DOE Zero Energy Ready Home Retrofits – Saving Money Today and Tomorrow

For social service agencies and nonprofits trying to make the most of housing budgets, retrofitting rather new construction can make sense from a cost perspective: new materials are costly, available land can be expensive and rare where services are most needed, and existing homes have subsurface structures, utilities, and zoning already in place. However, just because first costs are less, will the home be affordable over its lifetime, i.e., can the building owners cover both the mortgage and the monthly energy bills? This presentation will showcase three homes retrofitted for nonprofit agencies that helped ensure low lifecycle costs and affordability for their owners by meeting the high energy performance criteria of DOE’s Zero Energy Ready Home program. We’ll look at homes with very different vintages, materials, and structures and go “behind the walls” to show how these three homes were retrofitted to improve the envelope and mechanicals while still meeting all of the DOE ZERH program criteria. The case study homes, which included a siding retrofit with novel half-SIPs, a gut rehab from the inside out, and a noninvasive over-siding “outsulation,” yielded dramatic improvements in energy efficiency as well as improved indoor air quality, comfort, and noise reduction.