New Home Certified with Lowest Home Energy Rating Score
OPPD’s ENERGY STAR for New Homes Program has certified and confirmed the lowest known Home Energy Rating Score (HERS) for a home in the Omaha area, said Renee Jacobsen, product marketing specialist in Customer Service Operations.
With ENERGY STAR’s HERS rating system, homes are rated on a scale of 0 to 100 for energy-efficiency. The lower the score, the better. A home must score 85 or lower to qualify for an ENERGY STAR rating.
Homes scoring 70 or lower earn ENERGY STAR’s Five-Star Plus designation. The home built by Todd Menard Construction and certified by OPPD easily qualified for Five-Star Plus status, with a score of 40.
“And I plan on working toward beating that score with my next home, its really about building better quality homes,” said Todd Menard of Todd Menard Construction.
“The builder achieved this rating by super-insulating the home, super-air-sealing it and installing a geothermal HVAC system*,” Renee explained. “The home features blown-in insulation with R-50 (a high rating for insulation value) in the attic, high-efficiency windows and continuous ventilation.
“The home has 4,800 square feet of conditioned space, but has an estimated total annual energy cost of only $1,540. The annual energy cost for a home built simply to current building codes would be about $1,200 more.”
Renee said there are 40 metro homebuilders that are building strictly ENERGY STAR-rated homes. The number of ENERGY STAR homes built by custom builders, like Todd Menard, has more than doubled over the last two years.
ENERGY STAR-Rated Homes in OPPD’s Service Area
2009: 813 (100 from custom builders)
2008: 565 (40 from custom builders)
2007: 17
2006: 7
A geothermal (or ground-source) heat pump is a central heating and/or cooling system that pumps heat to or from the ground. It uses the earth as a heat source (in the winter) or a heat sink (in the summer). The system uses geothermal ground loops, high-strength pipes filled with water, set at depths of 60 feet beneath the surface. The liquid is circulated through the loops and into the geothermal unit in your home, heating or cooling your home.
Typical HVAC units use a fan to push air over a coil which heats or cools that air and then distributes it through the duct system and on into the home. The second half of a home HVAC system is an exterior compressor which functions to dissipate the warm or cold air out of the house.
A geothermal HVAC system can also be thought of as a two stage system. There is still an indoor unit, but the exterior compressor will be replaced with a pump and the geothermal ground loop which takes over the job of dissipating heat or cold. This geothermal transfer is 25-50% more efficient than your typical HVAC system depending on the time of year.
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