Pulte Homes and Re-engineering

Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
- Murphy's Laws

"In this line of work, Murphy is an optimist."
- Joe Lstiburek

As a society, we got used to low energy bills during the late 1980s through the 1990s. We assumed they would last. The results of that assumption are now coming home to roost. The related gradual paradigm shift creates opportunity.

In this day of consistently higher home energy bills, Pulte is taking advantage of that opportunity with a notion that is grabbing buyers' attention: a comfort-plus heating and cooling energy guarantee.

"It takes less than three minutes to get a buyer's full attention when we show them our heating and cooling guarantee," said Randy Folts, vice president of construction for Pulte national. No wonder that each year, the group within Pulte Homes' 45 divisions offering a Comfort and Energy Use Guarantee program grows.

Pulte's involvement with an energy guarantee stems from a 1999 buyer survey. But the story goes back farther than that.

The hassle factor

What motivated Pulte to get involved with the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Building America program, Joe Lstiburek and what Pulte now describe as a systems approach to their residential buildings? In part, it was to avoid "the hassle factor."

On one level, some code jurisdictions were requiring the same old features be built into a home. Yet Lstiburek and the building science community were claiming that those features-such as increased attic ventilation in hot climates-were outdated. Working closely with both Lstiburek and code departments, Pulte eventually achieved breakthroughs in code changes, building design and performance.

But back in 1997, Lstiburek was brought in as a consultant to help Pulte deal with persistent problems relating to callbacks and warranty. Rather than just solving the problems after the fact, which in some cases turned out to be very expensive when Pulte bought back a few troublesome homes, the company decided to get Lstiburek involved with prevention. Said Folts, "we got smarter and brought Joe in on the design side."

The learning process It all started with building science. To prevent problems, the design and construction teams needed to understand the basic building science that drives good and bad performance in buildings. Two Building America team members - IBACOS (Pittsburg, Penn.) and Lstiburek's Building Science Corp (Westfield, Mass.) - provided the training.

"We put on three- and four-day trainings that were open to site supers, drafting departments, project managers, VPs of construction and a few people with key contracting companies" said Folts.

The training included one classroom day, one day in the field and a target day within particular sectors. Everyone participating in the training received a copy of EEBA's Builder's Guide (see end note) written for their particular climate. Each training, paid for by the local division, costs $4,500. By November 2000, all divisions had received the training.

"The training opened eyes," said Folts. "I remember a framer getting excited when he realized how he was impacting building performance. Eventually, it made sense to him why it was better to take a lot of the framing lumber out of the house."

Systems thinking

During a presentation to the Energy Efficient Building Association's Denver conference last October, Folts called systems thinking "a holistic approach of re-engineering to develop cost tradeoffs." The goal: if your thermal building envelope is more efficient, you can save money on downsized HVAC equipment and end up with a significantly improved and predictable design at a moderate cost differential.

The package

A program called Engineered for Life (EfL) is the commercially available system, developed by Louisiana Pacific with assistance from Lstiburek and Advanced Energy Corporation (AEC), on which Pulte relies. It offers three levels of compliance for a systems-built home: silver, gold and platinum. All share some basic features.

The EfL silver level starts with an upgraded insulation standard ("Zero Tolerance"), features to provide combustion safety, an inexpensive fresh-air system and a tight duct system (tested). The gold level benchmark is Energy Star compliance. It includes tighter con struction, high-efficiency glazing, specific HVAC equipment and tighter ductwork, plus pressure balancing to assure comfort and the safe operation of combustion appliances. The highest level, platinum, incrementally boosts several of the features already incorporated in the gold level with advanced framing, tighter infiltration standards and all ducts located in the conditioned space.

Performance testing

To assure their homes will work as designed and to meet the EfL standard, Pulte hires an AEC trained and master certified contractor to provide performance testing. Fifteen percent of the homes are tested-I / 7 of the same model built. That contractor tests for at least three specifications:

House tightness. A blower door is used to test the home for air leakage. When the house is put under test pressure (50 pascals, like a 20 miles-per-hour wind), the home must not leak more than 35 cubic feet/minute of air, per 100 square feet of livable floor space.

