Surprising results

Just did an audit on a VERY high end home up on the ridge above San Rafael, above the ferry building.  Built in 1913 for a well heeled ship's Captain.  Wild layout but was ready for a remodel, something the new owners were doing.  A brand new high efficiency furnace system was already installed with all new ducts and they looked *beautiful* from the outside.  Very neat and clean, beautifully finished and taped, we expected very low duct leakage. So we sealed up all the registers we could find and pressurized the duct system.  Surprise!  It was off the charts high.  First thought: perhaps the manometer was hooked up wrong or was on the wrong setting.  Nope.  Then perhaps we missed a register and that was why we couldn't pressurize the system.  After crawling all through the house; attic, upstairs, downstairs, basement, crawlspace, we couldn't find any open registers.

Next: get out the smoke generator so we could blow theatrical smoke in to the duct system and perhaps we could then see where it was blowing out.  Running around the house while the smoke generator was sending smoke in to the duct system, the whole place was slowly getting smoky.  Everywhere.  After working on this simple duct pressure test for 2 hours and going over everything multiple times, we finally had to face the fact that this beautiful duct and furnace system leaked like a SIEVE!  I mean huge leakage.  We had the duct pressure fan up to max and still barely were able to get a number of CFM leakage.  Ready? Over 1100 CFM25.  Perhaps that doesn't mean anything to you but we were expecting around 100 CFM from a new, correctly installed system and we got over 1100.  1100 CFM is another way of saying that the duct leakage was around 50%, meaning half, HALF, of the heat put out by the furnace was lost to the outdoors before it ever got inside.  And in a brand new system, no less.  I was floored.  Part of the report will emphasize that the contractor MUST get the HVAC sub-contractor back out there to do his own test and fix the system.  It won't be easy and there may be some metaphoric blood spilled but the owner has the right to a correctly installed system.

What an example of a beautiful façade hiding a lousy system.  Note to self: put aside your snap assumptions until the data is in with the real story.

From the DOE's Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy News

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently released a report on how governments and industry can spark homeowners to seek out home energy improvements, or retrofits, which save energy and money for consumers. Energy efficiency upgrades include energy saving improvements such as adding insulation, sealing air ducts, installing high-efficiency lighting, enhancing or replacing windows and doors, and replacing furnaces, heat pumps, water heaters, and air conditioners. Called "Driving Demand for Home Energy Improvements," this study will help ensure that the Department's investments in energy efficiency provide taxpayers with a high rate of return on their investments, deliver the maximum impact in local communities, and support a self-sustaining industry for residential energy efficiency improvements that will help grow America's economy and create new jobs.

The report is aimed primarily at policy makers and energy efficiency program designers, especially those new to the field. The authors examined 14 residential energy efficiency programs, conducted an extensive literature review, interviewed industry experts, and surveyed residential contractors to draw lessons from first generation programs. The report highlights emerging best practices, provides insights into how to increase the effectiveness of incentive programs for comprehensive home energy improvements, and suggests methods and approaches to use in designing, implementing, and evaluating these programs. The report's findings will guide future investments for DOE's residential energy efficiency programs and similar state and local programs. The report's conclusions include:

• It is not enough to provide information, programs must offer something people want: High home energy use is not currently a pressing issue for many people. It is more important to identify an issue that people are drawn to such as health, comfort, energy security, competition, or community engagement to attract interest.
• It is important to know your target audience: A blanket marketing campaign to reach "everyone" will likely be ineffective and expensive, especially at the start of a program. The more effective approach is to find and target early adopters and tailor messages directly to this important audience. Demographics can help program administrators better understand the market and select optimal strategies. Organizers can also segment the market by interest in hot issues such as health concerns or the likelihood of getting savings.
• Partner with trusted messengers: Larger subsidies and more voluminous mailings don't necessarily win over more customers. Programs can and should have a local face, with buy-in from community leaders. Tapping trusted parties, such as local leaders and local organizations, builds upon existing relationships and networks.
• Language is powerful: Avoid meaningless or negatively associated words like "retrofit" and "audit." Use words and ways of communicating that tap into customers' existing mental frames. Encourage program staff and contractors to use specific vivid examples, personalize the material wherever possible, frame statements in terms of loss rather than gain, and generate a public commitment from the homeowners.
• Contractors are program ambassadors: Contractors, more than any other party, are the people sitting across the kitchen counter making the final sales pitch to a homeowner – contractors are often the public face and primary sales force for the program. Most programs that succeed in performing a significant number of energy upgrades have worked closely with contractors. Conversely, poor first impressions or shoddy work by contractors can reflect poorly on the program.
• Make it easy, make it fast: Offer seamless, streamlined services such as packaged incentives, minimized paperwork, and pre-approved contractors. By making it simple, it will make the decision to invest in home energy improvements even easier.

