Community-Scale Attic Retrofit and Home Energy Upgrade Data Mining - Hot Dry Climate

Retrofitting is an essential element of any comprehensive strategy for improving residential energy efficiency. The residential retrofit market is still developing, and program managers must develop innovative strategies to increase uptake and promote economies of scale. Residential retrofitting remains a challenging proposition to sell to homeowners, because awareness levels are low and financial incentives are lacking.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Building America research team, Alliance for Residential Building Innovation (ARBI), implemented a project to increase residential retrofits in Davis, California. The project used a neighborhood-focused strategy for implementation and a low-cost retrofit program that focused on upgraded attic insulation and duct sealing. ARBI worked with a community partner, the not-for-profit Cool Davis Initiative, as well as selected area contractors to implement a strategy that sought to capitalize on the strong local expertise of partners and the unique aspects of the Davis, California, community. Working with community partners also allowed ARBI to collect and analyze data about effective messaging tactics for community-based retrofit programs.

ARBI expected this project, called Retrofit Your Attic, to achieve higher uptake than other retrofit projects, because it emphasized a low-cost, one-measure retrofit program. However, this was not the case. The program used a strategy that focused on attics-including air sealing, duct sealing, and attic insulation-as a low-cost entry for homeowners to complete home retrofits. The price was kept below $4,000 after incentives; both contractors in the program offered the same price. The program completed only five retrofits. Interestingly, none of those homeowners used the one-measure strategy. All five homeowners were concerned about cost, comfort, and energy savings and included additional measures in their retrofits. The low-cost, one-measure strategy did not increase the uptake among homeowners, even in a well-educated, affluent community such as Davis.

This project has two primary components. One is to complete attic retrofits on a community scale in the hot-dry climate on Davis, CA. Sufficient data will be collected on these projects to include them in the BAFDR. Additionally, ARBI is working with contractors to obtain building and utility data from a large set of retrofit projects in CA (hot-dry). These projects are to be uploaded into the BAFDR.