HERS Score and Energy Star level

We just got our HERS score and Energy Star levels back and they are better than what we had anticipated. Our home engery rater (George Trappe of Residential Energy Services) just emailed us the prelimenary result of the tests they conducted last Friday.

Conducting the blower door test.

Our house already exceeds the new July 2012 Energy Star 3.0 standard (current EnergyStar standard is the 2.5) and the HERS score came back as a 41, which means our house is almost 60% more efficient than a minimum code house leading to a projected energy cost savings of almost $2300/yr as compared to a minimum code house.

HERS Score chart

What's even more remarkable is that this score was achieved without using geothermal heating or solar assistance, both of which had to be eliminated due to budget constraints. It shows that with putting some extra money in quality construction (in this case the ICF walls by an experienced ICF crew) can generate significant energy savings.

If later on we want to switch to geothermal or add solar power we can still do that and reduce our energy cost even further, while it is virtually impossible (read: expensive) to redo the building envelop at at a later stage...

In about two weeks we should get our official certifications but we wanted to share the prelim results as a testimony to the quality construction of our house.

Thank you, Charis Homes!