Daniel Rubin: It takes patience to be really green

Who knew kitty litter was such a great diagnostic tool?

The inspectors had thrown the switch, starting a giant fan brought in to suck the air out of David Krupp's Bella Vista apartment.

They were professionals - certified home energy analysts - and their job was to determine whether the building Krupp had rehabbed was green enough to be Energy Star certified.

And within minutes, the breeze drawn through the space was perfumed with an acrid feline funk.

This was a problem. Krupp didn't have a cat, but his downstairs neighbors did. This meant the smell was coming through the floorboards.

Krupp had been feeling confident. He'd spent a year gutting a century-old brick triplex at Eighth and Fitzwater and turning it into something green.

Krupp wanted his construction to be 25 percent more energy-efficient than international code requires. He'd spent more than $8,700 making his work environmentally friendly, going all out.

In addition to the garden-variety dimmers, timers, and motion detectors, he had sprayed soy-based insulation on the exposed brick walls, shot shredded recycled newspapers into the ceilings, laid floors of reclaimed red pine, then installed two solar panels on the roof to heat the water.

He was eager to have me watch as a pair of energy inspectors probed his handiwork for leaks.

An Energy Star building brings some financial benefits - beyond lean gas and electric bills, which averaged $78 a month this winter for the apartment Krupp shares with girlfriend Olive Prince. If he sells the building one day, certification will likely command a higher price.

But this was more about commitment than cash, he said. He believes in doing something sustainable. And that turned out to be a challenge in Philadelphia, where many contractors think of greenery as something to fold and bank.

He wound up becoming the general contractor himself to ensure the job was to his own specs.

Krupp, 29, is a wiry Melrose Park native who looks like a young David Brenner and speaks with the measured precision of an engineer. He majored in information systems at Carnegie Mellon, minoring in architecture and business.

"This is very important to me," he told me before the inspection. "I don't want to walk around thinking I constructed an energy-efficient building without really knowing."

Ted Dillon, one of the testers, last month had done a preliminary check that looked promising for certification. But things went quickly south Tuesday when he returned with Karen Stabenow, a colleague at Smart Energy Solutions.

With the fan roaring and the space depressurized, you could feel the leaks.

Cool jets of air streamed out of holes in the brick that Krupp thought he'd plugged. He and his carpenter, Eric King, started squeezing caulk into them.

The fan identified gaps in the floorboards, drafty places behind the light switches - all needing attention before the place could ace the test. Krupp - arms crossed, looking like an expectant father - asked Dillon, "Is this pretty standard for rehabs?"

"Yeah, rehabs are tough. Especially for you guys who like brick walls."

Krupp shrugged.

By 1 p.m., progress was so slow that Dillon was pessimistic that he'd have time to test both apartments with the door fan and sample the ductwork in both apartments.

He decided to try Krupp's ducts next - tape the vents, then blow air into the galvanized steel tubes to find any breaches.

Those turned out to be the trouble spot. Somewhere buried in the walls were the reasons air was spilling out of the ducts. There was no way Krupp could get his star with leaky ducts.

It could cost more than $1,000 to find the problem, the testers told him. The ducts weren't easily accessible.

"Any other option?" Krupp asked cooly. He thought of a friend who has an infrared camera. The camera translates variations in temperatures into different colors, so all he would have to do was run the heat or air conditioner and the camera should spot the leaks. That might work.

The testers would have to come back another day. But Krupp was already starting to feel better. He grabbed a handful of raw almonds, his lunch.

"I plan to have a party when this is all done and we're certified," he announced. I'll bring the newspaper hats.