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.

Even though she’s a very technically-minded person (she works on nuclear non-proliferation and carbon sequestration issues), but, like most people, she doesn’t know what she should expect when it comes to an assessment of her home’s energy efficiency. A good home energy audit these days will cost from a few hundred dollars to over $1000, depending on the size and complexity of the house, so homeowners of course want to know what they’re going to get for that investment.

Well, let’s dive in and take a look.

Who’s Qualified?

Although it may be hard to find someone with one of these certifications in every part of the country, you should look for a home energy auditor who’s certified as either a BPI (the Building Performance Institute) Building Analyst or a RESNET certified HERS Rater. Last year I wrote an article about these being the main certifications to look for, and it’s still the case.

What Should They Do?

1. Combustion Safety
2. Building Envelope
3. HVAC
4. Moisture Problems
5. Detailed Report
6. Extras

The first thing to know is that there are different levels of assessment. For simplicity, I’ll focus mainly on the comprehensive energy audit, but a seasoned home energy auditor can tell a lot just by walking through the house. The key is that it’s got to be someone who’s already done plenty of comprehensive audits and knows what to look for.

1. Combustion Safety

The motto of BPI is, “First, do no harm…to life, limb or property.” If your house has any combustion appliances in it, assessing their safety and suitability should be the first thing the energy auditor does. Often, a home energy auditor is the only person who looks at your house as a system and can tell you if there might be problems such as backdrafting that could put carbon monoxide in your home. A good combustion safety test will include checking for spillage of natural draft combustion appliances, the content of the exhaust gases in furnaces and water heaters, and worst case depressurization of the combustion appliance zone (CAZ).

2. Building Envelope

The building envelope is the boundary between conditioned and unconditioned spaces. It has two key components: the air barrier and the insulation, which need to go completely around the house and be touching each other. The home energy auditor you choose check all three parts of the building envelope:

• Integrity of the air barrier
• Adequacy of insulation levels
• Alignment of insulation with air barrier

When insulation is installed without an air barrier, it won’t do its job. Most types of insulation do not stop air leakage, so one thing the energy auditor will do is look for proper alignment of insulation and air barrier throughout the house.

The energy auditor will also look for proper levels of insulation (wherever visible) and check for the existence of insulation behind walls. They’ll check the integrity of the air barrier in two ways: a visual inspection and a Blower Door test. The former tells where the big air leaks are, and the latter quantifies the total amount of air leakage in the house. The auditor can use the Blower Door as a diagnostic tool to locate air leaks, too.

3. HVAC

Most homes use more energy for heating and cooling than for anything else, so assessing how well the heating and cooling systems are doing is vital. One thing that a home energy auditor will do that your HVAC contractor may not, though, is look at the quality of the distribution system. It’s one thing to heat or cool the air with high efficiency equipment, but if you put that high SEER air conditioner or high efficiency furnace on a crappy duct system, the money spent on the equipment is wasted.

The energy auditor should look at both the equipment and the distribution system. If it’s a forced air distribution system, they probably will also measure the amount of duct leakage in each system, especially is the ducts are outside the building envelope. Unless the auditor is also an HVAC technician, they probably won’t give you a full assessment of the equipment, but they can tell you, based on the age of the equipment, how soon you might need to replace it.

4. Moisture Problems

There are three things that cause buildings to fail more often than anything else:

• rain
• moisture
• condensation

In other words, water causes a lot of problems. Energy auditors often look for moisture problems in your home and will help find the source so you can eliminate the problem. Most of the moisture problems originate from drainage issues on the outside of the house and should be solved on the outside (e.g.,by fixing gutters that dump water at the foundation). Vented crawl spaces are a category unto themselves, and the good news is that we know how to fix themnow.

5. Detailed Report

Once the home energy auditor has finished with the onsite assessment of the house, which generally takes three to six hours, they’ll write up a report for the homeowners. Some companies have their templates set up and portable printers in their trucks and can deliver the report before they ever leave your house. Most, I believe, will do the report back at their office and then schedule an appointment to deliver it.

The report should cover all the items above (if applicable). It should give the results of the inspections and testing and put them in perspective by comparing what the auditor found in your house to what’s required by code (in the case of insulation mainly). In the case of infiltration and duct leakage, the comparison is usually to a scale showing what’s good and what’s bad. With the former, they may also tell you what size hole you have in your house.

