Insulation Institute Blog

Do Homebuyers Want “Energy Upgrade” Packages?

Are builders missing the mark by not offering upgrade options for HERS-Scored homes?

Homebuyers like choices. Builders, ever eager to meet the desires of their buyers, typically offer a dizzying array of choices in products, finishes and designs to suit a wide variety of styles.  Yet seemingly few builders offer consumers a choice in homes at varying energy efficiency targets. Is this a missed opportunity for builders in meeting the growing energy efficiency desires of buyers — an increasing number of whom self-identify as sustainable consumers? Perhaps.

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Do Homebuyers Want “Energy Upgrade” Packages?

Managing Your Online Reputation

If you’re a home builder, you may already know that nine out of 10 home buyers today rely on the Internet as one of their primary research sources and 52 percent turn to the web as their first step in the home search, according “The Digital House Hunt” published by National Association of Realtors®   Moreover, in the digital age, consumers use online review sites to rate their customer experience with a business, which is great, if that experience was favorable, but can be devastating to your corporate image if it wasn’t. A bad online reputation means fewer leads, less work and less revenue. More often than not, builders, contractors and other service providers have no control over the reviews that are posted online and are read by prospective home-buyers or renovators. As such, improving your online reputation has important implications for your company.

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Managing Your Online Reputation

A Novel Approach to Vented Attic Design with Mineral Wool

Vented attics have a number of benefits, but also one well known and pesky downside: it is very hard to perfectly air seal the ceiling plane given the number of penetrations you have. This results in energy losses but also, often times, pulling less hygienic air from the attic into the home itself. LG Squared, a firm out of Atlanta offering architecture, interior design, construction, HVAC design and building science consulting, found an interesting way around this problem and wrote about their approach in a recent blog. It involves continuous mineral wool insulation on the exterior, loose fill stone wool in the attic and a unique application for zip sheathing.

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A Novel Approach to Vented Attic Design with Mineral Wool

Do Quality Insulation Installations Cost More?

We talk a lot about the importance of quality insulation installation, especially for batts. If the home is getting a HERS rating, Grade III installation means 5% of your insulated area is modeled as uninsulated. For those in California, failing to meet their definition of quality, a Quality Insulation Installation (QII), means wall cavity R-value is discounted 30% when modeled to determine energy code compliance. For Energy Star or DOE Zero Energy Ready homes it’s simple: get Grade I or you can’t be certified[1]. So, there appears to be market value for quality installation, but does that actually manifest itself in installer compensation? If so, how much is it worth?

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Do Quality Insulation Installations Cost More?

For Better Homes, Is it Net Zero or Passive House?

While solar homes have reached a milestone, superior envelope efficiency must be primary

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that the number of U.S. homes with solar panels has reached 1 million. As the primary on-site renewable power generation source, the expansion of rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) means a much more distributed network of energy production and a more resilient energy grid.  But is the expansion of solar overshadowing basic tenets of optimizing energy efficiency?

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For Better Homes, Is it Net Zero or Passive House?

Providence Homes on Selling Comfort

Research shows that consumers want energy efficiency, but they’re motivated by comfort. As builders pursue energy efficient homes, they may need to shift how they promote the benefits of high performance homes to potential buyers, so that their messages resonate on an emotional level in an area that consumers really care about: comfort.

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Providence Homes on Selling Comfort

5 Things Builders Can Do to Reduce Comfort Callbacks

Comfort callbacks are both timely and cost consuming, so here’s what you can do to reduce them.

The single largest financial investment that consumers will make in their lifetime is their home and a wealth of research finds that homeowners want their abodes to be energy efficient and comfortable.  Both comfort and energy efficiency rely heavily on the delivery of consistent, quality construction, yet despite builder efforts, that goal falls short at times, leading to problems with home comfort. What can builders do to reduce comfort callbacks?

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5 Things Builders Can Do to Reduce Comfort Callbacks

Manufactured Housing to Get Energy Efficiency Boost

With a goal of reducing energy use while increasing efficiency and cutting carbon emissions, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in June proposed the first new energy efficiency standards update for manufactured homes in more than 20 years. The changes would cumulatively cut energy use by an estimated 30 percent over a 30 year period compared to the current standard and include a focus on the thermal envelope/insulation as the foundation of energy efficiency.

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Manufactured Housing to Get Energy Efficiency Boost

What’s the ROI of Attic Insulation?

As fall approaches it’s time to consider options to weatherize your home. This means making improvements that can help improve comfort and lower energy bills, in the winter months and beyond. For homeowners trying to prioritize their home improvement dollars, and time, the question of what to focus on first often comes up. We’re going to make the case for attic insulation, as new data has come to light regarding its benefits.

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What’s the ROI of Attic Insulation?