The report concludes that success will require multifaceted approaches that acknowledge a deeper understanding of what motivates homeowners and what contractors are concerned about. Effective programs will tend to be tailored to the location, thoughtfully researched and piloted, personalized to the target audience, and more labor-intensive than simple incentive programs.

California takes another Giant Step

Just a few days ago, on Oct. 14, the California Public Utilities Commission introduced Engage 360 to the public.  Engage 360 is a new brand name and a web portal that the CPUC hopes the public will as a place to go for information an to participation in energy-saving activities.

Commissioner Grueneich of the CPUC says "This new name, Energy Savings Assistance Program, is clear and concise. Customers will immediately understand that this is a program that provides energy and cost savings, resulting in a true benefit for customers otherwise unable to take advantage of energy efficiency programs."

According to the new website:  Engage360.com, the program was developed through a year-long process based on an in-depth, collaborative approach between CPUC staff and the utilities. The brand is built on the core attributes of conveying progressive inspiration, meaningful change, and a trusted information source with the aim of galvanizing Californians to adopt more clean energy solutions throughout their lives.

Another part of the new program is called the Energy Savings Assistance Program. The CPUC acknowledged the importance of a single recognizable and trustworthy name for these programs.  The name, Energy Savings Assistance Program, will be used by all CPUC-regulated utilities for programs providing weatherization and energy efficient measures to low income households.

So far, the site is pretty simple with a mainly social feel but since there's quite a bit of government funding behind it, I expect it to move more in to public education on the hows and whys of energy efficiency and conservation.

Check it out and let me (and them) what you think.

Another voice is added

“Convincing millions of Americans to divert their time and resources into upgrading their homes to eliminate energy waste, avoid high utility bills, and help stimulate the economy is one of the great challenges facing energy efficiency programs around the country,” says Merrian Fuller of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBNL).


LBNL has a research and information dissemination program that has been doing some fantastic research into how to best get homeowners to buy into the deep energy reductions that are necessary for us to control our national energy policy.  Some of their more interesting findings - to me, anyway - are that the words 'audit' and 'retrofit' don't make homeowners weak in the knees like they do me.  They are better sold on comfort, protecting their home's structure and value, or that their entire community is coming together to do this work en masse.  And the best inducement is seeing their local community leaders have it done to their homes and then give voice publicly on how much better their home is.


And since I'm considering going door to door, covering an entire targeted neighborhood, I'm particularly interested in a report on how well that worked out for a few that have already done it.  Haven't got around to reading it yet but will. 


I'd like to see this on the front page of the newspaper, talked about by the morning commute radio personalities, and billboards beside the freeway.  This *must* cover deep reductions in the proper loading order, not just 'let's put solar on the roof'.  Solar companies that are cold calling everyone in town and trying to sell them a solar electric system without talking about what's more cost effective - efficiency improvements first - drive me nuts, and I hope this clarification is part of any and all or the advertising strategies that are getting near (Yah!).

Certifications, Certifications....

Wow, do we got certifications.  It seems like every agency out there wants to have a piece of my bank account.

WARNING - feeling sorry for myself session ahead


Even though I was certified through CalCERTS as a HERS provider last year, it turns out that now I had to take another written test and field test, at my expense, to maintain my certification.

My original certification through the Building Performance Institute as a Building Analyst was fine up to this year but now, for the Home Star Program, I have to get Company Accreditation, also.  For that BPI requires another certification with another costly written and field test and extra insurance riders. Then they want $1,500 on top of that as the Accreditation fee - just for the first year - and without it I can't access most of the Home Star funding or business.

PG&E's Whole House Pilot Program requires a different set of requirements to access that program and, of course, more money.

Build It Green has their own classes, tests, and fees.

There's more but that's a taste of the current confused certification picture in California.  Oh, I forgot, each of the above also requires varying amounts of CEUs (continuing education credits) every year, all costing hundreds or thousands apiece and few fulfilling more than one agency's requirements.

