How Many Miles Per Gallon Does Your Home Get?

What’s New in Housing 3: Or How Many Miles Per Gallon Does Your Home Get

By Ronnie Godfrey

In making the purchase decision of buying a new car, one of the questions you might typically ask is, how many miles per gallon does it get. Seems that should be part of the overall cost consideration. Yet often I hear of folks purchasing a new home with no regard to its total cost of operation. Too bad, as the costs of operating homes of similar size can vary widely depending on how it’s built and what technologies are used in its construction.

We, of course don’t use miles per gallon. Instead the best way to measure one home against another is its Home Energy Rating System ( HERS score). The base score of 100 assumes a home is built to current codes. That home is probably better than a home built some time back to current codes of another era. If you incorporate energy saving into a new home then the score is lower. It’s like a golf score the lower the number the better.

For example, to be and Energy Star Home the score must be 85 or lower. Oh, and by the way that is about to change as EPA is rolling out Energy Star 2.5 in April of this year and the new score will need to be lower. The lower the score the more energy you can save on heating and cooling. The best score, it was thought, was 0, called net 0. Now we hear of homes that make more energy than they use. They are -0 (the building industry is struggling to come up with a good name for these homes).

For now, the best thing in the way of payback is a home with the lowest HERS score that you can afford. I mention “afford” as some of the things you might do to make your home energy efficient can have a significant cost, photovoltaic (PV) panels for example. I built a home a little over a year ago and the homeowner calls me every few weeks to tell me he just had an electric bill of $28 or so. He has solar water heating and PV panels.

The first $1,500- 2,000 spent on energy efficiency is the best and has the greatest/fastest payback. The way the home is oriented, insulated, the windows used, the HVAC system, most important the tightness of the home, these are the things that cost the least but deliver the most miles per gallon. These are the things that will cause the home to have a HERS score in the 50’s are 60’s. The other things like PV’s can be added later as a retro-fit. Of course as mentioned that afford thing comes up. Here’s my take; do those things that get you to a 60 HERS score initially, then as you can afford to add those other more costly add-ons, do so.

When you think of buying a new home be sure to ask to see the document that shows what the HERS score is for that home.

In keeping with the theme of What’s New, here is a website you can look at that incorporates several new colors, finishes, etc… in a home that was designed by Martha Stewart and built in Florida. Watch for the electric outlet in the garage for charging your electric car.

http://www.builderconcepthome2011.com/