Episode 3 | Builder Certifications with Beth Campbell

Alison and Mark are joined by Beth Campbell, a contractor who teaches curriculum for the Passive House certification organization, Phius. Join them as they break down the most common certification and rating systems in construction, including LEED, Passive House, Energy Star, HERS, and more, exploring how each can potentially benefit homeowners. Learn more about Phius by visiting: https://www.phius.org/

Learn more about Bensonwood by visiting our website: bensonwood.com

Transcript

Alison Keay: 0:00

Music, welcome to a new era of homebuilding, where we explore sustainable home building, high performance design, innovative offsite construction and groundbreaking practices that are transforming the homebuilding industry. This podcast is produced by Unity homes, a brand of bensonwin, and welcome to another episode of a new era of home building. Today we're talking about building and home certifications. I'm your host. Alison Kaye, Sales Lead at Unity homes,

Mark Hertzler: 0:32

and I'm your co host. Mark Hertzler, Director of unity homes. Our guest today is Beth Kimball. Beth is a self described high performance construction evangelist. She got her start over 20 years ago in construction while helping homeowners that were building their own funky homes using natural materials like straw and clay, she started her own construction business at that point. Has been working in healthy homes industry ever since she began working specifically with high performance such as passive house and Zero Energy homes 10 years ago, and has been helping project teams deliver great homes as a project manager, estimator and Constructor educator in more recent years, Beth actually worked with us at Unity homes for three years on some R and D projects unity was developing. Currently, Beth is an instructor for the Passive House certification organization theus. She is laser focused on helping teams learn to build the passive building standards, especially in Massachusetts, where Passive House is now code for larger multifamily buildings.

Alison Keay: 1:28

Welcome Beth.

Beth Campbell: 1:30

Thank you so much good to be with you all again.

Alison Keay: 1:33

So today we're going to hear a lot of different words out there. So lead, passive house, energy, Star hers ratings, zero energy, ready home. Maybe you've heard some of those words. Maybe not at all. So these are just a few of the common certifications or ratings systems that are out there for new construction. And today we're asking questions like, What are all these rating systems. Why are there so many of them? Why might a homeowner be interested in one of these certifications, and how might they be leveraged by utility or state incentive programs that might be out there as well?

Mark Hertzler: 2:16

So let's start with a HERS rating, since that is one of the qualifications for some of the other certifications. So Allison, you know you have some experience in this, explain to us what hers means and what's involved in it, right?

Alison Keay: 2:33

So the HERS rating itself isn't really a certification, but a score for your home. It stands for home energy rating, score, and things like design, location, orientation, the HVAC all play into a HERS model, a particular energy model for that, that scoring system that spits out a number between zero and 100 where 100 is equal to current energy code, minimum building and zero would mean that it's not using any energy at all, usually meaning net zero with renewable energy. And so it allows us to look at the energy performance of a house before it's built. It's really focused on that energy model, and you know, different codes are adopting that now to confirm that the homes are designed to meet a certain energy standard. Some

Beth Campbell: 3:31

some states are now requiring it, and it might depend on your local jurisdiction, but they're now requiring it for all new construction, and some states and jurisdictions are even requiring it for the sale of existing homes. So Portland, Oregon, for example, where I used to live now, requires that, I believe, for the sale of many single family residences, so that homeowners have an actual comparable example of understanding what it is they're buying, and it will help them understand what their utility bills might be.

Mark Hertzler: 4:06

And I know we'll probably get into this a little bit later, and some of the other certifications, but just in general, a score of zero to 100 100 being the code minimum, zero being no energy. What's a what's a good score? I mean, obviously I think everybody would love to see a zero, but what, in general, what's a good score? A

Beth Campbell: 4:29

good score, from my perspective, is going to be in the 30s or 40s. So for example, one home that I was managing when I was working with Unity homes got a herd rating of 34 so it still sounds like it's kind of high, but if you think about it, that's 70% more energy efficient than a home that is like a code built minimum. And so even if you're delivering a passive house, which might be an extremely energy efficient building, you're probably unless it has renewables. Probably not going to see something much lower than than a hersting in the 20s.

