Many people are familiar with Energy Star when it comes to appliances. See an Energy Star label when you’re shopping for a washing machine and you know the machine is expected to perform to a certain energy-efficiency standard.
But most people are likely less familiar with Energy Star homes, which are built to meet the strict energy-efficiency guidelines set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Energy Star-certified homes are at least 15 percent more efficient than code-built homes.
Yet the principle is the same with homes as with appliances – an Energy Star verification is an energy-efficiency guarantee, which is an increasingly desirable guarantee as the benefits of conserving energy become more widely known.
Mark Van Everen, owner of Bridgewater Innovative Builders out of Whitefish, is not only familiar with Energy Star certification standards, he is part of a project that could lay out a cost-effective framework for advancing those standards.
Van Everen was selected to build one of 10 homes in a four-state area – Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon – as part of a pilot program that will generate data intended to help establish future high-performance energy-efficiency guidelines. The pilot program is conducted by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance in cooperation with Northwest Energy Star Homes.
Van Everen is hoping to finish the 1,800-square-foot home on Eighth Street West and O’Brien Street in Whitefish by the end of the month. He said the homeowners, who currently live in Seattle, are excited about participating in the project. For one, they will have a highly efficient home. And they’ll be able to contribute to other efficient homes down the road through the data collected at their house.
After the owners move in, the home will be monitored for 13 months, gathering information on variables such as temperature, gas and electrical usage, relative humidity, and carbon dioxide. The data will be available on a website, creating what Van Everen calls an “energy dashboard” that both the project coordinators and homeowners can access.
“It’s really a neat idea,” Van Everen said of the energy dashboard. “It shows you what your usage is. It’s right there. You can’t ignore it.”
The idea is to create a home that is tightly sealed yet also has a constant supply of fresh air, achieved through a heat recovery ventilator that brings in a fixed amount of outside air. As cold outside air enters the house, it pulls heat from the stale outgoing air to maximize efficiency. A similar heat recovery system is used for heating water.
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A home is seen under construction in Whitefish. Lido Vizzutti | Flathead Beacon |
The home’s foundation is constructed as a conditioned crawlspace with insulated concrete forms. The exterior walls consist of a double 2 by 4 structure separated by a space that’s filled with dense-pack cellulose.
While this particular pilot program is new to Van Everen, he has a background in energy-efficient building. In addition to being an Energy Star-certified building partner, he is an energy rater and building analyst, and was a national finalist in the 2010 Energy Value Housing Awards.
In 2009, a home he constructed became the second house in Montana to attain a Gold Certified Green Residence designation. That house was built to use 60 percent less energy than a typical home of the same size built today.
Standing in the home on Eighth Street, Van Everen points out that the house doesn’t look out of the ordinary, yet its performance should be anything but ordinary.
“It’s kind of a typical home,” Van Everen said, “but it’s going to operate really well.”