Eddie Hutton had this video produced to help homeowners learn how to save energy, improve the environment and make older homes go “green.”

Saving energy and helping the environment that’s what the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is all about. They developed the LEED green building certification and rating system.    LEED is an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.  The LEED ratings describe the degree to which a building reduces negative environmental impacts and improves the health and well-being of its occupants. There are four rating levels based on the number of points achieved: from Certified (which starts at 40 points), to Silver, Gold, and Platinum (which requires a score of 80 or more points).

LEED-H is the rating system used for homes.  There are many categories outlined in a scorecard, such as:

• Location and Transportation: This includes proximity to a variety of transportation options, like bicycle paths and mass transit.
• Sustainable Sites: This includes rainwater management, using natural land cover, and protecting nearby habitat.
• Water Efficiency:  This includes reducing both indoor and outdoor water use, and tracking water consumption via water metering.
• Energy and Atmosphere: This includes refrigerant management, energy metering, and optimizing energy performance by using renewable energy sources.
• Material and Resources: This relates to the construction techniques, which must make use of environmentally-certified or recycled building products, sourcing raw materials locally or regionally, and reducing the amount of waste stored in landfills.
• Indoor Environmental Quality: This covers things that affect air quality, lighting quality, acoustic design, and surroundings, such as ventilation, low-emitting materials, and making use of natural lighting and heating.

The scorecard also rewards things like innovation, adaptability, and regional (geographic) priority areas.

Is your home a candidate for renovation and a LEED-rating?  You know, LEED is not just for new construction!  Maybe you want to start small.  Perhaps your home has a detached garage you’d like to renovate to be used as a vacation rental.  After all, we hear that Nashville is a destination site for many travelers! Having a Platinum LEED rating would sure serve as a differentiator when marketing your rental!

Let’s look at ways a house could attain a LEED rating.  First is its location: ideally, it would be in a neighborhood with bicycle paths and an MTA bus route, and close to parks, downtown and shopping. Add a geothermal heat pump for the HVAC system.  That way you can use a desuperheater to capture waste heat to provide hot water.  LED lighting is an ideal way to reduce energy consumption because LED lights use only about 1/5^th the power of incandescent lights, so the payback interval is shorter than any other energy saving approach. Plus, since LEDs don’t radiate heat like typical incandescent bulbs, they reduce the load on the home’s air-conditioning system.  Insulation is also very important in reducing the cooling and heating costs.  The best product out now is a soy-based spray foam insulation, which is not only eco-friendly, but is resistant to air, rodents, insects, mold, mildew, moisture and reduces sound transfer.

Download a copy of the LEED Scorecard and start your Green Home project today!

It is easy to be overwhelmed with the many different thermostats on the market and all the features!  Which one is right for you?  We’ve taken three of the top thermostats and done a comparison for you: the Honeywell WiFi, the Nest (now owned by Google), and the Honeywell Lyric. All tout easy installation and setup, and all allow you to control the thermostat remotely from a smartphone via a free downloadable app.  All will save you money on your utility bills if used appropriately.  Each of these thermostats uses different programming methods – or better said, what triggers the change in temperature settings – is quite different among the three.  So, depending on your habits, one might be better for you than another.

Honeywell WiFi

User ratings of this thermostat are very high, and higher than the user ratings of the Honeywell Lyric and Nest in most cases.  Users like the smartphone app a lot, and you can operate it from a website, too. You can schedule temperature changes for waking, leaving, returning, and sleeping.  Programming is a matter of setting up a 7-day schedule for each of these changes.  You can override the schedule at any point, but this method works well if you have a fairly predictable schedule most of the time. Temperature control is spot on, within +/- 1 degree. The touchscreen wall unit offers a multitude of preferences: colors, displays (Fahrenheit/Celsius, 12/24 hr. time, temp/humidity, etc.), brightness, auto/manual, keypad lockout, hold temperature option, and much more.  Plus, there is a smart mode whereby it learns how long it takes to reach a desired temperature and proactively adjusts, and it reminds you when it’s time to change your filters. The cons were few:  If your internet connectivity is down, you can only control the thermostat from the wall unit (same as a traditional thermostat), your color preferences cannot be saved, and circulate mode (fan) is preset at 35%.  Depending on the retailer, the cost for this unit varies from $193-$230 (not including installation).