Finally, with a good home energy audit report, you should get a scope of work that prioritizes the improvements you could make based on their cost effectiveness. Air sealing and duct sealing are usually at the top of the list of energy improvements, though combustion safety issues trump energy efficiency.

The report may also list any rebates and tax incentives that you can qualify for by improving the energy efficiency of your home. These vary by location, and not every home energy auditor can qualify you for every rebate. For example, Georgia Power has a generous rebate program, but you have to use one of the approved assessment contractors to qualify for them. To find out what’s available in your area, you can check the DSIRE or Tax Incentive Assistance Project websites.

6. Extras

Some other items that your home energy audit may include are a look at your home’s:

• Water efficiency
• Lights and appliances
• Dryer vent
• Energy bills
• Financing options

Some energy audit companies will check the flow rates of your faucets, toilets, and shower heads and make recommendations for improvement. Some check your lights and appliances and can even measure energy use of items like refrigerators with devices like the Kill-A-Watt or the WattsUp. I wrote about the dangers of underperforming dryer vents a while back and gave somerecommendations for improvement there. Some energy auditors will check that as well.

When I was doing energy audits (or home performance assessments, as I called them), I included an analysis of the homeowners’ energy bills. If they could give me 12 months of their bills, I could plug it into a spreadsheet I’d put together and calculate their energy intensity, the energy use per square foot of conditioned floor area per year.

If your intention is to use a home energy audit as a guide to improving your home, then hiring an auditor who can help you with financing options could be a big plus, too. Perhaps the best one available, in my opinion, is the Energy Efficient Mortgage, which you can use either for a purchase or a refinance.

Choosing a Home Energy Auditor

So there you have it. You can use the above information as a guide to choosing a home energy auditor and making sure you get the most bang for your buck. As with any other contractors you bring into your home, you should also ask for references and check them. I’m sure the comments below will have even more good advice.

Two things to be wary of are the ‘free energy audit’ (usually offered by companies who just want to get into your house to sell you their product or service) and the yahoo who bought an infrared camera and thinks it can find everything. Use the guidelines above to choose a home energy auditor, and you’ll get a much better audit.

If you’re in the Southeast, check our list of certified home energy raters to see if there’s one in your area. Many of them have both the HERS Rater and BPI Building Analyst certifications.

“Just like you to know I’m glad you aren’t in charge. If you stood between me and my freedoms of choice or others you wouldn’t be standing there long.”

Turns out he’d read two of the articles I wrote last week - The McMansion Penalty in ENERGY STAR Version 3 and Kick the Can! – No Recessed Lights in the Building Envelope. Looking at this fellow’s website, I found that he does nice remodeling work, focusing on kitchens and baths.

But why did he feel the need to send me that message? I reread the articles and nowhere did I call for any kind of government intervention to ban can lights or large houses. The McMansion article was about a voluntary program that aims to foster increasing home energy efficiency. The latter was about the problems with can lights from a building science perspective.

Freedom isn’t a black-or-white issue, though, and it doesn’t mean that we’re all free to do whatever we want. We’re not free to walk into someone’s house and help ourselves to their belongings, for example. We’re not free to yell ‘Fire’ in a crowded auditorium. We’re increasingly less free to smoke in buildings. Heck, in many neighborhoods, we’re not even free to use the color of paint we want on our house.

So what exactly is the issue with this reader? Does he send such emails to homeowners’ associations and governing bodies, too? Or are building science, green building programs, and building codes especially incompatible with freedom? Let’s explore that last question further, splitting it into three separate questions.

Is building science incompatible with freedom?

Science is science. Anyone who works on buildings is free to ignore the principles of building science to the extent that they can get away with it, but someone’s going to pay the price. Maybe it’ll be the occupants, who suffer with comfort problems, poor indoor air quality, frequent maintenance, or high energy bills. Maybe it’ll be the remodeler or builder who has to face constant callbacks.

That’s the point I was trying to make with my article on can lights. To the extent that program guidelines or building codes allow can lights, a remodeler or builder can use them. If they’re part of the building envelope, however, and create a problem with the air barrier or insulation, the contractor is giving their client an inferior product. That’s just building science.

Are green building programs incompatible with freedom?

