiet, so warm. The house better fortified than it had ever been, ready for its next 90 years. The last SustainableWorks vehicle pulled away, and with it the last of my 21st Century superheroes.

Information at www.sustainableworks.com or about the City of Seattle’s program at http://www.communitypowerworks.org/

Follow Ballard News-Tribune on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ballardnewstrib

And Twitter at http://twitter.com/ballardnewstrib