ClimateSmart Loan Program workshops begin again Monday 3/15

The third round of the residential ClimateSmart Loan Program in Boulder County is about to kick off again, with workshops starting on Monday, March 15 for people interested in the program. The workshops are mandatory for anybody who wants to participate in the loan program; there will be six of them in various places around the county through March 31.

For all the information about the program, click here.

For a schedule of the workshops, click here (PDF link).

Boulder's Efficiency Efforts Under the National Spotlight

This past weekend (Feb. 13 to be precise) Boulder found itself again in the national spotlight, the subject of a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal. This time, it was an in-depth article about Boulder's mixed results with pushing its citizenry towards energy efficiency. The tone of the article is not exactly positive, pointing out many of the challenges of the various programs that have been put in place over the last three or four years.

To be fair, not all of those quoted in the article have agreed that their comments were taken exactly in context. (See the Boulder Daily Camera's follow-up, here.) But in any case, the article highlights one of the main problems with any program that relies on people to take any sort of action for it to be successful: physics. Specifically, an object in motion will tend to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest. In this case, moving people to action is a problem not unique to Boulder, but is an issue of human nature. Despite this city's green leanings, the fact remains that it is simply easier to do nothing than it is to do something.

Click here for the WSJ article. (And, kudos to Boulder's Nate Burger of Eco Handyman for his moment in the national spotlight in the article's embedded video.)

Inhabit Launches Web Store

Not wanting to let the e-commerce revolution pass us by, Inhabit has launched a web store specializing in energy & water efficiency products. Product types include efficient lighting (CFLs & LEDs), ventilation, water saving, energy monitoring, air sealing and insulation, and more.

The store is an Amazon.com "aStore" (affiliate store) which means is powered by and run by Amazon. Inhabit doesn't actually stock the products sold on the store, rather, the transaction is handled by Amazon and Inhabit gets a small commission for each sale. What we have done is essentially filter out all of the "junk" on the Amazon site to focus on products that we believe would be most useful to our clients.

Give it a whirl, and please let us know what you think! Which products would you like to see added?

The store can be accessed from the Inhabit web site, or directly at this URL:
http://astore.amazon.com/inhabit-20

Boulder County Revamps BuildSmart Program

Having been operating for the last couple of years under what are rumored to be the nation's strictest energy efficiency building codes (which is all wrapped up in the moniker "BuildSmart"), Boulder County has just released a significantly revised BuildSmart program. Three major changes are:

1. The rules have been both simplified and relaxed for additions and remodels.
2. A prescriptive path option is now available whereas previously the performance path (via a HERS rating) was the only option for compliance.
3. The scale for new construction is now somewhat more lenient, and a sliding scale is introduced for homes larger than 3,000 SF. Previously, the required scale went from HERS 60 to 40 to 25 to 10 or below as the house size got larger.

With regards to additions and remodels, a common complaint I have heard has been that the regulations were getting in the way of people making any improvements to their old, inefficient houses since the rules required very high levels of whole-house energy efficiency once certain size thresholds were crossed. The new rules relax these requirements somewhat: any addition or remodel to an existing house that will result in a total conditioned area of 3,000 square feet or below will have to meet a HERS rating of 80 -- a reachable threshold for all but the most derelict of houses, but FAR more efficient than most existing homes. Above 3,000 SF a sliding scale kicks in, raising the required efficiency levels as the house size grows. For example, a 4,000 SF house will need to meet HERS 70, while a 6,000 SF house will need to meet HERS 50 (the lower the HERS score, the more efficient the home). Houses 8,000 SF and above won't need to get lower than HERS 30, which is still a pretty high bar but not as high as it was before.

The prescriptive path is also one of the all-new features of this new BuildSmart program. While the performance path requires that a house be modeled to predict how it will perform then tested to verify that performance, a prescriptive path is essentially a "recipe" that must be followed. So rather than saying that a house must hit a certain HERS score (performance) the prescriptive path says, for example, that you must use at least R-54 insulation in the ceiling, R-42 in the floor, windows with maximum U-value of 0.35, etc. Meet each requirement and you pass, no proof of performance required other than a required insulation inspection and duct test -- the specific requirements are on pages 18 and 19 of the new program document (PDF link).