Alison Keay: 5:05

Yeah. So the value that a HERS rating might bring to a project is going to be like Beth said, in that real estate information for resale of the home and code or confirmation for code requirements as well. Yeah,

Beth Campbell: 5:20

yeah. And right now, out there in the landscape, you know, you could have builders who are billing themselves as green builders, or something like that, and you don't, as a consumer, you don't really understand what that means or how that is going to apply. It could be greenwashing. It could be super legitimate. And so for companies, you know, like, like Unity homes, that really are delivering an exceptional product. And I swear I'm not a plant for unity, right here, I just am. I'm a former employee that very much believes in the product. You know, you guys are delivering excellent homes. And the HERS rating kind of evens the score so that so that homeowners can really, you know, on a more granular level, really understand what it is they're getting in a new construction home. One other thing to note about herd ratings is that it is completed by a third party certification, so you always have an outside entity that is delivering your her score, meaning that it's going to be legitimate and in not just, not just decided upon by the builder or the architect themselves.

Mark Hertzler: 6:26

Yeah, that's a good point that you can have confidence in the number that you're getting because it's a certified hers Raider. There was a third party that's giving that number, and you're getting a really good comparison of the performance of one building versus another building. So moving on to some of the actual certifications. One that is out there a lot, and you see in various places, is Energy Star. So Beth, can you tell us a little bit about what ENERGY STAR is and how it's used? Yeah,

Beth Campbell: 6:59

absolutely. So a lot of consumers are used to seeing the word ENERGY STAR show up on your appliances. Right? They launched a large program a number of years ago where you might have a sticker that shows up or maybe on a window package, something like that. But ENERGY STAR is an initiative of the Department of Energy, which got started I don't know, you know the full background history of it, but it's been up and running for many, many years. And similar to how there are code cycles that change, you know, the ENERGY STAR requirements have also progressed and changed through the years. So ENERGY STAR is a program that you know, helps homeowners make good buying decisions, perhaps at the marketplace, but it also is a certification program for homes, which similar to what we were talking about, with a hard rating, allows homeowners to understand that this home that they're buying has met certain qualifications and standards, and that they can trust that it's it's going to be, at minimum, better home than than what is code standard in many places. Now that is to say, let me, let me say one caveat in general, that code across the United States is varied, not only by state, but also by jurisdiction. So some states and jurisdictions now have energy standards and codes that are actually higher than even, than even ENERGY STAR. There are some, you know, certain energy qualifications, as well as some healthy home initiatives that need to be followed in order to get that rating. And then, similar to what we were speaking about with the herd rating, the Energy Star certification is also completed by a third party certification. And I believe everything that we're talking about today is going to be a third party verified and just to speak a little bit to why that is important, you know, as we mentioned, it not only instills confidence, but it also gives, you know, I use the term level playing field before, and I think maybe that's that's a pretty good one, is that you have now a baseline for which you can compare other projects to. So one thing that is a requirement when you're getting an Energy Star certification is actually getting a HERS rating. So anytime a home is Energy Star certified, it already is going to come with with a HERS rating involved. And I believe that many of these certification types we're talking about today also share that in common.

Alison Keay: 9:35

Yeah, one of the things that ENERGY STAR did, and I'll add that ENERGY STAR is an initiative of the EPA, and it was started to do two things, provide the guidance that Beth talked a lot about for homeowners, but it also was intended to change the marketplace in terms of the delivery of homes and the level of construction that was being offered. Yeah, and it's really done a great job in that. So some of the other things that are part of energy. Star is it deals a lot in moisture management, best practices for the exterior of the house, and also with interior moisture sources and proper ventilation for the houses. It deals with LED lighting. There's some water efficiency measures. And it's it's overall, it's to guide the improvement of construction practices. And I think it's just done a great job of that. It's been around for quite some time now. And I think what we'll get into next is that there are programs that build onto it as well. So it's used in other programs. It's used in the lead certification that we'll talk about later. And there's all these great add ons that you can go even further, building on that with. And one

Mark Hertzler: 10:49

of those add ons, I believe, is the indoor air plus, is that correct? Yes. So that's an add on certification to the ENERGY STAR.

