Take the ENERGY STAR new homes program, for example, the one I’m most familiar with. Version 1 required only one inspection, a home energy rating (for the performance path), and no checklists. Version 3, which becomes mandatory for builders wanting the ENERGY STAR label on their homes starting next January, requires 2 inspections, a home energy rating, and 4 checklists.

I understand the need for it from the perspective of the program administrators. Building and energy codes are catching up with voluntary program requirements, so they have to keep moving forward. Program leaders also have attempted to clarify the ambiguity of early versions of program requirements. And they have to make sure that the program is meaningful and that when the program label appears on a home, that home is significantly better than homes without the label. I get all that.

It just seems like we’ve lost our way, that we’ve all gotten blinded by a confusion of checklists, worksheets, prescriptive measures, and certification levels. Not to mention the confusion that comes from having so many different programs out there. If you’re a builder, you have to decide if you’re going for ENERGY STAR, LEED for Homes, EarthCraft House, NAHB Green Building Standard, Environments for Living… It’s not an easy task.

One of the first points of confusion that participants in the ENERGY STAR program face is whether to certify via the prescriptive or the performance path. That sounds pretty clear-cut, right? When you take a closer look, however, you find that the prescriptive path has performance requirements (e.g., testing for duct leakage and infiltration rates), and the performance path is chock full of prescriptive requirements. Just look at the 4 checklists required in ENERGY STAR Version 3.

As constructed, the performance path is differentiated from the prescriptive path by its requirement for a HERS rating. It’s based on how the home is constructed, how it tests out, and how the software does the energy modeling. It doesn’t depend on how the house actually performs, though, and that could differ significantly from the modeled performance. One reason we do it this way is so that the homes certified will carry the program label while they’re for sale, thus helping the builder to market their homes.

But what if we included the performance of a home over its first year of occupancy? Then we could include the actual energy use and calculate the energy intensity, even separating out baseload from the energy used for heating and cooling. It seems to me that this would be one of the best ways to handle quality assurance, too. If HERS raters, builders, and trade contractors know that their work has to pass not only the initial inspections but also a full year’s worth of performance assessments, don’t you think they’ll pay a bit more attention to getting the details right?

We could simplify the requirements for the initial certification and make sure everyone knows that the initial label means only that the home has gone through a process. Even though the energy modeling may say the home will use only $900 of energy per year, for example, everyone will know that that will be compared to the actual energy consumption for the ‘real’ label.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this Monday morning. I’m interested to hear what you think.

Top photo by acearchie from flickr.com, used under a Creative Commons license. Lower photo by Ian Sane from flickr.com, used under a Creative Commons license.

GIMBBYs aren’t worried about seeing wind turbines or transmission lines from their backyards as are the NIMBYs. It’s the guy next store that they don’t want to see. And GIMBBYs number many among us. A recent study conducted for the National Association of Realtors found privacy to be very important in selecting a home for nearly half of the Americans surveyed.

What’s this got to with energy efficiency? To gain privacy we move to homes that are further from work, schools and stores, suburban and rural outposts that offer us bigger backyards. By way of disclosure, before I go any further let me confess that I am a GIMBBY. I’d probably give up my lights, heat and air conditioning before my five acres of trees shielding me from others.

The Environmental Protection Agency calls big-backyard neighborhoods like mine “automobile dependent locations” and contrasts them with “transit-oriented” neighborhoods, places where you can hop a bus or easily walk to regular destinations. The agency recently looked at which kind of neighborhood uses the most British Thermal Units (BTUs), taking into account size and type of house, its energy efficiency, and vehicle use of its occupants. This is known asLocation Efficiency.

The EPA’s findings indicate that location really is everything. Transit-oriented neighborhoods offered up more energy savings whether the houses were single family detached, single family attached or multi-family. This is significant because homes that share walls typically require less energy for heating and cooling. But that advantage was not significant enough to overcome driving distance for the big-backyard neighborhoods. Travel requirements pretty much trumped all, indicating that a home’s location is “a major variable for household energy consumption,” the EPA said.

