THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 27, 1996 TAG: 9601250317
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: About the Outer Banks
SOURCE: Chris Kidder
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
My house is ``dried in.'' The windows are in; the exterior doors hung; the roof finished except for a few details. It's a milestone in the building process that lets the builder get on with the interior details.
Siding is going up, giving the house its final color. I'm sad to see the soffits (the area under the eaves of the roof) covered over. I loved the symmetry of the wood rafters lined up under each eave. Three or four years down the road, though, I'll be glad I don't have to get on a ladder to scrape and paint the wood.
The plumber has roughed in water lines and plumbing fixtures; the fiberglass shower stalls and tubs have been pushed into place, forming solid walls where only airy 2-by-4s stood before.
By the time you read this, the electrician will have walked through the house with me, marking out the dozens of electrical outlets and fixtures that go into the house. Talking me out of some of my ideas, I'm sure, and suggesting improvements on my plan.
This past week, the house had its initial Energy Saver Plus inspection from North Carolina Power. The Energy Saver Plus program, introduced in 1993, gives homeowners a 5 percent conservation discount and further reductions in heating and air-conditioning bills by virtue of its energy efficiency.
The program's main requirement is that houses have ``Comfort Assured'' heat pump systems. A Comfort Assured system is installed by HVAC technicians certified by North Carolina Power and is guaranteed to provide customer comfort and satisfaction.
Comfort and satisfaction are subjective concepts. That guarantee sounds like marketing hype to me, although power company officials cite instances where heat pump systems have been replaced when customers couldn't be satisfied any other way.
I'm more interested in what the Comfort Assured dealer does up front: If he does a good job, I'm happy to take responsibility for my own comfort.
Comfort Assured dealers are trained to analyze house designs and calculate heat loss and gain based on window area, ceiling configurations, wall thicknesses, insulation specifications and other factors.
The Comfort Assured HVAC system is based on these calculations rather than dictated by a builder's budget based only on square footage of conditioned space. The system is guaranteed to keep an even temperature throughout the house and control humidity.
The dealer and his technicians are trained to install systems properly, sealing them against air leakage, planning the ducts, returns and vents for maximum efficiency. Beyond guaranteeing my satisfaction, parts and labor in the system are warranted for one year. Comfort Assured dealers promise 24-hour-a-day service, so if my system breaks down at 7 p.m. Saturday, I won't have to freeze or swelter until Monday morning.
If, for any reason, I'm unhappy with my Comfort Assured system, and my dealer and I can't agree on what should be done, he has agreed to submit my problem to third-party mediation.
The Energy Saver Plus inspection includes a pressurized test of the duct system, which measures how many cubic feet of heated or cooled air will be lost between the air handler and its final destination. The loss must not exceed 3 percent.
According to Grady Lassiter, who does the duct blast testing for North Carolina Power, only a tiny percentage of Outer Banks installations fail on the first try.
When you consider that the typical HVAC system, not installed to Comfort Assured standards, loses 26 percent of its conditioned air, reducing leakage to less than 3 percent per square foot is no mean feat.
The blower test is done before the house is insulated. Once insulation is installed, a power company energy efficiency representative makes a visual inspection of the house.
On the Outer Banks, Pam Pekrun is the person who checks each piece of insulation in the outside walls of Energy Saver Plus homes to make sure it is properly installed. A common problem is that insulation doesn't get stapled in place, she says. Without stapling, it settles toward the floor, leaving a gap for outside air to infiltrate.
Pekrun checks every window to make sure that the window frame has been sealed with insulating foam or chinked with insulation. She climbs into the attic to make sure duct work hasn't been crushed or blocked in some way during the insulation process.
She also checks for potential trouble spots unrelated to the HVAC system that affect homeowner comfort. Two common problems are oversized plumbing holes between conditioned and unconditioned space and a lack of insulation behind shower enclosures on outside walls.
An Energy Saver Plus house costs more to build. For my house, which includes a small apartment for my aunt and has two separate heat pump systems, the additional cost per square foot was about 71 cents.
But my heating and cooling bills should be substantially less compared to those for houses built to minimum building code standards. Real estate agents say that the Energy Saver Plus designation would give my house an edge in the resale market.
Personally, I'm looking forward to being comfortable. MEMO: Send comments and questions to Chris Kidder at P.O. Box 10, Nags Head,
N.C. 27959.
by CNB