The first week of training began in a traffic jam. Actually, Dan, our instructor, got stuck in one on the first day but nonetheless successfully arrived and introduced the six of us to the theories and practices of a process known as weatherization.
Although the physical training was held (for the first two days) in Valley Forge NHP, the instructors, Dan and Louis, for Monday and Tuesday respectively, and all others to come were based out of ECA, the Energy Coordination Agency, Philadelphia sector.
Dan explained that weatherization is a method by which homes and buildings can be retrofitted so that they are more energy efficient, and therefore save more money. In doing so, he also covered how thermal and air boundaries can cause a home to be leaky and inefficient when not properly sealed and tight.
Louis described the dangers that we may encounter when performing energy audits or installing and improving structures: asbestos, mold, lead, and more.
Later those two days, we first did visual audits on Valley Forge NHP buildings and then, on the next day, pointed out the obvious dangers in those buildings.
In the latter half of the week, we spent each day at the Philadelphia site, ECA, where we continued to do workshops but also received PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) and suited up in goggles, gloves, masks, hard hats, and practiced using caulk and two-part foam, both of which we would use later in the field. We also learned about the use of a blower door in an audit, and had practice utilizing them.
And for some information to others, we had some especially nasty encounters with Asbestos and Mold in some of the row-homes that we helped the ECA crews with. The audit group that I was with encountered a three-foot patch of black mold that was actually eating through the fiberglass insulation.
ReplyDeleteThey really needed an abatement program.
And later in this first week of training, we entered in the data that we had previously collected and determined the energy usage of the two buildings at Valley Forge (Ranger Station and Thomas House) into an excel worksheet and analyzed the benefits of refrofitting, and saw the sheer vastness of electricity use and carbon emissions.
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