OK, OK, enough complaining.

What I've received for all of the above: one fantastic education in building science.  I often think, "If only I had known this years ago.."  The house as a system was hardly considered until less than 10 years ago and 10 years from now it will be de facto for ALL new construction.  The world needs this if our kids kids are to have a healthy future or for US to all live in healthy houses.

Yes, you've just read paragraphs of complaining about how much it's all costing but the work is there, it's fulfilling work, and a living is still to be made doing it. A lot more fresh faces coming in to this field are required for us to meet, or even approach, two of our local Sonoma County goals:

13,000 existing housing units retrofitted by 2012 (!)
Greenhouse Gas reduction to 25% below our 1990 levels by 2015 (!)

Holy Cow, Batman, we need every SuperHero we can muster.

New products on the market

Just got back last night from PCBC in San Francisco - the Pacific Coast Builders Conference.  Lots of new technology and products on the main floor and plenty of speakers and seminars upstairs.


The State of California had a booth (amazing, eh?) where the Department of Housing & Community Development was tasked with getting out the word about next year's new and considerably more stringent building codes.  The new code system is two tiered in 2011, where - if I got this right - a mandated list of items in many areas such as site development, energy and water efficiency, materials conservation and waste stream, pollution control, indoor air quality and moisture control, and installer qualifications are all part of the prescriptive path.  And a 15% improvement in these areas above today's standards for the performance based path.  That's for the lower tier.  And in 2012 will kick in the higher tier of all the above except a more stringent prescriptive path and a 30% improvement for the performance based.  All good and necessary but/and there will be more inspections and more contractor training required.  So start now and be prepared for January 1, 2011.
http://www.bsc.ca.gov/CALGreen/default.htm for the website and http://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/bsc/documents/2010/Draft-2010-CALGreenCode.pdf for the whole thing.  Note that it's still a draft.


Halo now has a line of LED 4" recessed cans that look *great* and they have a retrofit version.  Plenty of light and color temps from 4000K down to 2700K, or daylight to warm.  They'll be a big seller.  And I found out something new that I wish I'd known before: the module for their 6" LED recessed cans can be screwed in to an older existing non ICAT housing (which I'd known) and they make that non ICAT housing airtight, or AT (which I *hadn't* known and which I had after retrofitting so many cans in the last several months to get the AT rating).  FYI, their 4" line is different and can't be retrofitted to a standard can.  They've come down in price to below dimmable fluorescents, though still above standard CFLs.  Definitely competitive and I personally believe are the future that will make CFLs old school.


Eco - specializing in LED lighting - was there.  A newish brand from China, they do a lot of outdoor street and decorative lighting but also have a line of interior screw-in replacements for interior bulbs that are rated fairly good as far as lumen output but some were pretty weird looking.  They also had an extensive line of LED T8 and T12 fluorescent tube replacements that fit in the standard 2 pin on each end fixtures.  Might be good and can they also had some T5s that could be used under cabinet.  Unknown quality and the reps there couldn't answer my questions about longevity & lumen testing.  Innovative and could be good but I want to see 3rd party testing.


There were several spray foam companies there that tout soy oils, recycled content, and no ozone depletion.  Their words are carefully scripted to make them sound all green when they're not, but at least the percentage of non-nasty stuff is growing.  I am NOT against spray foam; I love the stuff, recommend it, and think it's the cat's meow for many problems, but it has a large and nasty upfront environmental cost.


I saw some new synthetic decking products that looked great.  Very realistic, in fact, I could hardly tell they weren't real wood.  Still as expensive as Ipe or high end wood, but though they're not made from post consumer recycled content, the long life span makes them at least worthy of consideration.  I'd love to see a real life cycle analysis and footprint of a synthetic deck product and high end wood like redwood or ipe.  Anyone have numbers on this?


Missing this year, and that WERE there last year, were a couple of water products.  Last year, there were two different companies coming out with plug and play type solar water heater products; basically a water heater/storage tank with an integral pump and control system so all one needed was to plumb to a solar panel on the roof and plug it in.  All electronics, freeze protection, etc. were included in a nice, compact package that would fit in a standard hot water heater closet.  I wonder why they weren't at PCBC this year.  And last year there were 2 different companies offering wonderful graywater storage systems.  Where were they?


