'Profiles' is a series of articles that focuses on the humans behind Home Performance.
In this post, we talk with Dan Henderson, Snugg Pro user and owner of Green Tracks Colorado
Thank you Dan for sitting down with us today. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, your company Green Tracks and which territory you operate in?
Yeah sure. I got into energy efficiency in 2011. I was with a corporate company for about 16 years and they offered me a package where I got 6 months severance and benefits and pay. So I took it and I retrained myself into this field and got the right certifications. I met a guy who had an energy auditing business going and needed help. I worked alongside him for about a year and then I split off from him and started Green Tracks Colorado in late 2012. I’ve been busy ever since! I really haven’t stopped being busy!
You mentioned you founded Green Track Colorado. What’s Green Tracks’ area of expertise, and which programs do you operate in?
It’s fuzzy edges you know, I’ll go pretty much wherever but 90% of the work is in Boulder County, CO and the surrounding counties also. I’ve been going to Denver once in a while. It just has too make sense, it can’t be too far away because then it takes up the whole day to travel.
I have just enough equipment and if I’m missing something, it hurts so I have to have everything with me charged and ready to go with every audit.
What are the core services that you provide?
Energy auditing is probably the core service, also energy inspections for the city of Boulder in rental properties. Boulder passed a law called SmartRegs where if you own a rental, you have to bring it up to a certain level of energy efficiency. To start that process you have to have an inspection done, so I come in and do that. I’m a SmartRegs inspector and along with that comes services like duct leakage testing which ties in with SmartRegs because it gets points in that program. And I have design, building or architecture companies who want me to set up a blower door and do infrared scans of the interior of the home sometimes. I also do CAZ testings. Are you familiar with CAZ tests?
Yeah, I think I attended one of your audit and you were doing a CAZ test.
Yeah I do all that still. That’s a requirement from Xcel to qualify for rebates so I have a lot of insulation companies calling me to do this in order to qualify their clients for rebates. And I hope to add some services this year and keep growing.
Above: Dan sealing up a window during a health & safety test
For all the gear heads who might be reading this. What do you keep in your truck and in your tool kit?
I think everybody is probably familiar with the blower door and IR camera. That’s basic equipment for an energy audit. Besides that, the four things I keep on my person are:
• A tape measure,
• A flash light,
• A laser measure
• A multi-tool
Those are the main things I have on me, and then in my bag I keep my other tools like:
• a thermometer,
• a hydrometer,
• a moisture sensor,
• a door scope - which is basically a camera on a gooseneck.
I have just enough stuff and if I’m missing something, it hurts so I have to have everything with me charged and ready to go with every audit. And that’s kind of a challenge to keep things charged all the time.
You’ve been in the home performance field for a few years now. What would you say is the most significant challenge in the home performance market in your area?
It’s been a challenge trying to break into the real estate industry and figure out how energy efficiency and energy auditing can work with it. People don’t want to have energy audits done before the house is sold. There’s already home inspections which turn up things, then you have to have another guy come in and do a whole other inspection and turn more things up? So no they don’t want energy audits before the sale. It’s after the sale that works well, when people have their new house and they want to know what the baseline efficiency of it is. But getting those new buyers to understand that is difficult and I think using the realtor is key there. A lot of realtors give closing gifts. I’ve been trying to convince realtors to present an energy audit as a closing gift. That’s about the only way that I’ve been trying to crack into that industry. That’s a challenge.
[Another challenge:] Once I’m at the energy audit, getting people to stop denying that the house is not ok. And really confronting them with the facts that no, there’s a lot of things going on here, a lot of things that aren’t so great with your house, and you kind of have to get over it and accept the fact that your house has problems. That can be an issue sometimes too.
That’s a pretty clever way of breaking in the real estate market - using the closing gifts.
Yeah, it’s been hit or miss, it’s not a consistent thing… I should try to get more realtors involved.
There’s also a push to get the Home Energy Score implemented and hopefully that’ll sort of trickle into the Home Performance where people will then do energy audits before the sale so they can advertise the HES score.
Yeah that’ll be nice.
Describe what a dream audit looks like?
