A Day in the Life of an EarthCraft House Inspector

What is EarthCraft House?

When people ask what I do, I say I direct a green building program for the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association and Southface Energy Institute. Typically, they give me a puzzled expression and ask, “What is a green building?”

While environmental construction practices have a strong presence in places such as the Pacific Northwest, California, and parts of Texas, it’s a relatively new concept for much of the South. In Atlanta, Georgia, the EarthCraft House program was launched in Fall, 1999. No one was sure what to expect. It was considered optimistic by most to have a few dozen homes built under the program in the first year.

Nearly a year and a half later, more than 100 homes are certified by EarthCraft House, with hundreds more committed to the program.

Entire subdivisions are requiring incoming builders to be EarthCraft House members. To date, 70 homebuilders have completed the training portion of the program, with seven more seminars set for the rest of the year, two of these focusing on marketing.

The homebuilders aren’t the only ones in on the act. Classes are teaching real estate agents, contractors, architects, appraisers and mortgage lenders about the benefits of green building. The response from all facets of the construction industry has been incredible, but it’s proving to be a challenge to keep up. Without the support of our industry and government partners, the EarthCraft House program wouldn’t be possible. The Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority, Fannie Mae, Georgia pacific, Dupont-Tyveck, Packer Industries, Home Depot, Building America, Keener Marketing, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Real Estate Guide and Northwest Exterminators are providing financial and marketing support along with invaluable advice.

Our partners, along with all the other building professionals I’ve met, are helping me answer the question, “What is green building?” For the builder, EarthCraft House is a second set of eyes that can serve as a powerful quality control measure. For the environmentalist, the program is reducing the construction waste heading to landfills and helping control Atlanta’s pollution problems. For the consumer, an EarthCraft House is more comfortable, quieter, healthier and cheaper to operate. For me, the beauty of a green building is how it uniquely serves the needs of so many people in such as powerful way.

James B. Hackler
Director, EarthCraft House

By Mark Newey


Five o’clock has come and gone. The last few subcontractors are packing up their tools and heading home as the construction site winds down for the day at Lot 23 of Hedgewood Properties’ Longleaf community in Atlanta. I am there with Pat Kurek, vice president of operations and the builder in charge of Longleaf, to finish up an EarthCraft House inspection. Although we both want to go home, our passion for changing the way homes are built keeps us at the work site. We’re discussing the logistics of moving the air handler to a combustion closet rather than the attic, a topic that involves energy efficiency, indoor air quality and noise levels. Like many issues in home construction, it is multifaceted, requiring us to think of a house as a system.

The continuing dialogue between inspector and builder is an integral part of the EarthCraft House program. Every home is individually inspected with the builder present. Inspections not only ensure the builder is meeting the program’s guidelines, but also to discuss ways of streamlining the green building process and including more high-performance, resource efficient, healthy features. All the builders that I have personally worked with say they’re learning a great deal from the process and appreciate the quality assurance that EarthCraft House inspections provide. For production builders such as Hedgewood, which construct hundreds of homes a year, the inspections are an effective tool for ensuring that all homes are performing properly. “The inspections have driven an improvement in the quality of our homes across the company,” says Kurek. “Building EarthCraft has refocused our efforts on what really counts in home construction.”

Cutting Down on Callbacks
One of the biggest paybacks of the inspections is cutting down on callbacks. Some of the oversights I’ve found during EarthCraft House inspections are disconnected ducts, missing attic insulation, improperly vented combustion equipment and missing wall sheathing – all things that significantly impact a home’s occupants and the environment. Many of these problems would have been discovered months later by dissatisfied homeowners complaining of high energy bills, uncomfortable spaces or persistent illness, but some oversights would never have been detected, causing problems for years to come.

However, an EarthCraft House inspection is much more than a quick walk-through to look for major problems. Visual assessment, documentation or diagnostic testing verifies all of the measures selected by the builder. This thorough process is what makes the EarthCraft House program one of the strongest environmental building programs in the country. Inspectors spend an average of three hours doing each inspection, and most homes don’t pass on the first try – the energy efficiency requirements in particular are very stringent, involving proper air sealing, complete insulation, and properly installed heating and cooling systems.

After Kurek and I add up the points for Lot 23 on the EarthCraft House worksheet, we discover the house scores 183 points, making it one of the higher scoring houses I’ve seen. In terms of the EarthCraft House program, the real strengths of Hedgewood homes lie in the categories of Energy Efficiency, Resource Efficient Building Materials, and Indoor Air Quality.

The measures in these three categories account for 133 of the total points at Lot 23. Energy efficiency features include 90% AFUE furnaces (6 points), windows with low-e coating (5 points), SEER 12 condensers (4 points), and ductwork with less than 5% leakage (20 points). Resource efficient building materials include engineered floor framing made of laminated wood chips instead of large diameter trees (4 points), roofing with a 40 year warranty (3 points), and air conditioner condensing pads made from recycled plastic (1 point). Indoor air quality features include placing the water heater outside of conditioned space (4 points), using high efficiency, low noise bath fans ( 3 points), and installing a plastic vapor barrier beneath the foundation to keep out moisture and soil gases (2 points).

Performance is Key
Certified houses range from small, low-income housing units to large luxury estates, with good home performance being the common thread. Most EarthCraft builders elect to have their houses and ducts tested for leaks, not just because the tests are worth so many points, but because they are excellent indicators of the overall performance of the house.

The house leakage test, worth 25 points, and the duct leakage test, worth 20 points, are weighted heavily in the EarthCraft House program for good reason. Leaky homes and leaky ductwork can easily account for 50% of the cost of heating and cooling a home, making air and duct sealing the most effective ways to reduce energy consumption and the pollution associated with it. To test a home, we use specially calibrated fans to pressurize the house or ductwork. We determine how leaky they are based on how hard the fans must work to produce a pressure change. A house that meets the EarthCraft’s specifications for air-tightness is about twice as tight as a typical new home.

Currently, all inspections are being performed by just a handful of inspectors, with each of us handling 20-30 inspections and re-inspections a month. We have a variety of backgrounds, but are well versed in building science and are trained Home Energy Raters. I hold a degree in aerospace engineering from Penn State University that helps me maintain a practical, scientific approach to building analysis. As the Inspection Coordinator, I spend most of my time helping new EarthCraft builders complete their first EarthCraft Houses, resolving questions about the program’s technical guidelines, and ensuring the quality and consistency of our inspections.

As more builders join the program, our projections of certified houses in the year 2 001 approaches 1000. I know we have quite a task ahead of ourselves to get every house inspected. I can understand why other green building programs decide to only spot check their houses instead of inspecting every one. Continuing the individual inspections holds a high priority for me because I can see the benefit they have. We have already hired three new inspectors to handle the increase in volume, and more will undoubtedly be needed.

Once Kurek and I have signed the EarthCraft House worksheet for Lot 23 Longleaf, it is time to head home. As I start up the car and pullout of the community, I wave good-bye to Pat and feel some satisfaction that together we’re slowly, but surely, changing the building industry as we know it.

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Sample EarthCraft House Worksheet: [sorry this link is no longer available]html

FROM Environmental Design+Construction, January/February 2001