Homes today are complex – they involve systems within systems, integrated technologies, and dozens of “pieces” or components that homeowners rely on every day. Each home component – including systems, appliances, finishes, and more – has its own make, model, serial number, user manual, warranty information, and more.

A homeowners’ manual is the key to maintaining and understanding all of these components. It is a compilation of information to help homeowners quickly and easily find the information to operate and maintain their homes properly. With green homes this is particularly important as the efficiency and effectiveness of all the various elements that make the home “green” are very interrelated and cannot be overlooked. Homeowner education and documentation via a homeowners’ manual is a requirement of home certification to the National Green Building Standard™ (NGBS), but beyond that, it’s just good business!

Responses from NAHB and Guild Quality’s recent survey, “Homeowner’s Perspective: The Value of a Green Home,” illustrated that homeowners would like more education from their builders. Owners of Green Certified homes specifically requested education to “understand how to operate and maximize the benefits of the green-related features in their home.” Taking adequate, timely care of a home is extremely beneficial in the long run and a homeowners’ manual helps homeowners – your clients – protect their most significant and important investment.

What Should a Homeowner Manual Include?

A homeowners’ manual is an easy way to guide your clients to useful product information, common maintenance solutions, and homeowner education. It should also provide general green living tips, resources, and additional information.

The NGBS includes Homeowner Education/Maintenance elements as a way to ensure that homeowners are able to maintain and enjoy the long-term benefits from their homes’ green features. For a home to be NGBS Green Certified, the homeowners/maintenance manual must include all the mandatory items and obtain enough optional points to meet the Chapter 10 point threshold.

Where to Start: Inventory Home Components

A good starting point for your homeowners’ manual is the inventory of all of the major components and systems of the home. Each appliance or feature comes with a copious amount of information: a manual (or two); identifying numbers for the product; warranty information; and information on how to properly care for each component.

Ideally, this type of information should all be well organized and easily accessible. Logical ways to organize it may be by room or by system type. A simple spreadsheet, table, or list which references the item and physical location within the home, brand/manufacturer name, model name and number, and serial number is the most basic format.

Examples of home components to include are:

• HVAC filters
• thermostat operation and programming
• lighting controls
• appliances and settings
• water heater settings
• fan controls

Targeted Resources

Provide the homeowner advice, guidance, and resources for home care and research. This may include tips on how to save money on repairs, utilities, and replacements and help to reduce the total cost of homeownership. The key in this section is to make the information practical, easy to find and use.

Home-Related Resources

Homeowners often need references or other resources to conduct their own maintenance and improvements within the home. They can look to their neighbors, friends, or colleagues for these things, or they can rely on information you’ve provided them – and brag about how helpful their builder is to their neighbors, friends, and colleagues! These resources may include a diagram of the safety valves and controls in the home, local service providers for maintenance and service, frost-protected shallow foundation maintenance (where applicable), and photo records of the home’s framing with utilities. Be sure to include your/your business’s contact information in this information.

Guide to Maintenance Solutions

A narrative explaining the importance of maintenance and operation in retaining the attributes of a green-built building is the starting point for maintenance information. Maintenance checklists provide a baseline for homeowners on when to perform various maintenance tasks, as well as provide a guideline for what tasks are DIY versus those that may require calling a professional. Checklists may be organized as seasonal or annual, and you can either us a publicly available template or one you create. Your company may have a maintenance handbook that would be appropriate to include in this section of the manual as well. Other information you want to include: humidity maintenance how to’s; instructions for inspecting the building for termite infestation; maintenance of rainwater diverting systems (gutters and downspouts); and stormwater management.

Green Options & Landscaping

The exterior of homes and the landscaping around them often provide many opportunities for “greening up” practices and products. Options include understanding common hazardous materials used around the home and instructions for proper handling and disposal; information on organic pest control, fertilizers, deicers, and cleaning products; and information on native and/or low-water landscape materials.

Assembly, Presentation & Education

The intent of a homeowners’ manual is to deliver useful and timely information to homeowners – that’s a constant. How this information is delivered is more variable. Information may be delivered in a hard-copy printed version or in some digital/online format. Either way, the information should be organized and categorized for quick and easy access.

Homeowner education is typically conducted upon the walk-through of the house and can be easily reinforced with use of a homeowners’ manual. Good education and a comprehensive homeowners’ manual may even reduce call-backs, especially concerning the most common homeowner questions and concerns. Remember, homeowner education is an invaluable opportunity for you to showcase the quality of the green or high-performance home you have built, and your level of customer service.

You may wish to provide education and training on additional items as well. Your homeowners’ manual will offer your clients a lasting reminder of the care with which you built and presented their home.

It is a classic conversation in the home building industry, the moves as well rehearsed as the opening of a chess game between two champions. There is an obvious, logical path and arguments for both sides when it comes to the adoption of new technologies and codes and builders’ general resistance to change.

Every green home verifier I know has been asked by a builder, “How green could it really be to air seal my house to such a level that I have to bring in make-up air through mechanical ventilation? Why not just let the house ‘breathe’ naturally by not sealing it up so tight?” This question, and others like it generated by new technology and codes, is one of the best reasons to have an expert verify your home based on the practices of the National Green Building Standard (NGBS). If you were building homes under the NGBS, you would have been asking this question back in 2008, if not earlier. Now it’s 2014, the 2012 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) is gaining ground and being accepted in many states, and these are no longer questions of “if” but “when” you will be required to meet a certain building leakage number. If you already addressed this issue back in ’08, you’ve nothing to fear. The most current version of the NGBS brings you to the cutting edge of the building industry in terms of new technologies and code changes, which are evolving the industry into something totally different then when we were kids.

That being said, there are codes that make sense, and codes that don’t. During my last conversation that started off with the above question, a builder reminded me of a building code in the 70’s which required plastic (poly) to be stapled over insulation before the installation of drywall. That was stupid; no wonder builders are cautious. But now the industry and its practitioners have evolved. Building technology and innovation has grown into a field of study all its own. Builders need a person whose entire job is to stay up on the changes; someone whose job it is to help decipher which changes are to be embraced and which are to be fought. That person is an accredited verifier.

As a green home building verifier and advocate for high-performance, efficient construction, many people assume I embrace all the changes in the building code that seem to ratchet up energy- and resource-efficiency, but I don’t. I only embrace those that make sense from a building science perspective! To use an example from the 2012 IECC, I don’t think the wholesale installation of hot water pipe insulation (HWPI) makes sense. In my area of the country, many builders use a parallel piping system – the type of system where the hub looks like a spider with red and blue legs sprouting from the sides. A parallel piping system saves about 33 percent energy use over traditional piping. Now, even if you forget the exponential increase in the cost of HWPI between traditional piping and a parallel piping system (which can be around $300), think of the logistics. The difference (besides cost) is putting a two-inch hole through walls, TJIs, and possibly an LVL, and putting nine or more two-inch holes through all the same places. My point is if HWPI is mandated the way it is currently written, builders are more likely to revert to a traditional piping system and lose the 33 percent energy savings in favor of HWPI, which saves less energy.

In cases like this, you need that person there arguing on your behalf for something that makes sense – like an exception in the code for parallel piping systems. Before the NGBS became prominent, there were very few builders in my area who even knew what a parallel piping system was. It’s all about staying on the cutting edge, being ahead of the pack. And enlisting the help of a trained, accredited verifier and a rating system like the NGBS can do just that.

Back to our original question – why seal the house then bring in make-up air? There are plenty of sound reasons:

• Improved Punch Out: You want to reduce nail pops and drywall cracks? The best way to do that is to reduce air movement and temperature differentiation within the wall. I work with a builder whose punch out list at the one-year walk is very limited.
• Improved Air Quality: Which would you rather be breathing, the air that seeped through all of the little cracks in the house or air that was brought in intentionally and filtered before use?
• Energy Savings: The use of point source air allows for a heat recovery ventilator (HRV) or an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) to be installed, saving precious energy and nullifying the argument of wasting conditioned air through mechanical ventilation.
• Cleanliness: What lives in the aforementioned cracks in the building envelope? Dust. Along with eliminating dust, the elimination of cob webs is another benefit of a well-sealed house. No self-respecting spider would make a web where there is no air flow – no chance of catching anything!

So here’s the bottom line (conveniently located at the bottom of my post!). Why certify under the NGBS? Being at the cutting edge of the innovation implementation curve allows you more time for adjusting to the evolution of our industry. To know what’s out there, to see it coming, and to adjust accordingly. A third-party expert armed with a consensus-based “roadmap” like the National Green Building Standard is necessary to help you navigate today’s building world.