Case Study

Leland, North Carolina

North Carolina Builder Gets Serious About High-Performance

Building America partners Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Wright Jenkins Home Plans and Florida H.E.R.O. recently worked with North Carolina-based builder Heritage Buildings, Inc., to make the conversion to high-performance building in the hot-humid regions of the Atlantic seaboard. Searching for new marketing opportunities, Heritage purchased a home plan WJHP and built a home achieving 56 on the HERS Index with only minor additional costs, despite having little on-site technical assistance.

The result was so successful that Heritage now offers high-performance upgrades to its clients on a regular basis, for $5,000 per home. These additional energy efficiency measures will also result in significant savings on energy costs. For example, compared to a neighboring home that is representative of a home built to the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), which North Carolina recently adopted as a basis for its state residential energy code, the Heritage home is projected to save $843 annually in energy bills. A North Carolina code-built home typically results in homes achieving HERS Index levels around 85.

Many of the high-performance improvements did not come with significant additional costs, but did require more attention to detail. For example, following ENERGY STAR’s Thermal Bypass Checklist. To make sure air sealing details were not overlooked in the field, Heritage builder Vic Sikka routinely returned to the construction site to personally seal any holes created by electrical and plumbing installations.

Marketing high-performance homes involves helping buyers understand the value of energy efficiency. Heritage Buildings found that understanding the total cost of home ownership was important to selling the value of high-performance improvements.

Lessons Learned

• Low utility bills and great customer satisfaction can help builders differentiate their product in the market.

• This builder found that following the EPA Thermal Bypass Checklist was a low-cost way of improving the thermal envelope and reducing energy costs.

• Attention to details, such as filling holes left by electrical teams, is key to any high-performance effort. This, along with other high perfomance measures, will save homeowners in a high performance Heritage home $396 a year over a 30-year mortgage.