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Sopris Development to guarantee comfort"Quality is what you see out of the corner of your eye." "When you get to the fork in the road, take it." How can you guarantee comfort'? Isn't comfort a purely personal assessment? Aren't you opening a Pandora's box by guaranteeing something that's hard to prove? The answers to these three questions: Pay a lot of attention to detail and quality control; no; and probably not. Here's the foundation supporting this concept: if you design and construct both a quality building shell and a quality HVAC system and then performance-test every home, a comfort guarantee is a logical benefit. Sopris Development, a Boulder-based builder of luxury homes, sees the logic here. Before the end of the year, they intend to become the first Colorado builder to offer both a comfort guarantee and an energy consumption guarantee to all their buyers. BackgroundJohn Stevens, president of Sopris Development. built his own home four years ago. "We used high-efficiency HVAC equipment, conventional building materials and conventional HVAC design and installation," said Stevens. "In fact, we installed three scaled-combustion furnaces and air conditioners. But we were sorely disappointed with the results. The performance was not what I was expecting. In particular, the conventional system design and installation methods really let us down." "Apart front my own home, we had one particular plan with two bedrooms over the garage that were susceptible to comfort problems," said Stevens. "I wasn't satisfied with the product we were putting out and thought our buyers deserved better. We wanted to build homes where people were truly happy with the results." Comfort complaints are relatively commonplace in Colorado. In a housing performance study of 150 Colorado homes built between 1995 and 1999, 50 percent of homeowners with bedrooms above garages experienced comfort problems. The maximum temperature range this writer has measured from the warmest to coolest room in an occupied home, on a hot July day, was 78 degrees in a second-floor bedroom and 64 degrees in the basement bedroom. Is comfort measurable?Yes. The idea is to set a clear standard that is easy to measure, and then carefully build to that standard. For a home with a single-zone heating and cooling system, the HVAC industry actually has an established minimum comfort standard. They state that plus or minus two degrees is the maximum difference allowed between the thermostat set-point and the temperature in any conditioned room. While this is doable, it certainly isn't automatic. Meeting this standard either takes sonic luck or a lot of effort plus a "systems approach." Environments for Living, a nationwide program of Masco Contractor Services, offers a comfort guarantee to builders and their buyers. Masco-trained insulators and HVAC contractors get involved, through a systems approach, during certain design, construction and performance testing phases. Once a home meets Masco's standards, their simple guarantee goes like this: they "guarantee the original homeowner that the temperature at the location of the thermostat in the home will not vary more than 3 degrees front the temperature at the center of any conditioned room within that thermostat zone." In any home that falls short of the standard, Masco identifies the problems and coordinates the necessary repairs. Sopris will be using Masco services to provide this guarantee. Systems Package"You cant suddenly change and start building this way overnight," said Stevens. `We started this journey about 18 months ago, and it's a long journey.' When Stevens says "building this way," he's reffering to the systems approach. A house is more than just a collection of' parts. It is a system that incorporates heating. cooling, air circulation. moisture control and more. If the pieces don't work well together, problems may develop. In a high-performance home, a "whole-house" design approach and quality craftsmanship combine to deliver better comfort, healthier indoor air and energy cost savings in a package that's built to last and hold its value. Sopris developed their current systems approach through an evolutionary process. Over a decade ago, they signed on as a "premier builder" with Public Service Company of Colorado's Ideal Energy Home Program. Then they participated in the Built Green program before stepping up to the U.S. EPA's Energy Star Home threshold, which is equivalent to five stars using the E-Star scoring method. Here are some key pieces of the systems package that Sopris employs today: Better-insulated shell: all walls are either sprayed with cellulose
(during nonfreezing weather) or blown with the Optima system (wintertime).
Floors above garage ceilings are dense-packed with blown insulation to assure
full coverage and eliminate the chance for outdoor into bypass the insulation. Tighter construction: this takes attention to the sealing of traditional problem areas such as cantilevered floors, connections between the house and garage. large passageways up into the attic, and leaks behind tubs. fireplaces and entertainment centers on exterior walls. The insulation package helps tighten the home. Just prior to closing, each house is tested with a blower door to quantify tightness. Mechanical ventilation: since homeowners can't rely on random leaks
and windy weather to provide fresh air. every home is equipped with a mechanical
ventilation system that supplies fresh air throughout the home. Multi-gaze healing and cooling: To provide homeowners with optimum control. Sopris installs dedicated heating and cooling equipment on every floor level of conditioned space. High-efficiency equipment: all furnaces are over 90 percent efficient and air conditioners are 12 SEER minimum. Heating and cooling equipment are right-sized according to detailed energy calculations, not over-sized per traditional rules of thumb (or as Stevens calls them, "Rules of Dumb"). Ductwork: all ductwork is engineered for each house plan. All ducts are either sheet metal or flex-duct (no building cavities). As part of Masco's guarantee, all ducts must he carefully sealed with durable sealants and then tested for tightness. Exterior drainage plane: to reduce potential moisture problems from rain and snow leaks, every home is covered with a layer of sheet material over the exterior wall sheathing. Any water that "blows by" the exterior cladding or around doors and windows will drain down the sheet material rather than being absorbed by the wood sheathing. This is a major durability and mold prevention plus. The cost factorAccording to Stevens, Sopris spends between S10,000 and $20.000 extra to meet their systems performance standard. That equates to between 2 and 4 percent extra for their price range (typically 5500,000 to $1,500,000). About half the extra cost is for the additional heating and cooling equipment and controls. The other big-ticket items are the power-vented water heaters, low-e windows. insulation upgrades, redesigned and carefully installed ductwork. the drainage plane to handle exterior moisture, and the cost of the performance testing each individual house. So, does spending a bunch of extra money for select upgrades guarantee comfort? Not necessarily. A comfort guarantee must he backed up by subtle changes at the design phase, carefully selected products, detailed scopes of installation work for contractors, equally detailed inspections and performance testing. A comfort guarantee doesn't have to he limited to luxury homes. Consider Artistic Homes (Albuquerque, N.M.), a production builder that puts up roughly 800 homes a year in the $100,000 +/- price range. Since January 2001. every one of their homes included a comfort and energy consumption guarantee. Max Wade, part owner of the company, said that after the first year only a handful of buyers challenged Artistic's comfort guarantee. In two cases. diagnostic testing identified performance problems that were easily remedied. In the others, simple temperature measurements proved the company met their guarantee. Bottom line resultSince Sopris switched to their systems approach. they haven't received a single callback about comfort. "We're a company of perfectionists," said Stevens. "We've always worked at getting better, and we've wanted to build the best house in our market. "This result-zero calls about comfort- is a great result for us." In this day of rising energy prices. every Sopris home now meets the EPA's Energy Star Home threshold - 86 on the uniform home energy rating scale. The energy efficiency benefit is a nice bonus hut not one particularly high on their typical buyer's shopping list. What is slowly setting Sopris apart is the comfort benefit. "The comfort amenity has indeed swayed people our way," said Stevens. "Until now we hadn't found the right marketing tool - we haven't even used brochures in the past. But now we're going to turn comfort into a solid selling feature." Guaranteed. 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. |
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2008 Built Green Colorado
Home Builders Association of Metro Denver, 9033 E. Easter Place, Suite 200,
Centennial, CO 80112 Last Updated: 10/05/2007 |