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6 Ways Your HERS Rater Can Help You Build a Better Home
- Taylor Fearrington
- November 11, 2020
- 7 Minute Read
There is a chill in the air, the leaves have changed and the clocks rolled back…. That can only mean one thing — It’s Q4!
While Q4 brings fall nostalgia and anticipation for holidays with friends and family, it often comes with an increased workload as we rush to meet end of year goals. Despite global pandemics and surging material prices causing headwinds, on the whole, the building industry has had an incredible year and our aim is to help you finish strong!
As an extension of your team, your HERS rater is there to help you achieve your goals now and well into the future. Here are 6 ways your HERS rater at Southern Energy Management can help during your end of year crunch.
Design and Engineering
Looking for a more cost effective way to meet code? Not sure if your HVAC equipment is appropriately sized? Concerned that you’re not meeting prescriptive code requirements and don’t know what to do?
How We Can Help
Our design and engineering services are here to help ensure you’re getting the most out of your homes. Don’t waste time or money on pathways that don’t fit your business. As an objective partner we help curate out of the box solutions to your problems today. We can help to:
- Demonstrate performance pathway compliance with code
- Ensure your HVAC systems are appropriately sized to maximize performance
- Recommend cost cutting strategies to meet code
Pinpointing Issues
Building a home is a complex endeavor – building them at scale is another beast altogether. Being able to accurately and efficiently identify issues is paramount! Whether it’s comfort complaints, persistent blower door failures, or something entirely different, we can help you attack pesky issues at the source.
How We Can Help
As your resident building science experts, we’re on jobsites daily with a keen eye towards performance issues. Not only do we provide immediate, lot specific feedback, we have systems in place to help you track issues over time so you can quickly course correct when troubling trends occur. Be sure to use that feedback to head off issues before they snowball. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
- Catch performance issues early before they become costly warranty problems with our advanced reporting and team of building science experts
- Our team can recommend strategies to overcome the issues behind many comfort complaints
- Recommend cost cutting strategies to meet code
Air Sealing Compliance
We know you’ve got a lot on your plate. There are hundreds, if not thousands of tasks to manage daily. It’s understandable that when looking to address air leakage, those details can feel like very small details. It’s true, your HERS Rater is often calling out small areas of leakage, but those areas can have a large impact on the long term performance of the home. We only get one shot to address those issues so let’s make it count!
How We Can Help
When armed with the right insights, feedback, and data, we expect to see our clients and their trade partners organically improve overtime. However, we can go beyond field verification and take a larger, more direct role in ensuring compliance.
Our Air Sealing services are designed to help punch out air sealing issues immediately during our inspections so you and your trade partners don’t have to after the fact. This saves valuable time, preventing construction delays for re-inspections, etc. and also increases the likelihood you stay compliant with code, efficiency programs, and/or incentives. We can help to:
- Save time and money by ensuring air sealing details are addressed immediately and sufficiently
- Minimize the risk of leaving incentive money on the table due to failing performance testing
Value Engineering
From customer preferences to municipal design requirements to maximizing available incentives, there are many variables at play when designing specification packages for your homes.
How We Can Help
With over 20 years of experience, we understand these variables and have tools to help you make smart decisions. Next time you’re considering a spec change, reach out to make sure you’re informed on how it’ll impact performance, program compliance, incentives, etc. Or let us help curate a spec package that will balance all variables in a smart, cost effective way that won’t compromise performance.
- Don’t make spec decisions without first evaluating all angles. Program, code, and incentive compliance should all be weighed. We can make that a painless process.
Incentives Support
You’ve made a commitment to build high-performance homes (or perhaps you’re just considering it) and we want to help make sure you’re rewarded for that commitment. Here are a couple major incentives available to builders in our markets.
- Duke Energy HERO Code Incentives — Earn up to $9,000/house in Duke Progress territory and up to $6,000/house in Duke Carolinas territory
- Santee Cooper Smart Saver Incentives — Earn up to $3,000/house in Santee Cooper service territory
- 45L (EPAC) Federal Tax Credit — Earn $2,000/home in federal tax credits
How We Can Help
Don’t leave money on the table! We specialize in helping our clients identify and maximize any available incentives.
- Our builder clients have earned over $30 million in incentives since 2013!
- We can help identify if your homes qualify for these incentives or what changes you can make to be eligible. Don’t miss out!
Powerful Data
It seems like these days everyone is talking about data. If you’re not leveraging data to your benefit, you are likely missing an opportunity. Do you understand how your homes performed by community or plan type? How about how you’ve done this year relative to last? We do and we want to empower you with that data!
How We Can Help
At Southern Energy Management, we work hard to aggregate and report data back to you in new and impactful ways. This data is intended to provide easily digestible soundbites for your sales teams, ensuring they are adequately armed to sell the performance of your homes. Operations teams will be able to more effectively manage internally and externally by being able to spot trends over time, by community, or even plan type. Be sure you’re reviewing the quarterly performance snapshots provided to your team. You might be surprised if you haven’t given it a look in awhile.
- Attack issues and celebrate success with certainty! Let us empower you with performance data to help keep you ahead of the pack
Let Us Know What You Need Help With
Achieving goals can be a daunting task, especially towards the end of the year. Luckily, with help from your HERS rater it doesn’t have to be! Leverage the tools, insights, and expertise your valuable trade base has to help you work smarter, not harder. Our building science experts are here and ready to take some of those troubling issues off your plate to help you build success while having more time to spend with those you love around the holidays. Let us know how we can help!
About Us
North Carolina’s solar power and building performance expert. Founded in 2001, we’ve worked for 20+ years to improve the way people make and use energy.
