Is your new home an energy hog?

Wednesday, October 11, 2000

Is

your new home an energy hog?

For a homebuyer,

nothing matches the feeling of glee in touring a builder's model and visualizing

your new home for the first time.

While you're

pondering the builder's laundry list of luxury options, why not consider

the practical option of making your home more energy efficient, and increase

its resale value down the road?

Of course,

not everyone has the opportunity to design an energy-efficient home from

scratch.

"The good

news is, energy efficient designs need not be expensive to construct,"

says Richard Roll, president of American Homeowners Association (AHA).

"Every homebuyer can benefit from recent technological improvements,

all of which can be seamlessly integrated into any type of house design."

The added benefits

are not what you might expect. It's not just hundreds of dollars in potential

energy savings each year from lower heating and cooling bills.

Houses with

better insulation and tighter construction tend to be quieter. Less noise

is transmitted from room to room, or from outside sources.

The first aspect

of energy efficient design is constructing the "thermal envelope,"

the structural components that physically separate the living spaces from

the outdoors.

Wall and roof

assemblies go beyond the traditional "stick" (wood stud), framed

wall type of construction. For example, structural insulated panels (SIPs)

are plywood or oriented strand board sheets laminated to a core of foamboard.

Since the SIP

acts as both the framing and the insulation, construction is much faster.

The quality is often superior to framed walls because the units are pre-fabricated

under factory-controlled conditions.

Remember also

to demand more insulation than the bare minimum that local building codes

require, depending on local climate.

For example,

in the northeast, R-11 in the exterior walls and R-19 in the ceiling simply

don't cut it. Go for R-20 to R-30 in the walls, and R-50 to R-70 in the

ceiling.

Tightly sealed

homes should be ventilated to reduce air moisture infiltration, prevent

mold and vent indoor air pollutants to the outside.

Although building

your energy-efficient home may require a little more time and money, it

just means researching the options with your builder, to arrive at the

best balance of cost vs. benefits.

For more information

on any aspect of buying a home, go to www.realhome.com , the web

site for American Homeowners Association.