This one’s also a no-brainer. If it’s a voluntary program, how can it interfere with anyone’s freedom? (Well, OK, there’s Henry Gifford and his lawsuit against the USGBC and its LEED program, but I doubt the courts will let it go far.) If anyone has a problem with the new large home penalty in Version 3 of the ENERGY STAR new homes program, they’re perfectly free not to participate. (Although ENERGY STAR is an energy efficiency, not green building, program, I’m lumping them all together here.)

Are building codes incompatible with freedom?

OK, the first two questions were easy, but this is the one, I believe, where the real friction is happening. Building codes contain a lot of prescriptive requirements, mostly to ensure safety and structural stability. Although some contractors may complain about  the details or enforcement of some requirements, I think most people understand the need for these measures.

In recent years, though, energycodes have been gaining a toehold and are even starting to be enforced. For example, we now have a new energy code in Georgiathat requires all homes to meet thresholds for infiltration rates and duct leakage. This requires someone to test the house with a Blower Door and duct tester. Is that an example of the state standing between builders and their freedom of choice? Some argue that it is and that builders should be allowed to build leaky, inefficient, energy hog houses if they want to.

In my opinion, though, we have a serious energy problem, globally and in the US, and energy codes are one way to help us meet the challenges. With thepeak of global oil production (peak oil) being upon us, the price of oil is rising. This is leading to the electrification of transportation, which puts pressure on the electric grid and causes prices to rise there, too. Efficient houses are going to be a necessity, whether we like it or not.

If we’re going to live in a civilized society, we always have to consider not only the needs and rights of others around us, but also the bigger picture of what’s happening globally. Am I saying we all need to live in yurts and ride bicycles? No. But we are facing some serious problems that demand a new way of doing things. Freedom demands a certain amount of responsibility, too.

What do you think? Do the demands of building science, green building programs, or building codes infringe on our freedom of choice?

Conflict resolution, mediation or arbitration are the instruments most commonly used in our culture to resolve conflict civilly. Don’t get me wrong, these are useful and potentially transformative tools. However, how much money, time and heartache would we spare ourselves if we focused on conflict prevention practices…practices to create mutual understanding up-front, rather than mucking through the emotionally and monetarily costly post-conflict swamp?

Initially, as an industry professional, you may balk at the perceived cost of making this kind of investment in changing your business practices, especially in a changing market. Consider this: How many times have you left money on the table or discounted your fees in compensation for misunderstandings that could have been avoided with routine communication protocols that include documentation? How many unnecessary phone calls have you received because your business model doesn’t effectively deal with the uncertainty your client lives with when so much of their money is at stake? How much time, aggravation and stress could you save yourself and your client, not to mention your reputation, by educating your client and preparing them each week for what lies ahead, being accountable to your word and deed and keeping them informed ahead of the curve?

After all, we remember experiences because they involve our emotions. It’s the emotion that sticks. What kind of emotion do you want creating your reputation? Are you just ‘hoping to get it right’ or are you proactively stacking the odds in your favor by having effective routine communication practices in place? Don’t you and your clients deserve less stress and more peace of mind? Certainly your reputation does.

What part, consciously or by default, have we played in this relational play? Consider that feeling insulted or judged aren’t reasons to blame, but reasons to examine what unexamined part of us has contributed to an unpleasant or hurtful interaction.

It’s not easy, nor comfortable to engage in this level of self-examination. Matter of fact, it can be downright sickening and extremely humbling when we see our culpability. But it is what’s at the heart of growing spiritually, emotionally and integrally.

This is conversation isn’t for everybody, but what if it were? What if we stopped compartmentalizing our business from our personal life…customers from the rest of the people in our life…who we are at work and how we are outside of work?  What if all encounters were opportunities to ask, “What is this interaction reflecting about my life and where I need to grow”?

Your ability to communicate effectively with the unique personalities of your customers affects your project’s success. There are several personality typing systems to explore. Check out the CAP Model at Speechmastery to learn about the 4 types: The Controller, The Analyst, The Supporter and The Promoter. Identifying your client’s personality type will help you better understand what motivates their interest. For instance, engineers are typically ‘analyst types’ who will ask infinite questions. They love gathering information before acting. So with an analyst type you want to be as prepared as possible to provide answers, or know where to find them. For instance, if you are designing or building an energy efficient home, you want to be well-versed on the latest information and ready for their questions.

