Howdy, I'm Eric Alarid with Tilson Homes and part of the fourth generation of the Tilson family. And today we're going to continue our craftsmanship series talking about all things energy efficiency in your new Tilson home. So the energy efficiency of your Tilson home starts in the framing. And it starts from the ground up. The first thing we do before we put any framing down is we use a product called Sill Seal which acts as a gasket below the exterior toe plate, which is the first board that's attached to your foundation, which acts as a seal as a gasket going all the way around the exterior.

And then we run a bead of foam all the way around the exterior of the toe plate to make sure that no air is leaking out. So while we're framing your home, we are taking into consideration every way we can possibly get insulation into all of the voids to make sure that it's as airtight as possible. We do that with a couple of different framing methods called ladder T's which you see an example of here. What we're showing you is, ordinarily, we would take this wall all the way out to the exterior.

What we do with a ladder tee is we stop short so that it leaves a space where we can get insulation back behind this wall, still support the load of the roof and the frame of the home, but pack a lot of insulation back there. So some of the other framing methods that we use to help get the most insulation possible are California corners and insulated headers. With California corners on the exterior corner of a home, instead of having the two walls meet leaving a void behind there, we stop one of the walls just short, turn one of the studs sideways so that we can get insulation back behind there, and filling the void with insulation.

One of the other framing methods we employ for energy efficiency is insulated header. So a header is a way that we span a distance over a door or a window to make sure we can still support the wall and the roof above. On an interior wall like this one, we use whatever's required to span the distance, in this case, 2 by 6's. And in between that, to make up the gap to match the width of the 2-by-4 stud, which is 3.5 inches, we have to use a piece of half-inch OSB or plywood in the middle to fill that gap.

On the exterior headers, we use half-inch foam to make sure that we have some sort of insulation on that exterior wall. And it really helps with the energy efficiency of the home. In the areas that we build, the biggest threat to your energy efficiency is going to be air leakage, not so much R-value, but air leakage. So we do a lot of things to combat that air leakage in our Tilson homes. One of the first things we do besides the exterior toe plate sealed up is we use a foam that goes all the way around every exterior window and door to make sure you don't have air leakage around the windows and doors.

So at Tilson Homes, to continue that flow of energy efficiency, we want to make sure that we're using the most energy-efficient windows possible. What we've chosen is a double-pane, vinyl, tilt-sash window. All of our windows are American made. And they have a limited lifetime warranty. So we've chosen vinyl because they're a very poor conductor of hot and cold, which makes them a great insulator to combat against the seasonal air outside. And on the tilt sash, what we can do, we can pick the window up, tilt it in, clean this bottom sash on the outside, close it back, and have that nice, tight seal to make sure that none of that seasonal air is getting inside.

We also use a low-e coating on the glass. And it's called low emissivity, which is to make sure that the light can pass through. But it keeps the UV rays out. So you don't have the faded furniture. And you don't have that solar heat gain where you're sitting here and you feel the heat coming in. So the windows, you're going to notice stickers on all of them. They have a little bit different numbers on them. These numbers matter. They talk about your solar heat gain coefficient, U-factors, air leakage. And we use these numbers whenever we're designing the HVAC system. And we put it all in a software called Manual J because it's really important that you have a right-sized air conditioning system.

And it takes into consideration ceiling heights, square footage of the rooms, the solar heat gain coefficients of your windows, the square footage of glazing or glass is going to be on the home, what direction the home is facing. And it puts all of that into a calculation. And it tells us what size AC unit you need to have and make sure it's a matching system. Another thing we're doing, we're installing these windows. You see that we're using Tyvek. And that Tyvek has a flexible wrap that's at the bottom of all the windows. And it's cut in such a way all the way around the window so that water cannot penetrate to the inside.

And you minimize the air leakage that you're paying to heat and cool from getting outside. So there are several different ways that you can comply with the current energy code. The way Tilson Homes has chosen after doing this for 90 years, the most important thing we can do for energy efficiency is to seal up these houses. And so we've chosen an open-cell spray-foam insulation. And the reason we've chosen that is because it is the most effective product at completely sealing up the exterior envelope of the home, the walls, as well as the attic. So we're here in this attic. You can tell it's a spray-foam attic.

And one of the biggest advantages of that, of course, it's a comfortable space. But there are some side effects to having spray foam that we have to take precautions against. And one of the major ones is humidity, particularly where we build. So this home is in Southeast Texas. It's probably 80, 82% humidity outside right now. And obviously, that would not feel very comfortable inside your home. So, for example, you can have it be 74 degrees on your thermostat. And 74 degrees at 80% humidity feels very different than 74 degrees at 60% humidity.