Finally, the last major change (as I see them) is that the new program both relaxes the current efficiency standard and introduces a sliding scale for required efficiency for new construction. Under the old program, a house 1,001 to 3,000 SF would have to meet a HERS index score of 60. So despite that the 3,000 SF home is three times the size of the 1,001 SF home, they had to meet the same efficiency standard. However, a house that was to be 3,001 to 4,000 SF had to hit HERS 40. Houses larger than 5,001 SF would have to hit HERS 10 or below, a very high threshold. Now, the sliding scale means that a house of, for example, 3,100 SF won't have to meet a HERS index 20 points lower than a house of 2,900 SF; instead, the decrease in the required HERS index is 1 point for each 100 SF in house size increase.

The entire document can be found on the BuildSmart web site, or can be downloaded in PDF directly via this link.

Boulder OK's House Size Rules

After much debate and rancor, the Boulder city council on Tuesday night, Oct. 6, finally passed an ordinance which will limit house sizes in Boulder. It all starts with this relatively simple premise: you can build a 3,500 square foot house on a 7,000 square foot lot, a nice even 1:2 ratio. However, if your lot is smaller the ratio increases, and if it's larger the ratio decreases. But that's not all. There are also rules which limit the floor area ratio to 35% of lot size, rules spelling out the maximum allowable "bulk plane," rules outlining and defining "virtual floors," and other rules affecting stairwells, basements and wall sizes. Rather than try to summarize it all, I'll simply refer you to the Boulder Daily Camera article about it here.

Whether you agree with whether the city should pass ordinances limiting house sizes or not, I think that everyone can agree that these rules are almost certain to make building a house in Boulder even more complicated (and more expensive) than it is now. Bottom line: if you're planning on building in Boulder any time soon, you might consider applying for a permit prior to Jan. 1.

ClimateSmart Loan Program to go to Voters again in Nov.

Boulder County's wildly successful ClimateSmart Loan Program has already loaned out over $10 million to over 600 Boulder County homeowners to fund energy efficiency upgrades. The program has been so successful that it's actually running out of money, so the County will go to voters again in this November's election with ballot issue 1B. Similar to last year's 1A, this ballot issue will authorize the county to sell bonds to fund the program.

Because the loans made under this program are tied to the property, not the borrower, homeowners are more likely to actually make the efficiency improvements to their homes. It's difficult to rationalize making expensive improvements with long-term payoff periods such as windows, furnaces, solar panels, etc. to a home if you don't know how long you'll be in the house. But if the loan is tied to the property, if you sell the house the buyer takes over paying for the improvements that he or she is now benefiting from.

Beyond the energy-savings benefits of the program to the homeowner (and community, and earth) it has also bolstered the local home-improvement industry during a time of economic pain. From contractors to solar installers to energy auditors to architects, much-needed work has been borne from the program as well. (Inhabit has performed dozens of energy audits and consulted for several clients as a direct result of the ClimateSmart program.)

Read more about the program in the Daily Camera, here.

Business Week Magazine: Boulder's the Strongest Housing Market in the US

While nearly every place in the country reels from decreased housing values, there are still a few markets where housing prices not only didn't fall from 2008 to 2009, but actually rose. At the top of this enviable list is Boulder, CO! With an annual increase in the median housing price of 2.12%, Boulder is bucking the national real estate trend with over 60% of homes increasing in value over the past year.

A similarity among many cities in Business Week's list was the presence of either a major university or a military base. Boulder, of course, is home the the University of Colorado's main campus and its nearly 30,000 students plus thousands of university employees (as a related aside, CU Boulder was just named the nation's "Greenest University" by the Sierra Club's "Sierra" magazine). Other factors pushing Boulder to the top included the 50,000 acres of green space surrounding the city which limits development and sprawl, as well as the fact that the "area is so pretty" which keeps demand for housing up.

The only minor inaccuracy in Business Week's article was that Boulder was referred to as an "affluent Denver suburb." Affluent? Yeah, sure, won't argue with that. Denver suburb? Hardly; it's 35 miles away from Denver and surrounded by those now-famous 50,00 acres of green space. All the same, this is all good news for anybody living, working or building in Boulder.