My husband and I purchased a home here in New Orleans – one that was renovated in 2002 and, fortunately, relatively unaffected by Hurricane Katrina. It is our first home and the degree of maintenance, as I’m sure most of you can imagine, is fairly high. As I continue to poke around and get a better understanding of construction and installation methods, I am amazed: I’ve gone through more expanding foam sealant in the past few months than I care to admit! We had an energy audit done on the home and the result of the blower door test was such that no baseline could properly be established: we could feel air flowing through holes in the brick fireplace mortar! This made me wonder where else there might be a “breach” in the exterior envelope’s air tightness only to learn that there is no exterior sheathing on the house! In talking with a co-worker, I was introduced to an interesting concept in old home retrofitting – an except of which is below… (improved image coming soon)
lospecs.com 