Lots more, of course.  Hundreds of vendors and many great products but I focus on efficiency products that can be used in retrofits and that have either a small amount of embedded energy - meaning they're cheap to make and use simple, renewable materials - and/or are cheap to run and use.  All that other stuff used to get me excited but I'm a lot pickier nowadays.

Putting a Face on the Gulf Oil Leak - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com

I try not to get political and I'm guilty of burning as much petroleum as the next person but dammit, this hurts:

Putting a Face on the Gulf Oil Leak - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com

Let there be light. And let it be from LEDs.

The following link takes you to one of my favorite blogs.  And this one has a few thought provoking nuggets.  Each one of us can make a difference, however small, that our grandchildren will thank us for.  I want to leave as good a world as I can for them and this blogpost talks about one way.

Let there be light. And let it be from LEDs.

Is Europe ahead of us?

I just returned from a wonderful vacation to France: 4 days in Paris and a week or so in rural southern France, in the Pyrenees.  The French are so French and the buildings aren't considered old unless they were built before the 1400s.  Fascinating history that dates back millenia, though occasionally rather bloody.  And while my lovely wife and I were soaking up the history and culture, I was also taking in how they used energy - how they modernized and heated all the old stone buildings, what their energy package was (electricity production, natural gas for heating, etc.), and their cultural beliefs around indoor comfort, personal space, and expectations.  Luckily, she was tolerant of my constant musings on buildings and energy use.

I expected and was familiar with Europe's smaller, more efficient vehicle size, excellent public transit system, higher percentage of scooter use, and the fact that walking is so much more a part of life than in the States, even in rural areas.  Transportation issues in the cities, and even interurban, are a whole topic in themselves and I won't go in to them here.  But the first thing that struck me as different and unusual inside a building was as soon as we got to our first hotel in Paris.  We tended to stay in what I'll call low-end-fancy or high-end-budget.  Michelin two and three stars but the cheapest of them.  As we walked in to the hall on our floor, it was initially dark but the lights turned on the moment we turned the corner, dim but adequate - aha, they're on motion detectors and turn off after a few minutes.  A little strange for us because the area is dark until you approach it but very effective as far as energy usage.  Then we enter our room and there is no light in the room until one sticks the key card in to a slot on the wall that turns on all the electricity in the room.  This was so common and expected there that they didn't even tell us about it at the front desk.  Granted, I've seen it in a few hotels in the States but it's still relatively rare but I suspect saves a LOT of energy.  No more lighting unoccupied rooms or endlessly droning room heaters.  Then we turn on the lights and find that they're CFLs in the ceiling and LEDs on either side of the bed.  LEDs, no less.  They're investing in LEDs on a public scale.  Small, excellent for reading at night, and probably draw less than 5 watts apiece.  There's more, but you get the picture: our carbon footprint while we were staying there was far less than the average hotel in the States (and yes, I'm making a point out of ignoring the huge carbon cost of our flight there and back - I'm still working on that area).

The other hotel we stayed at was similar, and what came to mind was a difference in cultural expectations.  The quality of life there is comfortable while the average person's energy footprint is considerably less than ours.  Hotels are actively investing in energy reducing technology: central boilers that not only provide the hot water but also feed individual, quiet water-to-air heaters in each room, either fan fed in a dropped ceiling or passive white radiators on the walls; modern LED directed lighting; services that are only available when needed, controlled by motion detectors or key card controllers.  These things cause a small amount of bother.  The room isn't perfectly warm for us when we enter, it's dark until we approach an area, there's more task lighting and less area lighting.  And we're conditioned to expect to not be bothered by little niggly things like that.  But the net savings from those actually very small adjustments are substantial.

Which brings me back to expectations.  I didn't gain anything directly from having to make little adjustments to accommodate these energy saving features.  On the contrary, they cost me slightly according to my American expectations.  But they saved the country substantially as a whole.  This takes me back to my college philosophy class and the concept of The Commons: the area of our cultural life that we all have to share with each other.  Water, air, roads and transportation, public spaces, most things the government does for us.  We take care of The Commons even where it costs us some personally because it's better for all and in the end, that's better for us.  We all do it to some extent.  We pay taxes, we share the road, we recycle and try not to pollute.  In Europe, with it's much older, denser history of human occupation, they just have a bit more developed sense of The Commons than we do here in the States, with our sense of unlimited space and resources.

