Owners: Berenice López & Clyde Manchester
Building a better world, one green house at a time
- Where it all began for Clyde and Berenice – two friends wanting to create a better world, one green home at a time
Portland, OR— Across the street you see a yellow van pull up. From the van a team emerges, dressed in silver space-age protective suits.
What’s going on? Crime Scene PDX? Or has your neighbor’s nuclear reactor begun melting down?
Quite likely a problem exists, but probably not one as dramatic as The X Files.
The people in protective suits could well be a squad from the Home Energy Life Performance Group — H.E.L.P.
Remember the name. It could be a life saver.
H.E.L.P. does solve mysteries about what’s going wrong with your house.
Perhaps you have noticed that you sneeze a lot more at home than at the office. Or perhaps it’s headaches. Could they be caused by fumes from building materials in your home? Or perhaps carbon monoxide?
Yes, that’s quite possible. Berenice López, president of H.E.L.P., observes, “Often we walk into homes with little kids and the carbon monoxide is very high.”
Have you noticed cold air sneaking into your house? Or perhaps warm air from your furnace is not getting to your bedroom?
Has your energy bill increased dramatically? Diagnosing this problem might be simple. Your ancient furnace or hot water heater may not be up to today’s level of efficiency.
H.E.L.P. offers a free introductory walkthrough inspection from their four specialists. If they find suspicious conditions, they can provide some suggestions about new energy efficient equipment.
If conditions suggest a more serious problem, their 11-person team stands ready to diagnose and correct the problems.
A bigger business
- H.E.L.P. crew member all decked out in his “CSI” suit installing wall insulation in a 1909 home.
“I’m involved with a lot of green conferences,” López says.
At one of these sessions, Berenice met Terry Brandt. As the Executive Director of Albina Opportunities Corporation (AOC), Brandt oversees making loans to time-tested businesses owned by women, minority, immigrant and disabled entrepreneurs. For more information about Albina Opportunities Corporation, call Terry Brandt at (503) 227-3950.
Brandt and López touched base a year ago at an Enterprise Cascadia meeting. López and Brandt began talking. When he found out H.E.L.P. needed more equipment to expand its business, “He helped me with a loan to buy more equipment,” she says.
MercyCorps Northwest and AOC acted jointly to provide funds for H.E.L.P.
Small businesses interested in AOC’s lending program can contact Brandt at (503) 227-3950.
With the national economic downturn still in progress, López expresses some hesitations about expanding on a whim. “I like to grow with profit,” she says. “We let demand dictate when to expand. If the demand is there, we’re ready.”
“We’re hiring under-represented (people) — women, ethnic minorities, people of color and people lacking a good education,” she says.
If running two businesses were not enough, López also volunteers her time. “I mentor my competition,” she says. “We train people into green jobs in case they want to go into business. I teach them to have a career.”
“We’re not just offering a job,” she says. “We’re offering a damned good job.”
“We are going to do what’s best for the house,” Berenice López promises. The H.E.L.P. owners and staff have the training and experience to back up that promise.
On the job
- The tube isn’t a dryer vent pipe… it is the Duck Blaster which tests duct work for leakage.
Just like the forensics lab on TV’s CSI, H.E.L.P. has an array of specialized tools to uncover most any mystery that lurks in your domicile.
López’ 12 years in construction work have provided her with a fundamental understanding of how houses go together — and where potential problems might hide.
When López decided to launch H.E.L.P. in 2008 she realized she needed to upgrade her skills. She enrolled in a three month series of night and weekend classes in Portland with two goals — becoming a building analyst and earning a Building Performance Institute (BPI) certification. BPI works loosely with the Energy Trust of Oregon in identifying and quantifying standards.
The night-and-weekend schedule stretched her endurance. It involved more than keeping up with family chores. “I was running my business,” she recalls. That business is Move-In Ready, a firm that serves homeowners and rental companies. It undertakes painting, cleaning, home and yard maintenance services for home sale, rental turnovers and new construction. To learn more about H.E.L.P. or Move-In-Ready, visit their websites at www.helppdx.com or www.moveinready.com
Clyde Manchester, López’ business partner at H.E.L.P., brought skills learned in more than 24 years of construction experience. Manchester, she says, has the patience to train people. “I’m very good at the business side of it,” she says. “We make a perfect team.”
Becoming a certified building analyst taught López to look at a house as a system — how dozens of individual units make a house operate as a unit.
“We have the coolest toys,” López says with a smile. Her high tech “toys” can detect many problems in a house that could cause illnesses.
“A blower door machine reads the air leakage of a home,” she explains.
The gas leakage detector, it goes without saying, can help eliminate sources of headaches as well as catastrophic Hollywood-sized explosions.
A moisture reader shows whether a house is too dry or too humid.
A test kit checks for the presence of traces of asbestos or lead.
Thermal imagers, similar to those used in night vision glasses, can signal potential problems as it identifies heat — or cold — areas in both inside and exterior walls.
- Carmy completes final setting on the blower door.
A duct blaster sounds as if it might be a video game function. Its real use, however, is a bit more prosaic: it serves to check air ducts for leakage. Clogged or disconnected ducts can result in poor distribution of warm or cold air to all rooms. “It tests pressure in each of the rooms (of a house) to see if the ducts are operating correctly. This measure helps to diagnose the system and helps to make it more efficient,” she explains.
And those are just the diagnostic machines.
For repair work, H.E.L.P. has blowers to shoot fiberglass or cellulite insulation into attics and walls. Experienced floor insulation installers can take care of other hard-to-reach places such as crawl spaces.
The H.E.L.P. team can correct many problems. They can install energy efficient windows. Under some conditions, energy saving furnaces and hot water heaters may qualify for some government assistance.
Harried homeowners have several potential sources of relief. The Energy Trust of Oregon offers cash incentives for weatherization measures. Federal programs will, under certain circumstances, make it possible to deduct some home energy upgrades expenses from your income taxes. The State of Oregon also offers some credit for qualified measures. Several other programs can help with meeting the cost of retrofitting a home for low to medium income home owners.
A call to H.E.L.P. — (503) 244-8232 — will help you with the details of these programs.