HERS and Mine, What’s HERS going to cost you?

You may not know much about it now but HERS ratings are here and are not going away. Home Energy Rating Score. They have been built into the 2015 IECC. Now, how and when it will affect you will may vary on when the code is adopted and then implemented. That said, you can use it today to sell your home, or not. What the HERS rating does is look at your home in relation to other homes in your geographic area or climate zone. For instance, I’m in climate zone 1 and Ron and Robbie are in climate zone 5A.

The actual score is referenced from 0 to 150+. A score of zero is what we call a NET ZERO home. In other words, it produces as much energy as it uses. Net is zero. A standard new home built to the 2004/2006 IECC would be the base 100-point home. This home is legally the worst house you can build. I mean it meets code. Think of the score like golf. To win, you want the low score. For every point, you go down it’s a 1% difference in energy efficiency.

A HERS test must be completed by someone with RESNET certification. An energy audit is not the same thing. However, it is a good indication of how to lower you HERS rating.

I said this could help sell your home. If you have a HERS rater come do the testing and your house is a 63 because you listen to the show and did all the air sealing before insulating and then installed energy efficient appliances, low E windows and high SEER HVAC, it shows buyers that your home will cost less to live in than another house on the same block. So, it’s worth more. 

The new 2015 IECC code is going to require that new homes be tested and the minimums have been lowered. The scores range from 52 in Climate zones 1 & 2 to 53 in zones 7 & 8.  As you can see new homes are going to have to built to much better standards than even 12 years ago to achieve this. And, as you can imagine it will add 7 to 10% to the cost of the home. The next step is for mortgage interest rates be tied to a HERS rating. The lower the score the lower the interest rate. This will encourage not only builders but homeowners to improve their HERS number.

You can get more information from www.herindex.com/