As our population grows and we strive to keep our standard of living while not destroying our environment, Europe has a few things to teach us about resource usage in our buildings.  And I haven't even gotten to the windmill farms, bullet trains, our plenty big turbo diesel rental car - full size for Europe - that got nearly 50 mpg in hilly, stop and go, and freeway driving while passing stringent air quality requirements and giving us standard amenities that most American cars don't even have as options.

Come on, America, we need to be on the *forefront* of energy efficiency, not lagging farther and farther behind.  Because the country that does more with less will end up leading.  And right now, that's not us.

Now how can I import that turbo diesel we drove there.  Mmmm....

To model or not to model…thoughts on building energy modeling software.

The home performance field bases itself on what it calls ‘building science’ and its results are supposed to be measurable, quantifiable, repeatable, and numerical.  We test in to a project when we start, we do whatever energy related improvements, and we test out at the end.  And the numbers are supposed to prove both the theory behind our choices and the practice of our actual improvements. 

Last year, I paid several hundred dollars for a software package that models a building’s energy use and then projects it’s use after improvements – and several hundred more for a class to supposedly teach and certify me to use it – and it wasn’t a couple of hours in to the class I was both lost and confused, and also floored at the relative ease with which small changes to my input caused large changes in the output.  The software felt like a black box: I put numbers in here and results came out there and I had noooo idea what relationship the latter had to the former.  Then I’d put in other very similar numbers and whoa, why is that result so different?

I have to say, it WAS partly the software: it was freshly on the market, I was in the first class to try it out, it wasn’t even going to be approved for use for another few months, and even the instructor was pretty lost.  And he’d been using the previous version for years.  OK.  I wasn’t a total numbskull.  But only now, the better part of a year after that day and after many hours of puzzling with this program, finally, today, after a real class on the software from one of the guys who actually *wrote* the software (plus they’re now on version 23), do I finally feel like I’m getting a handle on it.

OK.  So now, even though I think I can use this software to generate better numbers more reflective of the actual home I’m actually modeling, I also now see how easy it is to fudge or subtly shift numbers around to move the output around.  Mmm, all of a sudden I feel like I’m playing Moral Scruples. 

Of course, there are checks on the system.  My final numbers are sent in to a central database overseen by my certifying agency.  And a certain number of my projects are actually visited by another unknown auditor who checks my test numbers.  He goes there, interviews the person I did the work for, and verifies my findings.  And any pattern of strangeness found in my numbers causes me to be subject to even closer scrutiny.  So there’s someone looking over my shoulder, even though from afar.

I’m not alone here; I’ve heard others in my field say that they could make the software say pretty much whatever they wanted.  I guess what I’m grasping at here is that on one hand I’m amazed at the complexity of modeling software systems, convinced of the absolute necessity of them, and humbled by the trust placed in my honesty and integrity by the system.  The whole concept of home performance rests on our ability to quantify what we’ve done.  Without it, there’d be no home performance/energy auditing field. 

And I know how fragile trust is and how hard it is to regain it after it’s lost. 

Whew.  So, when’s the next class in this software?  I need to get better at knowing what I’m doing.  I can’t afford any mistakes. 

Home Star

In the final stages of its tortuous path through the House and Senate, the details of the 6 billion dollar Home Star program have become mostly clear.  In a nutshell, Home Star is a federal job creation stimulus fund that presumably will create jobs by making home energy retrofits and improvements more affordable to homeowners.  Though the details are still being worked out as of this writing, it will do this by providing strong, short-term homeowner incentives for air sealing, insulation improvements, new appliances, and possibly other improvements.  This will be a win-win for our economy: one estimate is that it will create 168,000 new construction related jobs while reducing the energy use and utility bills of homeowners who take advantage of the Home Star rebates. There are two main incentive tracks to choose from, named  the Gold Star and the Silver Star.

The Silver Star incentive track is a direct payment for the purchase and installation of certain proscribed items: insulation, high efficiency furnaces and hot water heaters, and other measures that directly reduce residential energy use.  These payments are based only on the appliance or installed measure, require a proof of purchase or invoice of the installation, and pay up to 50% of the cost of each measure up to a max of $3000.

