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Michelle: Hey everybody, Michelle with Colorado Real Estate here. Today, we are doing an energy audit with Deeper Green Consulting. Come check it out.
Michelle: Hi Guys, this is Michelle with Colorado Real Estate Summit County. I’m here with Glen from Deeper Green Consulting. We’re actually having an energy audit done on our own home today. So, we wanted Glen to come out and talk with everybody a little bit more about what Deeper Green does.
Glen: Deeper Green Consulting. We’re a local Summit County business. We do home performance assessments, working with our local nonprofit High Country Conservation Center here in Summit. We work with homeowners and do a full inspection and evaluation of their home as far as how well it’s actually performing. So, we’ll come in and provide a variety of tests, and then produce a report in the back end to educate the homeowners exactly how the house is performing as a complete system.
Michelle: So, Glen, tell us what are some of the benefits, you know, we’re working a lot with buyers here in Summit county. What are some of the benefits to a buyer when they call you in to do this energy assessment on their home?
Glen: Sure. Many homeowners, and especially new home owners, buyers that have recently purchased a house. They can look at the house and identify how it actually looks and feels from the outside. We’re actually looking at the inside and how the house is performing. So, we’re bringing a lot of information to that homeowner on areas of the home that are underperforming, based on current building codes, or based on certain tests and evaluation that we have through our infrared camera, a blower door test, indoor air quality tests that we perform, a radon test that we perform. So, a lot of things that you can’t necessarily see about your house, is uncovered in and presented to you through this process.
Michelle: So, when would you recommend a buyer have this assessment done on their home?
Glen: We work with homeowners that have owned their own for 20 years or brand new homeowners that have basically purchased the home in the last couple months. So there’s not any one person that benefits more from that. But it is interesting when people have lived in the home for 15 or 20 years, even that person is educated and has new information brought to their attention on how well the house is performing. And the new homeowners, it’s great because you can really understand exactly what you have bought in different areas that you have to make improvements on over the years. And we’ll work with you on that and identify different priorities and different return on investment that we would estimate any improvement that we would recommend. Then after work is conducted, we will perform additional testing to make sure that the performance has been increased.
Michelle: So, it’s all very– It’s very soundly based. We’re not just guessing at what’s going on. There’s numbers involved, and you know, air flow tests and you can tell the infrared camera, you know, where the air leaks were and then where everything’s been sealed off and fixed, and so it’s very– It’s a comprehensive process.
Glen: Yeah, it’s extremely comprehensive. We follow procedures that are standardized nationally through the BPI, which is Building Performance Institute. So, we follow their procedures as well as other procedures from the National Building Codes, and other tests and evaluations that, again a healthy home, comfort, building durability as well as energy efficiency is all the areas that we touch on.
Michelle: So, probably one of the number one questions, one of our questions when we called was what’s the cost, you know, to do all of this and what’s the benefit? I know there’s rebates involved. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Glen: Sure. There’s a couple areas that programs are provided to support this. On the first level is the actual assessment that’s being conducted. A typical home is 2,500 square feet and under here in Summit County, can have an assessment done for $99. There’s a small upcharge for houses that are electric for $2,500 based on the square footage, and then there is additional rebates available from excel and other energy providers, if upgrade work is being performed on the house as well. So, the assessment is discounted through rebates, and then any work that you do on your house is often offset by rebates and other promotional incentives as well. The whole mission, this is all driven by Energy Smart Colorado. They started this more than a dozen years ago and really trying to help the local communities save energy and help homeowners know more about their house and make it very accessible for them to figure out this information.
Michelle: Living in the mountains we know it’s always nice to have a warm, comfortable home, in the winter so, anything you can do, right?
Glen: Sure, and obviously Summit County has had a variety of building stock throughout the years, so it really doesn’t matter how old your home is, it really is all comes down to how well it was built and the performance of that. So, we’ll have new homes to test out fairly well, and we’ll have old homes to test out well, and then we’ll have new homes that need some attention as well as other homes that can use serious upgrades. So, we try to work with homeowners on an individual basis and makes sure that we’re making recommendations that fit your motivations and your desires, on how you want to improve.
Michelle: Excellent. Thank you.
Glen: I appreciate the time. We look forward to working with you guys, and hopefully can talk to more of your customers about how your home performs, and ideally make it so that we can make you more comfortable in your house.
Michelle: Thank you.