The high fuel economy helped the MSU team garner 844 out of a possible 1,000 points, earning its first-place finish. Coming in second place was the Virginia Tech University team, which built an EREV with a 40-mile electric range, also driven by a 21.3-kilowatt-hour battery pack, but with a 90-kilowatt motor. Their extended range was achieved with a flex-fueled, 2.4-liter, four-cylinder engine. Landing in third place was Pennsylvania State University, again with an EREV, which used a 12.8-kilowatt-hour battery pack to power an 80-kilowatt motor. Like the MSU team, their backup power source was a 1.3-liter, biodiesel-fueled, turbocharged diesel engine, which powered a 75-kilowatt UQM generator.

The May competition included a series of safety and technical tests at GM’s Desert Proving Grounds in Yuma, Arizona, marking the end of two years of hard work by the university teams. In the first year of the EcoCAR challenge, the teams determined the design for their vehicles, and in the second year, they had to turn those designs into reality. For the next and final year, the teams will have to refine their vehicles to near-showroom quality. In the meantime, you can participate in a Web chat with the top three teams on Friday, June 4, at 3 p.m. EDT on the EcoCAR blog site, “Inside the Green Garage.” See the press releases from GM and MSU, as well as the EcoCAR Challenge Web site.

A high performance home, like the beautiful home in Hattiesburg i recently verified to the NAHB green building standard is one that takes advantage of energy efficient sustainable construction. The definition of a green built sustainable home varies widely.

The fifth edition of The Dictionary of Real Estate Appraisal defines sustainability as the practice of developing new structures and renovating existing structures using equipment, materials, and techniques that help achieve long-term balance between extraction and renewal and between environmental inputs and outputs, causing no overall net environmental burden or deficit.

In 2007 the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the International Code Council (ICC) partnered to form and establish a much-needed and nationally-recognizable standard definition of what is meant by “Green Building.”

A consensus committee was formed to develop this standard in compliance with the requirements of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The resulting ANSI approved ICC-700-2008 National Green Building Standard defines green building for single and multifamily homes, residential remodeling projects and site development projects while still allowing for the flexibility required for regionally-appropriate best green practices.

NAHB Green Building Standard is made up of 6 chapters:

1. Land Use
2. Resource Efficiency
3. Energy efficiency
4. Water efficiency
5. Indoor Air Quality
6. Home Owner Education

The USGBC’s LEED program, the EPA ENERGY STAR, and over 100 other green programs exist in the US today. There is no  doubt that learning all the nuances of these programs is a challenge to the appraiser.  So let’s look at a couple of steps that an appraiser can take to gather data in an effort to not only define green but to properly give it value.

If the green home you’re asked to value is part of a third-party rating, like the NAHB program, there will be a paper trail to document the analysis needed to produce the appraisal data. So ask for the following:

1. Any scoring sheet of the green building program
2. A home energy rating or HERS report
3. Fannie Mae Energy Report
4. Documentation of any incentives
   1. An IRS tax credit
   2. Utility rebate
   3. Real estate tax discount
   4. Lower interest rate mortgage
      1. i.      EEM – Sponsored by FHA, VA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as some conventional lenders, it credits a home energy efficiency in the mortgage itself and stretches the debt to income qualifying ratio allowing the home owner to qualify for a larger mortgage amount.

Another challenge to the appraiser might be describing improvements. Begin with the site and pay attention to shading, landscaping materials and water use techniques. Include language that describes the use of solar panels, low VOC paints, recycled glass counters, structural insulated panel (SIP) outside walls and energy efficient heating and cooling systems.

When comes to comparables don’t be fooled by the home with an energy efficient kitchen. That’s a far cry from a home with a green certification. Green built homes are also built “above code”, meaning that you’ll need to pay closer attention to the quality of construction line in the URAR. Actually there are three lines that need special care. Those lines are:

1. Quality of construction
2. Heating and cooling
3. Energy efficient items

If you’ve not made an adjustment in those area a comment should be made as to why they’ve been left off. Items that are not covered in quantity may be addressed in quality. Again, look for incentives, monthly energy savings, and lower maintenance items as good talking points in your analysis.