Read the Article

While estimates vary, studies suggest that more than 4 million people work full time from home; many more part-time. When budget allows and the need arise, professional builders are making space in their floor plans to provide a work space that is both separate and private. Many builders provide more than one room in which owners can conduct business, and the floor plan placement, access, and other features of current home offices are increasingly sophisticated.

Compared to the adapted work spaces in dens, libraries and even garages just a few years ago, home offices are now specifically designed for office use. Builders often locate these rooms on the main floor, frequently just inside the front door. This allows privacy by separating the office from other public areas. In addition, the office might share a powder room or full bath (with its own door) and provide built-in bookshelves, extra storage and surfaces for files and office equipment. In model homes, home offices are marketed to make sure that potential homebuyers are aware that the builder offers a dedicated office space in addition to the bedrooms within the floor plan.

Luxury and custom homebuilders may provide a secondary office niche near or adjacent to the master bedroom or in the kitchen. These smaller office areas work well for home management tasks, such as paying the bills or maintaining the family schedule. Such space can also be carved into a long and wide hallway or included in a second-level loft between bedrooms, providing family access to a computer or homework area for school-age children. The floor plan may also provide a similar space near the kitchen or family room so that parents can supervise schoolwork, craft projects, or oversee Internet access.
In some cases, the home office is a separate building, outside the main footprint of the home’s floor plan. A separate building allows at-home workers to come and go and greet clients or visitors without disturbing or being disturbed by household activities.

Regardless of the context and however accommodated in the floor plan, there’s little doubt that home offices have changed basic housing design. They are now a common feature in nearly every type, size, and price of new home. This trend is sure to continue as work and home management evolve in response to advances in electronic and communication science. Market-savvy builders will be ready to meet the needs of each client family.

Susan Kramer-Pope Communication Practices that Make a Difference

We each have a reaction to uncertainty. Some find it exhilarating. Some find it terrifying. In all cases there is an element of stress. If you are a custom builder, you are intimately involved with managing stress-your own as well as the effects of your customer’s stress upon you.

As the builder you come to the table with years of experience in a field your client usually knows little or nothing about. Without addressing this disparity in the way you communicate, you are setting yourself up for almost certain misunderstandings throughout the life of the project.

Consider wearing the hat of an “educator” when interacting with your customer. Educate them about how you do business. When it comes to the contract, create a summary sheet with bullet-points of the most critical pieces that you need to stress, and make sure to use stories from your experience as examples.

Educate them about why you prefer the subcontractors that you use. Educate them on the implications of delayed decision making on the project time-line, their budget and your business, especially if you have other jobs in the pipeline ready to start.

Continue to be an educator to minimize misunderstanding all the way through the project. The worst thing you can do is assume the customer knows your business! If you are stumped as to what topics to cover in this education effort, look no further than the communication breakdowns in your past and ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from that situation that will make a difference for me and this new client?”

This stance may seem elementary to some or bothersome to others. But the question remains the same. What are you doing to create mutual understanding and reduce uncertainty throughout your projects? Your reputation depends on it.

Professional homebuilders recognize the value of providing flex spaces in the floor plans of almost any type and style of house. Luxury and custom homes, in fact, often include more than one flexible-use space to allow the owners to follow several passions, whether it be a full-time or off-hours home office, a hobby or game room, an in-home theater, a wine room, or a craft area. Smaller homes might provide a flex room for more practical needs, but the value to the homeowner is no less important.

Flex spaces may also serve multiple functions. An occasional guest bedroom or suite can easily double as a home office, studio, or sewing room (or maybe all three); a loft between secondary bedrooms is a perfect solution for an out-of-the-way play space and quiet homework area for school-age children, perhaps also housing their various computer and video game collections.

The latest floor plans also incorporate flexible space into more private areas. A sitting room in the master suite can serve as a temporary nursery, while a nearby home office alcove might, upon retirement, become a quiet reading nook or library for the couple.

Full-depth basements and full-height attic areas are also prime spots for additional multi-use or flexible space that allow the house to grow with the family. Left ready for wall and floor finishes but otherwise perfectly functional, such areas may initially provide easily accessible space for long-term and seasonal storage needs. Later, they can be fully finished (and furnished) as the family’s needs change and their budget allows.

