As springtime rolls around and the world begins to turn green once again, many of us will be contemplating a new home improvement project, searching for the perfect fixer-upper to purchase for an investment or personal residence, or perhaps beginning the construction process on a brand new home. When it comes to housing, take a hint from Mother Nature. Bring on the GREEN!

When you think of the term “green,” in relation to housing, what immediately pops into your head? Is it a solar panel? Perhaps a piece of recycled decking? Maybe it’s a bundle of locally harvested lumber? While all of these products could indeed be considered green, it’s important to remember that green comes in more than one flavor.

A new shade of green has hit the market recently. It is called building performance. Much like the measurement of embodied energy in a specific product, building performance looks at the big picture...the total effectiveness of the whole building.

Think about it for a second. Would your house be green if you lived in an energy-hog, but had Trex decking? What if you had a high efficiency heat pump...but left the windows open all year long? If you installed bamboo flooring in your new home, but had to replace the entire flooring system in three years due to wood rot and mold infestation, would it still be green? If we step back and look at how a house works as a system, there is a tremendous amount of opportunities to improve the basic guts of the house before spending exorbitant amounts of money on high-tech green components.

For those of you who are building a new home, don’t be fooled by thinking that a new home is automatically high performance just because it is new. I have seen many homes in the past two weeks alone that have holes connecting the inside to the outside—which equates to having two sets of French doors open all year long! These are holes that will never be seen from the inside of the house once the sheetrock is installed, and they will surely go unnoticed for many years to come—consuming energy, wasting the homeowners’ money, and creating more pollution all the while.

Whether you’re dealing with an existing home or building a new one, the basic principles of home performance are the same. The goal is to create a living environment that is healthy, comfortable, efficient, and durable. Doesn’t sound unreasonable, does it? Rather than explaining the nuts and bolts of creating such a living space, I’d like to focus on a few high performance building programs that are currently being promoted by the Home Builders Association, the Western North Carolina Green Building Council, and two of the major utility companies—Progress Energy and Duke Power.

The Energy Star program and the NC Healthy Built Homes program are designed to guarantee a high performance home to the end user through a process of plan analysis, builder training, site inspections, and diagnostic testing. Houses built to these standards are demanded by buyers and embraced by progressive builders who wish to provide superior housing to deserving clients and differentiate their companies from the competition.

The EPA’s Energy Star homebuilding program is the base model for these two high performance building programs. It requires that every qualified home meet strict guidelines for energy efficiency and be verified by a third party that analyzes the plans before construction begins, trains the builder and trades-people, identifies potential problems during the construction of the home, and tests the house using a variety of high-tech diagnostic tools. These third-party inspectors often find opportunities for improvement that would otherwise go unnoticed (like the two sets of French doors that will be open all year long). By taking simple steps during the construction of a new home, performance can be improved tremendously.

The typical inspections include a framing inspection, insulation inspection, pressure-testing of ductwork to ensure proper tightness, and a whole house infiltration test, which is commonly combined with the use of an infrared camera to verify the performance of the insulation.

Other inspections include the measurement of exhaust fan air-flow rates (very important for control of indoor relative humidity levels) and the measurement of pressure differences created by the HVAC system. Dramatic pressure differences between rooms could result in the back-drafting of combustion appliances and/or fireplaces, potentially resulting in carbon-monoxide poisoning.

Mechanical fresh-air introduction is also measured and documented during this process. Fresh air that is brought into the home dilutes pollutants that would otherwise build up over time. This concept is especially ideal during the winter months, since people rarely want to open their windows when it is cold outside. Note that the majority of HVAC systems found within houses are closed-loop systems that circulate the same air over and over again.

The NC Healthy Built Homes program uses the Energy Star program as a baseline, while adding additional emphasis on other performance issues such as: types of materials used in the building, paints and finishes, water, renewable energy systems, and site development.

Progress Energy and Duke Power show their support for these high-performance building programs by offering discounted utility rates for all houses that are certified. Some lenders offer special financing options for houses that have received the Energy Star certification.

The same building principles that are implemented in new construction can also be utilized in the retrofit of existing buildings. For additional information on high performance building, visit www.wncgbc.org or www.energystar.gov/homes.

Isaac Savage is the president of Home Energy Partners, Inc., Asheville, NC. For more information, call 877-511-0117 or visit www.HomeEnergyPartners.com.

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