Alison Keay: 10:58

Yep. So it's usually optional. Is what that means you can stop at ENERGY STAR, or you could add indoor air plus onto your Energy Star certification. So this one is another actual certification, and it focuses more on indoor air quality and reducing VOCs, which means volatile organic compounds and other airborne contaminants from the products that we're using in the construction of our homes. Yeah,

Beth Campbell: 11:23

and one great example that I like to use when I'm instructing about, like, what's considered a voc would be formaldehydes that might be used in some press boards that are part of, you know, more cost effective cabinets, unfortunately, aren't necessarily going to be good for our health, because they will, over time, slowly release some of those chemicals into the air.

Mark Hertzler: 11:46

Yeah, so that's the key, is having a balanced ventilation but also eliminating some of those contaminants as well. And

Alison Keay: 11:54

for those who suffer from allergies or sensitivities, chemical sensitivities, this is an important one to pay attention to, because this, again, is third party verified. So there's actually going to be a checklist and things that are verified on site so that the homeowner knows that the builder followed, you know, certain requirements that are going to result for them in a healthier indoor air quality environment for them.

Mark Hertzler: 12:19

And then another add on to energy. Star is the Zero Energy Ready Home. What's that about?

Beth Campbell: 12:25

Great. Before we talk about the Zero Energy Ready Home certification, I think what's important is to define what this term net zero energy means. And what that means is essentially that the home is going to produce. And this could be a building too, right? I'm using, I'm using the term home right now pretty loosely, so we could say zero energy ready. Buildings are buildings that produce as much energy as they consume over the course of a year. So for example, in the northern hemisphere, in the summer, we're probably going to be producing more energy on site than we would in the winter months, when we have shorter days and more cloud cover. And that is to say that during those summer months, a building might be overproducing in terms of the energy that's used on site, and during the winter it might be under producing. However, when you average the annual use compared to the annual production. The production is going to meet or exceed the use by that building. So we've established what net zero energy is on a project. So the Zero Energy Ready for Homes program is based on this concept of achieving a Zero Energy Ready Home. So what I just described is you probably have PV installed on site. You might have some some rec credits where you're producing off site, but generally speaking, we're installing solar on site in order to get a building to be net zero. And what the Department of Energy wanted to do with a Zero Energy Ready Homes program is use that excellent foundation of energy star and then build on it. So in order to get this extra qualification, it is going to have, like you already talked about, the indoor air Plus program. So it's already going to follow those guidelines. It's going to follow a couple of the elements of the WaterSense program, which is another one, which is about, you know, reducing overall water use in a building. And then it's going to look at some of the building science aspects of making sure that, you know, when you're making an airtight home that is going to be comfortable, resilient, durable, energy, efficient, all of these things that it also is is going to be capable of getting that, that net zero energy rating. And so it's called the Zero Energy Ready Homes program, because it's saying that you just have to be ready. You don't actually. They have to install PV or solar on your roof, but you have to have a few elements that make it very easy, so that when and if you decide to go net zero on your on your home, that everything's kind of ready in there, so that the solar can just be installed.

Alison Keay: 15:17

Yeah, what I like about the Zero Energy Ready Home certification is that it sets up people up for future renewable energy. So you might not be installing it with the immediate construction of the home, but you know, it being a doe program, it's looking to the future of housing stock and its readiness for that as well. Good.

Mark Hertzler: 15:38

So let's now move into your area of expertise. Beth, tell us a little bit about passive house.

Beth Campbell: 15:46

Well, I'm going to try and make this as succinct as possible, because I could launch into my regular 24 hours of instruction here to get into really the nuts and bolts of passive house. No, so passive house is a term that kind of unfortunately got directly translated from the German Passive House, which means passive building. So it is not specific to single family homes. Just to set that straight, it is a certification that is available worldwide, and is one of the highest certifications that you can get for any building. Now, it's not to say that it is kind of high in the sky or some type of certification that would be unattainable. In fact, the organization that that I work for, FIAs, really sets their standard at the intersection of an excellent building that's going to maintain durability and resilience and healthy indoor air quality while taking the cost into consideration. Because, as we all understand, if we actually want to, you know, positively impact climate change, we have to, we have to greatly improve our building stock. And so as we're building new buildings, we want to make sure that passive building principles are scalable, and therefore they also have to meet, you know, pretty stringent financial mechanisms that are out there. So it is a certification that, again, is a third party certification. Bs is one of the organizations. The other organization that also certifies projects in North America and throughout the world is called phi Passive House institute that was originally started in Germany. And so both organizations will mandate certain air tightness levels and one of the hallmarks of a passive house certification, or a passive building certification, is that the building is modeled. It is energy modeled ahead of construction. And instead of being prescriptive, like code is often prescriptive, like we have to have an R 21 insulation in the wall, for example, passive buildings will say, as long as you meet these energy targets and we don't have any condensation issues that might cause risk to the building, then you can mix and match your building style with whatever's going to meet your building typology, whether that's a single family home or perhaps a multifamily home, multifamily building or commercial building, school, church, you know, whatever it is, whatever building type it is, as long as you can hit those metrics, then you can use the materials that you like and build it in the style that makes sense for your local region. So