Duct tightness. This test is performed at the pre-sheet rock stage. With all the supply and return registers sealed off with tape, the total amount of air leaks must be less than 5 percent of the HVAC blower's rated capacity (e.g., 60 cfm of leaks for a 1,200 cfm blower). (Note: in Colorado, the average leakage is around 1,000 cfm, qualifying us as having the nation's leakiest ductwork.)

Room pressure. The return-air system must provide enough pressure relief such that no room in the house exceeds a given amount of pressure relative to the outdoors (plus or minus 3 pascals of pressure, which is a very small amount). Jump ducts, transfer grills or secondary returns are used to meet this standard.

Guarantees

The EIL program delivers a two-year Heating and Cooling Cost plus Comfort guarantee to every Pulte home meeting the gold and platinum level standards. The heating and cooling guarantees are based on the kWh and the rms usage on an annual basis at the current utility rates. If the homeowner goes over the guaranteed usage, the homeowner is reimbursed 100 percent of the difference through the program.

Building America - EfL Platinum Level Unvented Roof

True costs

"It takes a couple dozen houses to figure out your true costs," said Folts. He listed the rough costs associated with upgrading their typical 1,800square-foot home (see table at left).

Opportunity

It doesn't matter whether you build more durable, healthier, safer, energy-efficient and affordable homes if you can't sell them. So Pulte surveyed buyers during 1999 to examine buyer motivations, during a time when energy prices were low but headed higher.

"Over 80 percent of those surveyed said they would pay an extra $1,500 to save between $200 and $300 on annual heating and cooling bills," said Folts. "But consumers often say they will pay for energy efficiency, while they don't always come through. It's still a dollarper-square-foot industry. So we went a little further."

The survey showed that mature families and seniors place the most importance on energy efficiency, and the entry-level market placed the least. They seemed most receptive to the additional benefits such as increased durability. "The idea of paying a little more for a home that was more durable and required less maintenance was more important to older buyers," said Folts.

It's working

"Our houses are using 30 percent to 50 percent less energy for heating, cooling and hot water than a house built to the Model Energy Code," said Folts. That translates into a $300 or more savings on the average Pulte buyer's annual energy bill as well as having a more comfortable home.

"It's also significantly reduced our callbacks and warranty costs. That means less inconvenience for our customers."

How about in Denver?

Rusty Crandall, director of construction for Pulte Denver, reports that the local division has upgraded with a number of individual measures, including cellulose insulation blown into walls and ceilings.

"We're almost to the first level (silver) of the EfL program, but we're not yet as involved as the Las Vegas and Phoenix divisions," said Crandall. "In Las Vegas, they can offset some of their higher costs by the $500 to $1,000 savings they get from downsizing their air conditioning units. In heating climates like ours, it's different.

"A year ago we researched going to the higher level and fully costed it out with our contractors. We found that it would run us between $1,000 and $1,200 per average house to get to the gold level and $1,500 to $2,000 to reach the platinum level," he added. "Our marketing people questioned the value in our strong market, so we didn't move on it. But as energy prices increase and building slows down, it may be the perfect time to jump up. That would separate us from the pack, get us a big bang for our buck."

Steve Andrews consults with builders for E-Star Colorado and writes on energy issues (sbandrews@att.net). E-Star (www.e-star.com), is a nonprofit home energy rating system that works with both new and existing homes statewide.

The Builder's Guide, available through www.eeba.org, describes in great detail many of the items described in this story and is highly recommended.

2008 Built Green Colorado

Home Builders Association of Metro Denver, 9033 E. Easter Place, Suite 200, Centennial, CO 80112
(303) 778-1400 fax: (303) 733-9440  info@builtgreen.org

Last Updated: 10/05/2007