A Comprehensive Home Performance Energy Program
A Comprehensive Home Performance Energy Program is a philosophy and a science based on the premise that homes should be safe,
healthy, comfortable, durable, and efficient.
Homes are probably the biggest investment most of us will ever make, and are one of the few
things we purchase that don't come with an instruction manual. Is a home comfortable? Reasonably
energy efficient? Safe and healthy? These are all considerations that a homeowner will either take for
granted (we would assume, after all, that the air inside a home wouldn't be a potential health hazard),
or simply neglect.
These are the considerations that a home performance contractor sets out to address, while taking into account the interconnectedness of homes, and the relationships between each of the home's components. In accord with this holistic approach, a home performance contractor will assess, and then address, any of these potential problems within a home.
As mentioned above, home performance is based upon what we call the 5 pillars of home performance:
1) Safety: Assessing the safety of a home is an important part (maybe the most important) of a home
performance contractor's job. Back-drafting appliances that may be sending carbon monoxide into the
home, unsafe levels of formaldehyde from building materials, are both potential safety issues that a
home performance contractor is trained to address.
2) Health: Indoor air quality is listed by the EPA as one of the top environmental threats to human
health. A home performance contractor's job is to ensure that your home's indoor air quality is not a
threat to you or your family's health.
3) Comfort: Our home is our refuge. It should be comfortable. Drafty rooms, cold spots, unpleasant
humidity and heat in the summer, poor quality lighting or incandescent lighting that creates
unnecessary excess heat in the summer, are all avoidable unpleasantries. A home performance
contractor can help.
4) Durability: Imperfections within a building, in addition to causing discomfort and raising health concerns, can also have long term repercussions. Moisture problems causing rot in framing, or insufficient insulation causing ice dams, are among the durability concerns that a home performance contractor will pinpoint, then tackle.
5) Efficiency: Last but not least, home performance is about ensuring that a home is cost effective to
live in. If a mechanic told you that a few simple improvements could drastically improve the fuel
efficiency of your car, that's something most of us would jump on. That's what a home performance
contractor does for your house.
For more information, please check out the Comprehensive Home Performance Energy Audit