Mark Hertzler: 18:38

just for clarification, and it's a great explanation of how Passive House is trying to get to a certain overall energy modeling. But I do know there are some specific qualifications, like a certain air tightness level, a certain hair HERS rating, right?

Beth Campbell: 18:56

So the means and methodologies of getting to a passive a passive building are that the building needs to be three things. It needs to be airtight, it needs to be super insulated, and it needs to be what we call thermal bridge three. So in terms of air tightness, a lot of code around the country right now might require a rating of around three air changes per hour, that is to say, naturally through the cracks and crevices in your home, that the air volume inside a building would naturally be exchanged about three times an hour. But again, that's getting pulled in through the garage or through your foundation crawl space, and it's you don't you don't control at all where that and that airs is air exchanges coming from and the FIA standard for building certification is about six times as efficient as that, five to six times as efficient as that. So this is a very, very tight envelope. And the reason why it it really encourages a healthy indoor air quality is because you have. Have a low flow of continuous, filtered fresh air coming into the building at all times.

Mark Hertzler: 20:08

Yeah, good. Thank you. So the next certification that we often hear about is LEED, L, E, E, D,

Alison Keay: 20:18

yes. So that stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and this goes a little ways back in and how, how new it is. It is It was established by the US Green Building Council, and it is what was intended to be a pretty well rounded green building or sustainability program. So it includes and pays attention to things like energy use, but also materials and sourcing those materials, but also the operation costs of the building. Thereafter, it takes into account things like community and location and walkability and site management during the site prep as well. So maintaining or protecting from runoff and things like that that are bad for the environment around the house site. So it's going to lean on a HERS Raider for a HERS rating as well, and a lead consultant, potentially in the design of the house, and then it'll have just like passive house has a LEED Green Raider, is that third party entity that's coming on site to verify things throughout the process. One of the things that lead has done a really great job of just like ENERGY STAR is transforming the marketplace, so all kinds of product companies or manufacturers began to tailor their offerings to meet certain points and credits in the lead system. And so that did a good job of, you know, turning the corner in the construction materials marketplace to to kind of meet the needs of green buildings and sustainability a little bit better.

Mark Hertzler: 22:04

One last rating or certification we have is Living Building Challenge and the well, building standard. What's that about?

Alison Keay: 22:12

Yeah, so these are two different certifications, but I thought it'd be neat to talk about them, because they they happen to be more in the commercial realm, but they're kind of considered the most stringent building certification programs out there right now, the Living Building Challenge has a list of banned materials that they've determined are unsafe for use in terms of their materials entire life cycle, the way something is produced, the materials that are sourced to produce it, and then also what happens to it after it's end of life. And you know, would typically end up in a landfill, like, what is its recyclability and or what are the environmental detriments that could happen from that decomposing in the ground as well. So it's taking into account a lot of those things. And another thing above the Living Building Challenge is that it requires one year post occupancy data to get the certification. So you not only have to model that you can meet those requirements, you have to prove that you've actually performed, or your building has performed that way for a year.

Mark Hertzler: 23:22

That's interesting. I you know, that's one thing to show it on paper, but it's one thing to actually show it in real life. Yeah.

Alison Keay: 23:30

And the well, building standard is a more of a healthy building certification program, and it's really mostly based in commercial at this point, but it's looking at physical and social environments and how they impact health. So designing things like office buildings and schools with paying attention to the air quality, water quality, the light of the spaces that people are in for a good amount of their day, comfort. So that's even things like furniture and layout and are do they have access to see, you know, outside environment from where they are. So it's really taking in a lot of the physical, social, psychological health impacts of our built environment.