Appraiser should also remember that some loan underwriters may indicate that Fannie Mae does not allow adjustments for energy efficient features, but that is not the case. You may be called upon to support the energy adjustment, which can be done by multiplying the energy savings by the gross rent multiplier.This is a common capitalization technique and a way to place emphasis on energy efficiency contribution.

Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide includes the following:

“Special energy-savings items must be recognized in the appraisal process. Appraisers must compare energy-efficient features of the subject property to those of comparable properties in the “sales comparison analysis” grid to ensure that the overall contribution of these items is reflected in the market value of the subject property.”

Finding value in a new market can be a challenge but should not be considered impossible. Soon everyone will realize the importance of and recognize the value in building energy efficient.

If you browse into your local auto dealer and peer into any model on the lot you’ll find a MPG (Miles Per Gallon) rating stuck on the rear window. The numbers should help you understand how much fuel (energy) the car will use under normal operating conditions. This info is a great way to determine how depleted  your wallet will be “before” you decide to drive that baby off the car lot. It might even help you budget for the purchase!

What about the home you’re looking to buy? How can you tell, in terms of today’s dollars, what the home will cost you to maintain? Wouldn’t it be good information? The info is available to you today. Right now. This instant…

Want to know more? I have the answer, and if you’re buying the right house the cost to know…is FREE!

Contact me for a detailed explanation of how a home energy audit can help you decide if the home you’re thinking of buying is a lemon. If it is and you just can’t live without it…I’ll show you how to make “lemon-aide”!

601-454-5559 in central Mississippi.

ERHOM joins the National Recycling Coalition, Keep America Beautiful, and various other national and state organizations in recognizing America Recycles Day on November 15. America Recycles Day is the only nationally recognized day dedicated to encouraging Americans to recycle and to buy recycled products. Celebrating its 12th year, the day has grown to include millions of Americans pledging to increase their recycling habits at home and work and to buy products made with recycled materials. Through America Recycles Day, Keep America Beautiful, Inc. and the National Recycling Coalition support local communities and raise awareness by educating citizens about the benefits of recycling. Volunteer America Recycles Day coordinators are positioned throughout the country and work to organize recycling awareness events in schools and communities, and in conjunction with local municipalities.

On November 15 each year, millions of people become better informed about the importance of daily recycling
and buying recycled products. The purpose of America Recycles Day is to continue to promote the social,
environmental and economic benefits of recycling and encourage more people to join the movement toward
creating a better natural environment. For more information on America Recycles Day and events, visit
the web site at www.americarecyclesday.org.

When a high wind strikes a house, the flow of air over the roof creates an upward suction, in the same way that wind creates lift on an airplane wing. Wind tries to lift shingles and sheathing off the roof, the roof sheathing pulls up on the roof rafters or trusses, the roof structure pulls up on the wall plates (trying to lift the walls), and the walls pull up on the floor deck or foundation that they rest on. If any connection anywhere along that load path fails, the structure can come apart. It’s just one of the ways that wind can destroy a house, but it’s an important one and has to be understood, designed for, and built for.

Today I performed a pre-pour foundation inspection on a home in Brandon, MS and met custom home builder Tim Prevost of Timber Creek Homes. Tim was busy setting a special device in place to help prevent wind “up-lift”.

Normally the nailing pattern and sheer strength of the outside sheathing or decking will provide adequate up-lift protection. But some floor plan designs call for narrow wall sections and when a section of the wall is less than 16 inches wide it needs added support.

The Simpson Strong Tie is a cold steel strap that is placed into the concrete slab before pouring the concrete mix. During the framing stage the strap is securely nailed to the sheathing or plywood skin of the home increasing the wall’s ability to resist upward pressure. This special tie provides a solid sill-to-foundation connection and will help provide not only the up-lift protection during high winds but provides building sustainability.

Building Green is smart.

For more information on Green Building and construction consulting contact Gary Smith at 601-454-5559.