Home Star Information – 4-19-10

by Don Ames

HomeStar Program to Monitor Efficient Homes

From csmonitor.com  by tracey Samuelson

The problem: There’s not enough trained personnel to tackle the more sophisticated pieces of Homestar (named after Energy Star, the government’s popular energy efficiency labeling system).

With unemployment rates around 25 percent, the construction industry has a large pool of skilled workers anxious to get to work. They’ll be able to handle the first level of retrofits, known as silver star.

Silver star will consist of rebates of 50 percent of the cost for simple upgrades – new insulation, duct sealing, or water heaters, for example – ­for a total of up to $1,000 or $1,500.

The gold star level will take more training. Under gold star, contractors evaluate the entire house, recommending a wide suite of improvements to realize 20 percent energy savings. If consumers achieve that, they can get a $3,000 rebate plus additional amounts for any energy savings above 20 percent.

“It’s a chicken-and-egg kind of game right now,” says Matt Golden, president of a San Francisco-based home-retrofitting firm and a leading player in creating the Homestar program.

For the gold level, contractors will need to be accredited by the Building Performance Institute. That process typically involves a few days of training and two examinations, one written and one administered in the field. It can take eight weeks to schedule an exam and typically a few months to complete entire process if starting from scratch. Experienced contractors can opt out of the training, if they wish, and proceed straight to the exam.