Mark Hertzler: 24:15

Great. So now we have a long list there of different programs, certifications and so the really big question is, and I'm going to throw out a little teaser here as well. The big question is, what does this mean to the homeowner? What certifications should they be going after? What things in play that they need to consider with these and the teaser that I'm gonna throw out there is stay tuned for upcoming episodes, because we are going to get a little bit farther into this. But while we have Beth here, Beth tell us why a homeowner needs to be concerned about these things

Beth Campbell: 24:53

absolutely. So I used to think that as a builder who knew how to build a high quality home and a high perform. At home that that was good enough. And what I have seen time and again is that when you have that third party on site checking these different aspects of the building and actually verifying that what you've intended to build is what has actually been built, is really critical. And you know, one of my colleagues that I teach with is a verifier for the state of Rhode Island, and he said that, you know, and it's not to disparage Rhode Island, everybody's doing their best to get caught up with all of these changes that are happening in the industry. But when he goes in and verifies, sometimes even a code built building to make sure that it's keeping up with even just the basic code requirements that sometimes ventilation rates will be totally way, way, way off, and they'll see that maybe a ventilation hose hasn't even been connected to their energy recoveries, ventilator or something like that. And it's having that that third party set of eyes on things is is a major support system really is what it ends up being to the builder to help think through when issues arise, or make sure that you know the project as DeLong as designed is what is as delivered and

Mark Hertzler: 26:17

Allison, some of these programs come With incentives for the state or the federal level, correct? Yeah,

Alison Keay: 26:24

so that's that might be another value to the homeowner, is that achieving some of these certifications will allow you kind of a higher tier in some of the state rebate and incentive programs. So hers ratings are already being adopted into a lot of the programs for the basic rebates that utility programs are offering and building on that. So right now, the state of Massachusetts is even incentivizing Passive House certification, actual certification. So that's a big jump in terms of what the marketplace might have been used to getting rebates or incentives for that level is increasing.

Beth Campbell: 27:05

Yeah, and just to piggyback on that concept of what's happening in the state of Massachusetts, which is really at the forefront of energy efficiency code regulations in the United States right now. So passive building certification has been adopted by about a third of the jurisdictions within this the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, meaning that, and that's only for multifamily buildings. So meaning that if you're building, I believe the threshold is 12,000 square feet and up. So that's really large, medium to large multifamily buildings. It's required across about a third of Massachusetts right now to actually get passive house certified. So to be clear, passive house is not required for single family construction in Massachusetts, but the state has really adopted it as a best practice for delivering projects that are going to be resilient in the years to

Mark Hertzler: 28:02

come. Beth, thanks a lot for joining us. We appreciate you coming back and offering your expertise. It

Beth Campbell: 28:09

was it was so fun. It was so fun to, you know, be able to dive into this conversation with you all. And again, you know what Unity is doing out there to transform, transform the housing market. I'm just an enormous fan, so I can't wait to see where this podcast progresses, and hopefully, hopefully someday be a unity homeowner myself. Great.

Mark Hertzler: 28:30

And if people want to find out more about FIAs, or you, where should they go? So

Beth Campbell: 28:36

yeah, if you'd like to find out more about FIAs, you can go to their website, fias.org, similarly, passing house Institute, you can just Google that. You'll come up with it. And if you'd like to find me, you can I'm within the builder database on the FIAs website. You could also search for me on LinkedIn as a FIAs instructor, and I'll probably pop up there too.

Alison Keay: 28:57

Thank you. Thanks for listening to a new era of home building. If you're passionate about high performance homes like we are, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for our next episode on design efficiency and sustainability with guest Amanda wagunski from the bensonwood design group. You can also visit unityhomes.com to learn more about our upcoming events. Subscribe to our newsletter. Check out our home plans and get in touch. Thanks to George Peavey, Jason reamer and Josh Riemer of our company's very own plum Gable band for the music you hear on this podcast, and thanks to Damaris Graham for the production and editing of the podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Until next time, I'm Allison Ken and I'm Mark Hertzberg, and here's to better building you.