The 60%'s going to feel much more comfortable, much cooler. So to combat the humidity in a spray-foam home, we put dehumidifiers in every single home that we build. And they do a great job of extracting that moisture. And you can feel it in the sheets. You can feel it in the air, walking around downstairs, your clothes, and just walking around downstairs. It's so much more comfortable when you have a dehumidifier. And you have to do something to get all that humidity out of the air. So another advantage of having the dehumidifier, of course, is that assists in pulling the moisture out of the air, which helps out your AC unit, so it'll last a little bit longer. In addition to that, it's going to save you some money because the AC's not having to work nearly as hard to pull all the moisture out of the air. So all of this encompassing that energy efficiency, making sure that the equipment lasts longer, that it saves on your energy bills, and that it's a very comfortable feel walking around your forever home. So one of the key components to the energy efficiency in Tilson Homes is spray-foam insulation. We do spray-foam insulation statewide in Texas. And the reason we do is because we are really, really focused on keeping the air that you're paying to heat and cool inside the home. And spray-foam insulation's the tightest, most efficient way to do that. One of the things you're going to notice about spray-foam insulation is that every single penetration into the outside of the home is sealed up as tightly as possible around corners of studs, between studs, attic space.

The entire building envelope is completely sealed up, which is really, really great when you're in Texas because, really, what we're combating most of the time in all parts of the state is heat. And so all of that air you're paying to heat and cool-- particularly in the summer time, that air you're paying to cool, you don't want it leaking out. One of the most important components to fight against here in Texas with your energy efficiency is air changes per Hour that's how it's measured that's how the leakage or loss of the home that you're paying to heat and cool is measured. So the way that's done is with a blower-door test. So once the house is close to completion, we're going to pull the front door off the home and they'll put a balloon or tent-type system on the front. And they're going to start sucking air out of the home.

What that tells us is all the different places and penetrations that air can escape. That air that you're paying good money to cool, we don't want it escaping out of the house. And so it has to test out at a certain number of air changes per hour or less, depending on where you're building in the state. And we have to meet or beat that. And with spray-foam insulation, it makes it very, very easy to meet and actually very well exceed what the requirements are. Another side advantage of spray-foam insulation is, while attics aren't typically designed for a whole lot of storage, but when you do have to go into the attic, it can be sweltering hot in the summertime, particularly if you don't have spray foam.

But when you're doing spray-foam insulation, it seals up the entire attic, the rafters, and everything. And so actually, there's a small supply of conditioned air into the attic space, which makes it actually very comfortable to go into, even in the summertime. Because the attic is part of the conditioned space to a degree, the ductwork that's running through the attic is not running through 120-degree air space. And you're not having that heat loss or heat gain going on inside the ductwork. So the AC's not having to work nearly as hard to cool the air that's moving through the ducts. And you don't lose as much of that cold air when it's going from one side of the house to the other.

That's how it's different temperature differentials. So that's one of the key advantages of spray foam is your AC equipment's not working nearly as hard, which is going to save you money on your energy bill. So one option that we do offer on our homes is tankless water heaters. Now, we recommend, if you're going to be doing tankless, that you have gas, so some type of propane or natural gas, which you can see is coming in here. So this happens to be a Rinnai tankless gas water heater.

One of the values that this could add is that, particularly for a water well or something like that, you actually don't have as much water that you're using because you don't have a tank, a conventional tank, either electric or gas, sitting up in the attic or in a garage, holding all of that water. So that's really good because you have to heat that water from time to time. But if you want to opt for a tankless water heater, we do offer gas. One of the offsets of that is, whatever you do save in water, you probably are going to burn in gas. So that's something that's not often discussed. But a conventional tank-gas water heater is probably around 27 to 35,000 BTUs.

A tankless water heater like this one is 90,000 BTUs. The reason for that is because the water is moving through this. And so a lot of fuel has to be put to it to heat it up to the 120 degrees that you see. So that's what you feel is your shower or your faucet. So as far as energy efficiency goes, you're definitely going to be using less water. And you're not paying to heat water when you're not using it, which is really not that frequently as far as hot water goes. Really, it's when you're running a dishwasher, maybe doing a load of laundry, or taking a shower is the only time you're going to use hot water.

But the other 23, 22 hours out of the day, the water would just be sitting up here in a tank. And you are paying to heat it as it drops below the desired temperature. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you found it helpful. And I hope to soon make you part of the Tilson family.

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