Flex space provisions extend outdoors, as well. A covered outdoor area, complete with a compact kitchen or barbecue, seating, and perhaps even a fireplace or flat-screen television, extends and expands adjacent indoor living space and serves a variety of functions in its own right.

The “future-proof” concept of flexible-use spaces in today’s housing also demands that these room are properly equipped to handle the family’s technological needs for communications, data, audio, and video access. Regardless of how the flex room is used, chances are good there’s some electronic gizmo or network that needs to be plugged in without having to rewire the house. Modern flexible-use spaces allow for simple “plug-and-play” access no matter what’s on the other end of the cord … or if there’s a cord at all.

The increasing popularity of flexible and multi-use spaces in today’s new homes is a reflection of contemporary lifestyle demands. Modern households need their homes to enable them to follow a variety of passions and pastimes, as well as allow the ability to change those uses as the family matures. Professional homebuilders have recognized and provided for that need with floor plans that deliver maximum flexibility so that homebuyers can truly customize their living experiences.

The building process is relatively foreign to those outside of the industry. The best way to help a homebuyer understand the construction process and appreciate the value of the high-quality materials and methods we employ is to schedule visits to the job site at key milestones.

Walking through a newly framed home, for instance, allows us to point out the tight tolerances we require from our framing crews. On-site, we can show examples and explain why these standards help to ensure reliable performance and comfort in the finished home.

After framing, homeowners can watch the ways that we install the home’s wiring, plumbing, and mechanical systems. Our exacting specifications make sure that those systems perform as designed and promised. As construction continues, we encourage new homeowners to schedule similar walk-throughs so we can showcase the high-level materials and methods we use to build homes. What is difficult to articulate in the office becomes clearly demonstrated as the house takes shape.

We also consider the conditions of our job sites as an indicator of quality. We expect, for instance, that our crews and trade partners maintain a clean site. Disposing of trash and scrap materials not only makes for a professional work environment, but also a safe one. We believe that our insistence on a professional looking job site translates to professional, superior-quality workmanship.

As a new home nears completion, quality is even easier to see and understand from a homebuyer’s point of view. Again, adhering to tight tolerances, we work hard to make sure that walls are smooth, that cabinets, trim, and other fixtures fit snugly into place. We make certain that windows and doors operate smoothly, and that flooring and other finishes are installed to meet the expectations of our discerning clientele.

But the true test of quality construction is occupancy. New homeowners will understand what we mean by quality after living in their home for a while. How our homes stand the test of time and the rigor of everyday living is a testament to the quality we strive to achieve from the foundation to the rooftop.

To heat and cool a home built for high performance, a professional builder can select top-quality heating and cooling equipment to ensure year-round comfort and energy savings. However, if the owners want that equipment to perform as designed, they must maintain it.

Fortunately, the proper maintenance of heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems (commonly referred to as “HVAC”) does not require homeowners to be mechanical contractors. A few easy steps for preventive care, conducted on schedule, are usually all it takes to keep those systems humming at peak performance.

The vast majority of residential HVAC systems are “forced air” configurations. The system consists of a centrally located condenser along with a furnace and blower units that push heated or cooled air through a network of large pipes (or ducts) into the rooms of the house through vent registers.

A forced air system relies on other ducts to suck in and return air to the system from registers near the ceiling. “Return” air is either recycled through the system or exhausted to the outside, keeping the inside air fresh and comfortable.

Maintaining this system starts at the blower, which circulates a high volume of air. The blower contains a removable filter to prevent small particles and allergens from contaminating the indoor air. For most HVAC systems, the filter should be replaced every three months. Some newer, high-performance systems may have filters that only need to be replaced semi-annually or even just once a year. Consult your owner’s manual for frequency of replacement as well as size of filter. Filters of all sizes are available at most home improvement and hardware stores and are easy to remove and reinsert into the blower.

The next component to maintain is the ductwork. It’s a good idea, even in a new house, to have the ducts cleaned out at least every two years. In fact, most professional builders will offer or simply conduct a thorough duct cleaning before the owners of a new house take occupancy. Responsible builders do not want their buyers to be greeted with a puff of construction dust the first time the HVAC system is used! Two years later, the owners should contact a local duct-cleaning service or ask their builder for a recommendation.