I like to pull up to these simple homes but every once in a while you need a challenge
The simpler the layout of the house the better. If you pull up to a single story ranch house that’s 60’ x 30' with a basement or a crawlspace and a normal attic, you know that the audit time is not going to take 4-5 hours, it’s going to take 2-3. The flip side of that is that these older ranch homes tend to have quite a few things wrong with them so the reporting time is a little bit longer because there are more issues to write about so you kind of have to be careful what you wish for. Yeah, the audit may be a little bit simpler but then the report can be a little complicated.
I like to pull up to these simple homes but everyonce in a while you need a challenge: yesterday I was up in the foothills of Boulder and there was a 5000 sq. ft. home built by a reputable architect and this thing was a spaceship, it was circular on multiple levels, with a flat roof and the design was really, really cool. That home was a little challenging to audit because the type of material used in the wall structure was mostly masonry but I did find some insulation in there. Trying to get into the ceiling to figure out what the top thermal layer of the house was difficult. You need a challenge once in a while to keep it interesting.
Above: Dan testing outside of a home.
As a Home Performance professional, what's one thing that kind of makes you cringe when you see it
There are homes that have really poor indoor air quality. Those make me cringe and I always figure out why the air quality is so poor when I’m doing the audit. It becomes obvious and it usually has to do with not cleaning up after their pets properly, or storing a lot of chemicals in the home, or their furnace or hot water heater was over producing CO2 and that was spilling into the home a little bit.
I was in a small crawl space the other day and they had rat poison, they had paint and they had a box of cleaning chemicals.
And you can tell if they’re storing unsafe chemicals as part of your inspection?
Yeah, if it’s in an enclosed area and they have rat poison for instance. I was in a small crawl space the other day and they had rat poison, they had paint and they had a box of cleaning chemicals. It was definitely poor air quality in that little crawl space and it was seeping up into the house so part of the recommendation of that audit was to get that stuff out of your living area so it doesn’t mess with your air quality. That’s what makes me cringe, it’s low air quality. It’s tough.
It’s tough and it’s probably easy to miss to the untrained homeowner.
Yeah. Also one of the challenges is trying to explain to people that their house is too tight and that they would benefit from a mechanical ventilation system. That’s a challenging discussion to have with a lot of people. I get that when I do CAZ testing and then a blower door test.
Interaction with children and pets can be fun. Kids are just characters you know
The blower door test will sometimes tell us that their air changes per hour are low and then they need to watch out for things like higher humidity, lingering odors, condensation on windows, all the tell-tale signs of a house that’s not getting enough fresh air. We tell homeowners that a tight house is really a great house, it’s energy efficient, and you're not getting air leakage anymore. The problem is that you’re also not getting enough fresh air so you need to have a piece of equipment installed to bring in fresh air. A lot of people get it but some people just shake their heads and don’t understand so that’s a challenge.
What’s the fun part of your job?
Interaction with children and pets can be fun. Kids are just characters you know. And then dogs get excited for 30 seconds and then they’re fine after that. I usually take some IR pictures of the kids and the pets. People love it.
Above: Dan on an audit visit in Boulder, CO.
For those 16 years I was at that corporation, it was take take take. It was sales and it was all just ‘what can you give me?’ In this industry, I’ve reversed that. I’ve turned that around because it really bothered me and so now I’m giving.
What’s one thing you really love about this industry?
For those 16 years I was at that corporation, it was take take take. It was sales and it was all just ‘what can you give me?’ In this industry, I’ve reversed that. I’ve turned that around because it really bothered me and so now I’m giving. I feel like I’m helping people solve issues in their home that can make their home more comfortable for them. They’re not so hot upstairs anymore or they’re not freezing in their basement anymore and their energy costs go down so I feel like I’m giving instead of taking. I think that’s the big turnaround in my life. Going from corporate sales to energy efficiency is going from taking to giving so: that’s huge for me. It’s important.
Any words to live by for your fellow home performance professionals?
Be careful around your attics and hatches! The most dangerous part of our job is working around a hatch. Be really, really carfeful.
You can learn more about Dan Henderson and his activities on the Green Tracks Colorado website.
If you’d like to be featured in Profiles, please contact ben@snugghome.com.
About Benjamin Mailian
Ben is Head of Product and a co-founder of Snugg Home. He looks after product management, design and engineering management. Ben helps energy efficiency programs get the most out of Snugg Pro by aligning their business requirements with Snugg Pro's configuration and integration capabilities.