Buying a new house is always a numbers game.
There is the cost of the mortgage, assessments and taxes.
There are the number of bedrooms and baths, the square footage of the house, the cost per square foot as well as the size of the lot.
And home maintenance? Many people buy new construction in the hope of minimizing those costs or postponing them for a couple of years.
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Basic utilities such as heating and cooling cannot be put off, however, though surprisingly few buyers bother to inquire about estimated monthly energy costs, say builders I’ve queried over the years.
Typical of the attitude among some builders was the one I heard after I toured a model home with a cavernous two-story living room/dining room/family room area opening to the kitchen and breakfast area.
“Almost nobody ever asks,” said the builder when asked about the house’s energy efficiency and the estimated monthly utility bills. “The occasional man who has had a bad experience will ask. Women don’t care.”
A small but growing number of new home builders are betting buyers, both men and women, do care.
They believe that some buyers, all else being equal, will find a home built to a higher energy-efficiency standard to be appealing.
The reasons: lower utility costs and a more comfortable living environment with less air pollution.
One of the recent converts to this way of thinking is Court Airhart, president of West Chicago-based Airhart Construction, who has signed on to be a partner in the Energy Star program, a voluntary effort sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The agency, which has teamed with the U.S. Department of Energy for some categories, provides performance guidelines for buildings and more than 35 types of residential and commercial products, including appliances, lighting, home office equipment, consumer electronics, heating and cooling equipment.
Builders are free to select energy-saving features from a variety of reliable and established technologies and practices, but the goal is to achieve at least 30 percent more efficiency than the 1993 national Model Energy Code or 15 percent more efficiency than state energy rules, whichever is more rigorous.
To win the Energy Star label, usually attached to the cover of a new home’s circuit box, a house undergoes an air leakage test.
Not surprisingly, a number of enterprising people saw opportunity in testing and proving to owners of drafty older homes that they needed more insulation and repairs to cut down on high energy bills; so Energy Star is perhaps better know among those who own existing housing.
Builders have been slower to get on board in part because most buyers assume new construction is an improvement over what was built in the past.
While that is generally true, building to code is a minimum standard of safe construction, not necessarily the highest level of quality craftsmanship.
Airhart said his firm, which builds about 45 homes a year, devoted some attention to improved insulation, good house wrap, careful taping of ductwork and caulking wall plates. Extra effort also went into the windows and exterior door frames, investing in windows with low-E (low emissivity) insulated glass. The builder also installed energy-efficient heating and cooling units.
The company plans for all homes in the Medalist and Signature series to be Energy Star compliant. The label will set the company apart from some of the competition –there are only 31 Energy Star builders in the entire state.
Airhart estimates that buyers will save from $200 to $400 a year on utility costs.
Some key numbers for Airhart are items that buyers may not know about, or neglect to ask.
He says 2-by-6-inch exterior framing allows two extra inches of insulation in exterior walls for an R-24 rating compared to the more standard R-13. (The R value measures resistance to heat loss).
Using a spray-in-place cellulose insulation made from recycled newspaper called Nu-Wool plugs small cracks and crevices for an R-38 rating, more than the standard R-30 for a roof.
The company installs gas-fired heating systems that are 92 percent efficient and Puron-charged (not Freon-charged, which damages the atmosphere) cooling systems rated 12 SEER (for seasonal energy efficiency rating).
Electronic zone dampers are installed in homes between 3,100 and 3,900 square feet. Controlled by a second-floor thermostat, the electronic zone damper can provide cost-effective second floor heating and cooling when there is only a single furnace in the home.
While buyers will appreciate the long-range utility savings, Airhart believes the more immediate reason for opting to buy an Energy Star home is a more comfortable interior environment.
The efforts to prevent heat and cooling loss are not aimed at sealing the house entirely, he notes. Houses need a constant air exchange to be healthy places to live.
These construction measures are an effort to control air exchange to a consistent level. It is the random air leaks that cause drafts that lead to the familiar energy-wasting and costly battle between family members of turning up, then turning down the thermostat.
The final measure of whether a structure qualifies as an Energy Star home is called the blower door test. To see how this works, I headed out to one of the company’s just-finished custom homes (pictured) in the Prince Crossing Farm subdivision in West Chicago on a snowy January morning.
Craig Matteson, partner in Arc Insulation, Romeoville, was conducting the blower door test, which depressurizes the house and replicates the effect of a 24-mph wind on all sides of the structure.
The point of the 30-minute test is to measure how much air is moving through the house under such conditions. Matteson, whose firm provided and installed the insulation for the house, said he usually conducts the test twice.
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Matteson, a former builder, has been installing cellulose insulation since the early 1990s. He said he was trained to conduct the Energy Star testing in part to try to prove to builders that he had a better product.
The 3,500-square-foot, five-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath house cost about $535,000 including the lot. The upgrades to qualify for the Energy Star label cost about $6,600, just 1.3 percent of the total cost, Airhart said.
Homeowners “are not going to get it back in the first year, but in five or six years” Airhart said, but he suggests that those living in the house during that time will have a more comfortable, healthy and pleasant experience. Yet he says not every buyer will want to spend even that amount on energy efficiency.
“If you are in a subdivision with 10 builders, two different buyers will make different choices. I don’t think either is right or wrong. The consumer has the choice,” he said.
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Secrets of an Energy Star house
– Upgraded insulation and structure
– High performance windows
– Controlled air infiltration
– Energy-efficient heating and cooling equipment
– Tight duct systems
Energy Star qualified homes are independently verified to be at least 30 percent more energy efficient than homes built to the 1993 Model Energy Code or 15 percent more efficient than the state energy code, whichever is more rigorous.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency