NORTH HERO, Vt. (WCAX) – New regulations are set to go into effect next week aimed at making Vermont homes more eco-friendly. But some home builders say the state is moving too fast on the energy efficiency standards.
Jim Bradley is building what will soon become an 8,000-square-foot home in Grand Isle County. He says It will include the latest and most efficient amenities including eco-friendly heating, appliances, water systems, and weatherization.
“It’s going to be a much tighter house but it’s going to be more durable. You’re building to that 100-year mark and beyond,” he said.
How we engineer and build homes has changed a lot in recent years, taking into account humidity, airflow, and new kinds of weatherization materials. Vermont lawmakers last year passed updated energy and efficiency regulations requiring construction practices like these in new homes. But Bradley and other builders say they are concerned regulations are evolving too quickly and that the workforce won’t be trained on them and may make mistakes.
“If we’re just trying to hit the code benchmarks and builders don’t know how to build that high-performance assembly with good intentions, there can be a lot of errors,” Bradley said. And that, he says, can lead to mold or other critical failures. “And if you’re the unsuspecting buyer that buys that house 10 years down the road and then you find it, that investment, becomes a bigger financial risk for you because you have to replace all of these items.”
When he’s not at the Statehouse presiding over the Natural Resources & Energy Committee, Senator Chris Bray, D- Addison County, paints and does carpentry work. He doesn’t see a need for a further delay in the new standards. Bray points to a new law that will fund a registry of qualified builders and training for those on the latest standards, which he says do have flexibility.
“I always call it choose your own adventure. Find your own way to meet the performance standards instead of being given a strict recipe. ‘Here’s how a wall is built is built — A, B, C, D, E. — you must build it that way.’ That’s not the way it works,” Bray said
Bray also says there is urgency in implementing the home efficiency requirements because they will help meet new pollution reduction requirements under the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2020. “This is part of the logistics of how we build. Just like transforming how we heat and cool and how we drive,” he said.
Department of Public Service officials say they have made changes in the rule-making for the codes for insulation and windows in order to concerns from builders and architects about cost and feasibility.
While lawmakers approved the new standards last year, their effective date was delayed until July 1. Some industry officials are asking for state officials to delay it further.