The Gold Star is a performance based incentive, requiring a full energy audit prior to any work being done and then a test-out afterwards to quantify the improvements.  It pays up to $3000 for demonstrated improvements in energy efficiency of 20%, determined by the modeled difference between the test-in and the test-out.  For the homeowner who wishes to go further, the Gold Star track pays a further $1000 for each additional 5% of modeled energy savings up to a total of $8000 or 50% of the cost, whichever is less.  Being performance based, this track will push homeowners towards measures that offer the biggest bang for the buck; these are often the more labor intensive ones such as air sealing, crawlspace measures, and insulation improvements.  The contractors who perform the improvements must be licensed and specially certified, so you can't claim the Gold Star rebates if installed by your uncle Joe the plumber. 

As you can see, the Gold Star track has higher requirements including tested numbers that show (at least as far as the modeling software can) the expected energy savings. It also has the possibility of higher payouts.  The Silver Star track is available to any homeowner and *may* even be available at the point of sale for certain energy saving purchases.  Homeowners who buy and install measures themselves can only claim the cost of the merchandise towards Home Star rebates, while those who pay a contractor to buy and install can use the total contractor invoice when claiming rebates.

Home Star has a planned roll out of this month - April - so stay tuned.  Hopefully, homeowners will realize monthly cost savings immediately.  I'll let you know as soon as I hear.

LED residential lighting

2009 is the year I saw LEDs finally come down in price, up in lumens per watt, and with a broader selection of colors.  Enough so that they’ve become competitive with CFLs for the claim of the Greenest Light.  But luckily for us research is being done on manufacturer’s claims of light output and longevity, and unluckily for some manufacturers the research is showing that not all LEDs are being created equally.  In fact, the worst are so bad that their initial light output is a small fraction of what’s advertised and within a hundred hours of use their already small amount of light falls off to miniscule.  And that’s what I want to talk about here.

The EERE – Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, an arm of the Department of Energy – has enough of a budget to contract with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to put out a report from time to time called the CALiPER or, take a deep breath now, Commercially Available LED Product Evaluation and Reporting.  Say that three times fast.  Started in 2006, there have been 9 research reports or rounds in which various LED and CFL lamps and fixtures were bought on the open market and then put through their paces.  And if you’re nerdy enough to not be put to sleep by technical reading, you may find them fascinating.  I did which makes me a Certifiable Energy Nerd.

Available to the public, you can find the series at the EERE website and, though they’re all informative, the last few here and here are more so.  To sum up in a nutshell what was found, there are a LOT of brand X LEDs coming on the market of poor quality and the buyer, you, must beware.  But there’s also a few that are as good as or better than their claims.  How are we to know?  The reports describe the LEDs that were tested but for some reason (if you know why let me know) they don’t give the Brand names.  Small pictures of each product are included so you can make a vague guess as to what brand they are and apparently they tend to be the ones sold at the big box stores.  The cheap ones.

Other reports, available at Home Energy Magazine and here at the EERE (it's almost 4 years old - an eon in LED development - but still apropro), lay out the possibility that the increasing marketing of the low end LEDs to the public may cause a backlash similar to the ones CFLs experienced when they first came out.  I know I’m showing my age but I remember how poor the quality was of SOME of the early CFLs and how the failures of the cheap ones colored public perception of CFLs in general and set the CFL industry back a few years.  I suspect LEDs are in for a similar perception unless manufacturer honesty and federal oversight of the wild marketing claims keeps the poorest performers off the market.  But the major brands – Cree, Halo, and a few others – have fixtures that ARE competitive.

If your incandescent lamps are burning out or costing you an arm and half a leg to keep lit, or if you’re tired of your CFLs being so dim for the first minute they’re on and you want something better, LEDs are becoming Prime Time in 2010.  And when you're in the store looking them over, remember this label:

  

It's a voluntary Truth in Labeling program run by the Department of Energy.  Read about it here.  The major manufacturers who sign on to the above labeling alliance can't afford negative publicity and their products appear to be well designed and with actual quality control.  

I’m installing an increasing number of the new generation ICAT (insulation contact, air tight) LED modules and my customers are raving about them.  They come on quickly, have a high enough Color Rendering Index (CRI) that objects appear as they should at night, are now available in various color temperatures (see this article for why CRI and color temperature are important), they dim adequately with standard dimmers, and the cost of the recessed lighting fixtures are similar to CFLs.  Personally, I’m sold on the technology and it’s improving all the time.