I've spent a week at the Affordable Comfort Institute's Home Performance Conference (#ACI09 on Twitter). I've learned a lot, some of which I shared in detail in blogs about sessions on mold, and houses and health, and I met extraordinary people. Here's a quick, slightly mixed-up low down of lessons learned.* Buildings (existing buildings) consume 70% Seventy Percent! of electricity in the US.
* Home owners and home performance professionals are motivated. When a Federal Energy Tax Credit was established in 2007 for homes meeting the Energy Star requirement of becoming 50% more energy efficient, the program specs assumed that 55 homes would meet that standard over a two year period. Twenty-one thousand nine hundred and thirty nine (21,939) homes qualified in 2008 alone, according to Steve Baden, Executive Director of RESNET.
* 5.8 million homes in the United States are moderately to severely unhealthy according to standards of the National Center for Healthy Homes. Training director Tom Neltner pointed out that their standards are devastatingly low. "Houses with rats don't qualify. With rats and floods don't qualify. With rats, floods and no bathrooms will qualify." The people who live in these houses respond to questions about the quality of their homes defensively. No one wants to believe that their own home is unsafe. While Nelter's was an extreme example, it is telling. What is the potential harm in failing to accept the short-comings of our homes?
* Based in part upon findings of the National Center for Healthy Homes, the 2009 guidelines for asthma treatment recommend home inspection. Increasingly, doctors are recognizing a correlation between indoor air quality and asthma. If we consider that an asthma attack requiring hospitalization costs $3,000 on average, mold eradication starts to look like a very good deal.
* Lorraine Gauthier of Now House explained that if you live in Ontario in a house that generates power, the province will pay you $.42 per KW/h, and that amount may rise to 80 cents soon. Some people thought that sounded ludicrous. It isn't. The terms are part of a twenty year contract. Real change requires real incentives, and the math, according to highly reliable Marc Rosenbaum, is good math.
* Lousy internet during a week long conference at a major hotel makes those people who depend upon connectivity for work frustrated and unpleasant.
* I am one of those people.
There's more. Much More. The Thousand Home Challenge is going to change the way we think about our homes, and Passive Houses have the potential to change the way we think about the future. I wish every home owner could step into a session and see what's possible when we take on our homes with the right information with the help of passionately competent professionals.
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