• Certified 618 Single Family Homes
• Certified 2,603 Multifamily Units
• Saved 3,162,613 kWh*
• Saved 630.8 tons of Carbon from the atmosphere*

Clean Air
Chuk Bowles, Technical Director

As more and more building professionals enter the realm of high performance green projects, indoor air quality will be a crucial area for the construction industry to focus on.  Today’s consumers are aware of what the air inside buildings can do to human health and well being.  As the consumer demands healthy living environments, it is critical that the home building industry begins to accommodate their needs.

So what are the primary causes of indoor air quality problems?  According to statistics gathered by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, 52% of the problems are due to poor ventilation.  These percentages were confirmed in a Canadian study of buildings as well.  Most of these problems stem from inadequate to poor ventilation in HVAC systems.  The bottom line is that you must deliver air to people.  Therefore, it is imperative that HVAC contractors have proven strategies to provide better designs and that builders demand quality installation.  As we all know you usually get what you pay for.  Cheap installations often lead to indoor air quality problems. Systems installed at bargain basement prices most likely will not provide adequate fresh air and are often accompanied by comfort problems for the homeowner.

Builders who were early advocates of building tight structures became aware early on that simply providing the lowest heating and cooling bills in town was not the entire answer.  Tighter construction requires a focus on addressing indoor air quality issues.  We should concentrate on moving air at all times, providing constant filtration of indoor air, as well as eliminating the stratification of air.  We should be addressing surface moisture related problems such as mold, mildew, and condensation through humidity control.  The industry now has available mechanical components such as variable speed air handlers, mechanical ventilation systems, and residential de-humidification units; some or all which can be mixed or matched to design HVAC installations which address these issues. 

As system designers and builders, our role in recommending and selecting systems to promote healthy air in enclosed environments is a matter of great importance.  The right system and approaches will assure homebuyers your homes are safe, comfortable, and energy efficient. 

GreenWorks Symposium 2010
Steve Reed, EarthCraft-Habitat For Humanity Coordinator

EarthCraft Virginia and Habitat for Humanity International recently partnered to host this three-day building science conference in Charlottesville.  Over 20 Habitat for Humanity members from 12 different organizations around Virginia and West Virginia attended, along with for-profit builders and other professionals.  Four of the Habitat for Humanity organizations gave presentations on their experience building EarthCraft houses over the past three years, including their utility monitoring studies which are documenting actual cost savings to their partner families.

Advanced Energy, an Energy Efficiency Services firm in North Carolina who guarantee energy bills on their projects, provided a building science course which reinforced the EarthCraft builder training.  Other presentations included a panel of experts who discussed promoting green building, EarthCraft Technical Advisor John Semmelhack on Passive House projects, and Chuk Bowles on HVAC techniques relevant to upcoming changes in the Energy Star program.

We hope GreenWorks will become an annual training event that will continue building momentum into next year.  

ENERGY STAR Gets Serious
Sean Shanley, Director of Residential Operations

As some may have heard, EPA rolled out new guidelines for ENERGY STAR that take effect January 1, 2012.  Known as ENERGY STAR 2011 or version 3, it significantly ramps up the ENERGY STAR program.  Since the current version uses the IECC 2004 as its reference an update was necessary to reflect the changes that being made in many local building codes due to IECC 2009.

Now, instead of a HERS Rater verifying items from one checklist, the Rater will verify 3 checklists, the builder will verify one, and the HVAC contractor will verify one.  These checklists will not only address the thermal envelope, but also the quality of the installation of the HVAC system and water management.  A requirement of the HVAC checklist is that a manual D be performed for each house.  Many HVAC contractors are not familiar with these, so builders will need to work closely with their HVAC contractors to ensure they are familiar and comfortable with manual Ds.

Many builders in this climate zone are accustomed to aiming for a HERS index of 85 or less.  With version 3, this will no longer be the case.  Instead, a HERS target index will be generated for each house which is based off of the HERS index of the reference house and the Size Adjustment Factor.  The Size Adjustment Factor varies from house to house based on the size of the house and the number of bedrooms.  EPA has calculated what it considers to be the benchmark house size per the number of bedrooms.  Homes larger than the benchmark will be penalized through needing to achieve a lower HERS index.

Benchmark Home Sizes

Builders currently earning the ENERGY STAR label for their houses should familiarize themselves with the new guidelines which are available at http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=bldrs_lenders_raters.nh_2011_comments.  The rollout of the changes is staggered based on when the house is permitted and completed.  All houses permitted before January 1, 2011 and completed by July 1, 2011 will keep using the same version 2 standards that are currently in effect.  Homes that are permitted after January 1, 2011 and are completed by January 1, 2012 will be held to version 2.5.  Version 2.5 is an interim program that requires the use of the new thermal envelope checklist.

Currently, the ENERGY STAR program is the baseline for energy efficiency in programs such as EarthCraft House and LEED for Homes.  Both programs are still determining how they will handle the upcoming changes. 

Landscaping: Is Your Grass "Green"?
MaryKate Weaver, Intern

As green-building advocates, we are well aware of the statistics associated with traditional building practices. The construction industry alone accounts for nearly 40% of the carbon dioxide emissions in the United States!  Fortunately, we are shifting the paradigm by constructing homes in a more efficient way; homes that are better for our health, our environment, and our pocketbooks.

In all the excitement of building homes, the importance of the environment surrounding the home is sometimes overlooked. Traditional landscaping practices hold some dirty secrets of their own and they deserve our attention.

Grass-dominated yards are major gasoline hogs.  The amount of time and money spent on them is astounding, not to mention how detrimental they are for our environment.  According to the EPA, 800 million gallons of gas are used by Americans every year to trim their yards—in some metropolitan areas, the emissions from lawn mowers account for 33% of air pollution.  Using a lawn mower for just one hour releases the same amount of carbon emissions as eight new cars driven for the same amount of time! In addition, every year 17 millions of gallons of gas are spilled as people fill up their mower tanks. That is more gasoline than was spilled in the Exxon Valdez catastrophe of 1989.

 A less obvious carbon dioxide contributor is found in the fertilizers used on lawns. The recommended application of fertilizer is 137 lbs per acre of yard, which results in around 405 lbs of carbon dioxide created by the manufacturing, transportation, and application of these chemicals.  The carbon dioxide released from this process is equivalent to the average sedan driving 440 miles.

There are other reasons to cut back on grassy space—time and money.  According to the EPA, 32% of homeowners’ water bills stem from outdoor water use.  Americans spend around $30 billion a year on maintaining their lawns, and the average American homeowner spends roughly twenty-five hours a year mowing the lawn.  Let’s face it—there are dozens of ways we would rather spend our time than pushing around a gas-guzzling machine on a hot Sunday afternoon.  And $30 billion is more than the gross domestic product of the country of Vietnam!

It won’t be easy to change the mindset of millions of Americans bent on “keeping up with the Joneses” by cultivating the perfect lawn. But we can start by doing two things—decreasing the size of our current lawn space, and supplementing or replacing traditional non-native, water-guzzling grasses with more drought-resistant native strains.  By making a few small changes, together we can make a big impact.