Companies Climb on Board
As the program gains momentum, it’s attracting private investment. Mike Rogers, a former EPA employee who helped to develop the national program, is now in the private sector as a senior vice president for GreenHomes America, headquartered in Syracuse, N.Y. GreenHomes has thousands of energy-upgrade jobs under its belt in Syracuse, Rogers says. Now, with venture capital backing from The Link Group, GreenHomes is poised to go nationwide. “We’ll be launching an operation in New Jersey this fall, and we are in acquisition discussions in Texas, California, and Washington state,” Rogers says. The idea is to acquire successful contracting companies in suitable markets, adapt them to the strategy of “home-performance contracting,” and set about upgrading one home after another. Once the ball’s rolling, Rogers says, there’s “a huge inventory” of under-performing homes for his company to tackle.
GreenHomes America’s standard operating procedure conforms well to the EPA program’s philosophy. “We go in,” Rogers says, “we take a look at the entire house, and we do what we call a ‘test-in’ [using] a variety of diagnostic equipment — “blower doors, duct blasters, infrared cameras — and we do combustion-safety testing.” Then the GreenHomes “adviser” prioritizes what the house needs based on what the homeowner can afford. Almost every house gets careful air sealing, most get insulation, many get new HVAC equipment, and some get new windows. Occasionally, GreenHomes will even install a solar water heater or photovoltaic panels. “We do all the work in-house,” Rogers says. “We’re a one-stop shop for the homeowner.” Finally, the diagnostic tools come back to the job for a “test-out.” And if the homeowner follows all the recommendations, GreenHomes America, in most cases, is willing to guarantee a 25% energy-use reduction for the home, including heating, cooling, lights, and appliances.
Rogers says that there’s no reason why a general remodeler can’t do the same thing that GreenHomes America does. In fact, he says, “I think a general remodeling contractor is very well-positioned. Unlike any of the vertical trades — your window guy, your insulation guy, your heating and cooling guy — the general remodeler is used to managing more complex projects. With even a kitchen remodel, certainly with an addition, you are very often pulling together multiple trades already.” A homeowner on his own would struggle to put the pieces of a home-performance upgrade together, Rogers observes, “but a general remodeling contractor can be that one-stop shop.”
Getting with the Program
In Wisconsin (which, like New York, was an early adopter of the EPA home-performance program), Madison remodeler Chad Speight is doing just that. Speight rolls the home-performance pre-testing part of the protocol into the design phase of his design/build contracts, and he considers it part of any remodeler’s responsibility. “A quality builder or remodeler is going to do blower-door testing and check ventilation fans for airflow, and do safety checks because you could make major energy improvements to a home, completely alter the dynamics of moisture and heat flow and airflow, and cause some serious problems that were unintended consequences. If you’re a home improvement contractor, you should actually improve the home, and not take a chance on poisoning the occupants.”
Speight subs the pre-testing and post-testing out to certified home-performance testers in his market. “That has great value to my client as well as to me,” he says. “They get third-party verification of what has been accomplished at their home, and I have verification of what the subcontractors — as well as my own staff — have done.”
—Ted Cushman is a photojournalist in Great Barrington, Mass.