On the same every-other-year schedule, the entire HVAC system should be checked by a professional mechanical contractor. Again, your builder can recommend a reputable service, ideally the company that installed the system. This check-up will ensure that the system is operating properly; bringing enough fresh air into the house, providing adequate ventilation and maximizing energy efficiency. Homeowners can do random spot checks by inspecting the outside of the equipment for any leaks, cracks, or other abnormalities and reporting those to their builder or HVAC service contractor.

This type of simple and inexpensive maintenance program will help to keep the HVAC system running at optimum performance for many years.

Today, simple respect and responsiveness seems to be more the exception than the rule … especially after the sale. How a homebuilder manages after-sale service, also called warranty service or call-backs, is a key indicator of the company’s overall professionalism and ability to meet (and ideally exceed) a homebuyer’s expectations.

The goal of the professional builder is to quickly and completely respond to and resolve issues that come up during the time a home is under warranty. As a critical part of providing great housing value and achieving customer satisfaction, professional builders encourage questions from homebuyers and respond to their concerns in a timely and respectful manner.

Typically, a builder’s warranty addresses specific issues with a home related to its structural components (such as the foundation and frame), basic electrical and other mechanical systems, and the quality of workmanship for a set time period. How a builder responds to warranty service inquiries varies depending on the policy offered and sold with the house: some are defined and managed entirely by the builder, while others are defined, at least in part, by independent agencies (such as an insurance company) and administered by the builder.

Specific warranty language and procedures benefit both the builder and the homeowner. Simply, a well-defined and properly communicated warranty service policy helps eliminate confusion about who is responsible for issues, concerns, and other call-back items that may occur in the first year or so of occupancy.

While there are specific differences among builders, a superior warranty service program includes:

Documentation. A documented process for responding to call-backs and customer service inquiries creates a “paper trail” that ensures that questions and concerns are properly communicated, managed, and resolved. A professional builder will document the details of the warranty policy and keep track of inquiries, response time, and specific types of service calls from the first call to follow-up to ensure the homeowner’s ultimate satisfaction.

Response time. Responding to a service call is more an issue of timing than time; the key is to understand which calls will be addressed immediately, and which may require or allow more time. No one likes to wonder if or when a call or email will be answered; if homeowners can depend on getting a reply from their builder within a reasonable (or better still, stated) time frame, chances are better that they’ll be satisfied with how the issue is resolved.

Collective calls. Even if a builder responds to a warranty service call within a day or so, making a visit to the house to resolve a non-emergency situation may be timed to coincide with other scheduled work at the house. This “collective call” minimizes the number of times an owner needs to be at home to make the house available to the builder’s warranty service team. Of course, emergency calls demand immediate attention, but collective calls can be a more convenient and reliable way to address a variety of concerns or maintenance issues at the same time.

Scheduled visits. Professional builders are becoming more proactive in how they address scheduled service and other routine maintenance work while a house is still under warranty. In many cases, a builder will schedule a visit and “walk through” (or tour) a new home within a month after occupancy. These visits are opportunities for homeowners to ask questions and for the builder to document or schedule service work covered by the warranty. Such visits also help builders refine their warranty service processes based on a homeowner’s feedback.

No builder follows exactly the same policies and procedures for warranty service, inquiries and incidents. Our goal as building professionals is to provide each client with the best new home buying and living experience possible. How builders refine and improve their after the sale process goes a long way toward delivering superior customer service and buyer satisfaction.

Lawson Has Answers For Your Questions

Q: Why do builders sometimes send another company on a service call?

A: Increasingly, new-home builders rely on a variety of trade (or specialty) contractors, such as electricians, plumbers, and heating and cooling experts, to help build your new house. Part of their contract is servicing their work; who better than the person who installed your faucet to fix a leak? While the builder is ultimately responsible for making sure warranty work is documented and performed, he will rely on trade contractors to make warranty service call on his behalf, to his standards, and to your satisfaction.

If you are in need of a job tested and homeowner approved tradesman for home maintanance please do not hesitate to call us for a experienced based referal. We have a list of tradesmen and handy men who need work and have a record of reliability that has been proven over the years. I want to do all that I can to keep them in business and welcome your call. Regardless the size of the job we probably have someone who can do it professionally and make you happy. My cell phone (770-231-4003) is the best way to catch me these days. Give me a ring.

Hope you have a wonderful New Year.