I think we did it!

Over the past few days, Mike Holcomb and I have been getting the energy efficiency rating of our Vineyard Project together. The HERs score is basically a rating of how energy efficient a home is based on a number of things, including a blower door test, the HVAC system, energy usage, and so on. The HERs rating is what is used to qualify a home for the Energy Star Rating. The rating is based off of a home that was rated originally tested and used as the test case. Most homes that qualify for Energy Star homes come in around at about a HERs rating of 80. That means that those houses are 20% more energy efficient than the test house. This is really good and a step in the right direction.

Most of our houses have been scoring in the 50's, which is where we would expect the to fall. This HERS score qualifies our homes as 5 star+ in the Energy Star rating system.

The Vineyard Project came in at a remarkably low score (low is good). As many know, I am a firm beleiver is Kaizan, or continuous improvemet. I want each house we build to be as energy efficient as possible for the budget. It would be less of a challenge to build a super tight house if we had a huge budget, but it doesn't work that way.

The Vineyard Project obtained a HERs score of 34!! According to our research to this point, that is the best HERs score ever achieved in the State of Michigan. This extremely low HERs score means that our Vineyard Project is now projected at the Platinum Level under the LEED for Homes program. Both Eric and I are very excited about this.

The reason this is such huge news, is because this house now proves to every other builder out there that you can build a tight house and still keep the prices down. Before the $22,000 in tax credits that this house qualifies for, the cost was at $136 a square foot. There is nothing on this house that is not custom and it also has geo thermal, solar hot water system, and almost 4kW of PV Solar. After the tax credits, the house nets about $126 a square foot. That is crazy! For that price, why wouldn't homeowners demand that their builders get them solar or geo thermal for their budget?

I am fired up, and watch what type of attention we get for this. I am now going to go on the cirquit and explain why I think builders have the ethical responsibility to offer these important sustainable options on the homes they build for their clients....

Rock on!