Google Nest 

By comparison to the Honeywell WiFi, the Nest is more simplistic. The display only offers temperature, and not the multitude of preferences (colors, etc.) like the WiFi does.  Also, unlike the WiFi, you cannot do all the functions from the thermostat wall unit that you can do from your smartphone. There is no hold temperature option, and the temperature control was only +/- 3 degrees (a 6 degree swing is enough to make it feel too hot or too cold). Like the WiFi, it learns how long it takes to heat up and cool down to your set temperatures and proactively adjusts.  There is no need to enter a 7-day program, though you may.  You can merely set target home and away temperatures (for cooling and heating) for a single day or week, and it uses that as a starting point.  Then, the Nest “learns” your patterns by having a sensor that senses when someone is home.  So, if you have an erratic schedule, this feature might be ideal.  However, user reviews say if you have a big house, its line of sight will not cover the entire house, so you may be home but in another room where the sensor can’t sense you, and thus the “away” mode kicks in.  Many users found the “learning” was imprecise at times, and some gave up on it and opted for straight programming of temps at specific times.  The thermostat is accessible via the internet and the unit itself maintains connection to an internet website to tell you the outdoor temperature.  Nest offers usage reports and shows you, via a green leaf on the display, when you’re saving energy.  Users reported many frustrations, including software updates that wipe out your settings and any “learning” that was done, and time changes (for Daylight Saving Time) did not update the temperature settings, but many problems have since been fixed in newer updates. The Nest’s construction is solid (glass and stainless steel vs. the Honeywell’s plastic) and costs for the “second generation” of Nest units vary from $249-$300 (not including installation).

Honeywell Lyric

The design of this unit at least on its face is similar to the simplistic display of the Nest.  But its geofencing feature represents a totally different programming alternative. It uses your smartphone’s location to determine whether you are home or away, and sets the temperature accordingly.  If you’re the type of person that doesn’t go anywhere without your smartphone, this might be for you, but be aware that everyone in the household must have the app installed on their smartphone.  Multiple thermostats can be controlled from the same app.  Users say the Lyric does a better job than the Nest at fine-tuning the temperature: it considers both indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity to reach a set point. Users found the software app with the Lyric more clunky than the Nest, and some functions can only be done from the smartphone or web, not from the wall unit. Many reviewers reported the geofencing was not reliable, problems working with iOS 8, multiple manual resets when internet connection was lost, and other frustrations causing them to set up shortcuts or do manual overrides or to swap out the unit due to frequent breakdowns.  Others reported poor experiences with Honeywell’s customer support, or that they did not like the wobbly plastic feel of the device.  As with the Nest, there is both an older and newer model, plus there is a retail and contractor’s version.  Costs for the newer retail model range from $219-$280 (not including installation).

With all smart thermostats, you’ll want to check compatibility with your home’s HVAC system before purchasing one.  Some do not work with baseboard heat, for example, and if you have multiple zones in your house, you’ll need multiple thermostats.  Installation can be done by the homeowner, but know that we are happy to help you install any thermostat of your choosing.

In August, we began our Smart Thermostat Poll to get your input on some of the features manufacturers are now offering on their new crop of thermostats.  Are manufacturer’s over-engineering these or are these really features people want?  We put it to the test, by asking which features you liked or thought you might use (a “yes” answer) and which features you either didn’t care about or wouldn’t use (a “no” answer).  Here’s a summary of the results*:

The features most users said they wanted or would use are:

• Reminders to change your air filters.
• Allowing you to override your “normal routine” when on vacation (away mode).
• Alerting you when the temperature in your home gets too cold or too hot, which may mean your HVAC unit isn’t working.
• Allow you to run only the fan (to circulate air) without having to run the air conditioner or the heat.
• Having the thermostat derive its power from your HVAC (instead of running on batteries).
• Automatically adjusting for daylight savings time.
• Automatically downloading software updates from the Internet.

Features users said they would be least likely to use were:

• Having a portable (handheld) thermostat control that can be used in any room of the house.
• Having the display in different languages.
• Being able to upload a photo that displays on the thermostat’s screen, with screen saver and slideshow features.

Thank you to all who have already taken the poll.  If you haven’t taken the poll yet, there’s still time (click here)!  Plus, just for taking the poll, we’ll send you a coupon good for 10% off the installation of any thermostat of your choice. Enter your name and email address at the bottom of the poll.  To be eligible your home must be in Davidson, Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson, Sumner or Cheatham counties.

With all the different models, prices, and features, and 10% off installation, what’s YOUR excuse for not saving energy and money?

* If you’d like the detailed results (all categories with percentages of responses), subscribe to our blog and we’ll email the detailed results to you.