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Recycled lumber helps in framing
If only there were a way to check out a home in the manner that really counts before buying: the monthly operating costs. Too often home owners get surprised with drafty homes, ill operation of fireplaces, gas guzzling heaters and energy dependent air conditioning to get the house liveable.
But a new method allows such a rating. Home stagings are all very nice, but the new new news is the Energy Performance Score (EPS). This index is a score comprised of data points and sustainability considerations of a given home.
Each house using the evaluation is rated on a best-to-worst spectrum that shows energy use of the individual house, the rating if the same house were built to code with no extra green considerations. Cost comparisons must include generated savings from putative construction issues that might otherwise be present.
This rating communicates how green the home will be to live in. The features and an estimated average for the geographical area are also incorporated into the score. Home builders can begin to use such an evaluation to assess how green their finished products are.
The ratings are part of a general trend toward proving the veracity of environmental claims. The public’s backlash of greenwashing is becoming a tangible entity. Home buyers now want more value than ever before. That means lower utility bills.
The U.S. Green Building Council has discovered that some LEED Certified buildings did not save as much energy as anticipated. The Council now requires the operators of newly constructed certified buildings to submit the first 5 years of water and electric bills for confirmation.
The Energy Trust program employs third-party auditors to study and certify the houses. The auditors may spend up to three hours looking at the quality of insulation, the performance of the windows and the tightness of the construction.
They perform a blower door test, which measures the leaks coming through the shell of the house. The EPS might be the new school of home evaluation. If not now, then perhaps twenty years from now, when midcentury homes will really be showing their back teeth.
The easy-to-read standard graphic presentation of the scores shows a house’s total energy use, carbon impact and utility costs. And how are consumers to know they aren’t being green washed by any of a myriad new environmental claims?
The EPS provides a breakdown of the details. Living eco friendly is the challange, The EPS is meant to be the solution. If reduction in consumer energy is your goal, look at the EPS for your next new home before falling in love. You might help save the planet.
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