Michael Guertin and Susan Aitcheson’s East Greenwich home isn’t a “dream house” just because most days sunlight streams through French doors, across the kitchen’s natural wood floor and dining table, straight to the sink. It also earns dream status because it’s energy efficient and reduces their utility bills. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is hoping that more home buyers and builders will find the energy efficiency factor appealing. That’s why the agency conducted a showcase of homes throughout the region last month. The so-called Energy Star Homes that were featured use less energy and improve indoor air quality. The U.S. Department of Energy and the EPA created the Energy Star label to help consumers identify home appliances and other products that meet federal energy efficiency standards.
The modified Cape house, where Guertin and his architect wife have lived since September 1997, was the Energy Star attraction in Rhode Island on June 27. About 120 people toured their home, Guertin said. Similar tours were conducted at about a dozen locations in Massachusetts as well.
Though EPA estimates show it can cost about $6,000 more for an Energy Star Home, agency officials said it pays off in the long run by decreasing electricity and heating bills by about 30 percent a year. That might appeal to Rhode Islanders, who pay $1,500 a year in utility bills on average and could save approximately $450 annually, according to EPA statistics.
By Guertin’s calculations it cost only $767 for a year’s worth of electricity, oil heat and propane gas for cooking in his 2,000-square-foot home. A similar home without the energy efficiencies built in, he said, would cost about $1,356 a year.
Such homes also emit less greenhouse gas, or carbon dioxide, which contributes to global climate changes, and help reduce air pollution.
“The average home actually contributes more greenhouse gas than the average car,” said Betsy Agle, an EPA spokeswoman. “When you flip on a switch or turn on your air conditioner, you’re burning fossil fuels; almost 90 percent of it (electricity) comes from fossil fuels.”
Some 5,000 homes are expected to be built in Rhode Island this year alone, and by encouraging the construction of energy efficient homes the EPA hopes to reduce air pollution. If all households and businesses in the United States bought Energy Star approved products over the next 15 years, the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be equivalent to taking 17 million cars off the road for each of those 15 years, EPA officials report.
For prospective homeowners and builders who already are stretching their finances to the limit, there are mortgage programs that can help, Agle said.
Guertin, who owns the East Greenwich contracting firm Residential Construction Consulting & Management, said he’s built energy efficient homes for clients for about a dozen years, but had never lived in one. Clients kept telling him how wonderful it was to live in a place with lower utility bills and rooms where the temperature didn’t vary from one corner to the next. So when he and Aitcheson finally got the chance to build their own home they went the energy efficient route.
They opted to exceed the EPA’s Energy Star standards.
He builds energy efficient homes throughout South County not only because it helps differentiate him from other builders, but because he has a history with energy conservation.
“When oil prices went up in ’74, my father made us put up super insulation and everything, and I got a taste of it then,” Guertin said. “I wasn’t a builder then, I was a teenager.”
Among the steps he took to make his South Road home, which is also featured in the current edition of Fine Homebuilding magazine, energy efficient:
The walls are insulated with dry blown cellulose, instead of the more conventional Fiberglas. “That ends up being the primary savings,” he explained. A savings despite the fact they paid about $3,000, or about twice the usual cost. This helps keep the house cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and even soundproofs it so well that you can’t hear commercial planes flying overhead toward nearby T.F. Green Airport when the doors are shut.
A door heading from the main floor to the basement area is an exterior door, instead of an interior door. This prevents the main living areas from losing heat to the basement and keeps out potentially harmful radon gas, according to Guertin.
Windows and exterior glass doors are coated with Low-E and are filled with Argon gas for insulation. This produces the same effect as drawing shades closed in the summer, by reducing radiational cooling and deflecting glare. It also protects furnishings, curtains and other materials from fading in the sun.
Glass doors in the living room and kitchen area are facing south to take advantage of the winter sunlight. And overhangs from the roof are wider than normal so that during the summer, when sunlight might add undesirable heat, there is shade from direct sunlight.
For more information about Energy Star Homes and other programs contact the EPA hotline at 1-888-STAR-YES or visit the Energy Star web site at www.energystar.gov/homes.
