About Building America
The Best Practices Series offers specifics on implementing Building America solutions.
Building America is an industry-driven research program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, designed to accelerate the development and adoption of advanced building energy technologies in new and existing homes. Here you will learn more about the research goals, the benefits to builders and homeowners, and the role of national laboratories. Some of the information is provided as Adobe Acrobat PDFs. Download Adobe Reader.
For additional information about Building America, see the Program Overview (PDF 1.3 MB).
Research Goals
Building America works with Research Teams made up of key members of the building industry in the production of advanced residential buildings. These teams conduct systems engineering research to develop technologies and strategies that achieve the following goals:
Learn more about the Building America Research Benchmark and Performance Analysis procedures.
- Produce homes on a community scale that use on average 40% to 100% less source energy
- Integrate onsite power systems leading to zero energy homes, that produce as much energy as they use, by 2020 (PDF 852 KB)
- Improve indoor air quality and comfort
- Help home builders reduce construction time and waste
- Implement innovative energy- and material-saving technologies
- Improve builder profitability
- Provide new product opportunities to manufacturers and suppliers
- Dramatically increase the energy efficiency of existing homes.
Successful technology packages are chosen based on overall, whole-house cost and performance assessments, allowing the Building America teams to achieve performance goals with little or no increase in home ownership costs. Learn more about how Building America puts research to work (PDF 483 KB).
Improved Home Features
The Building America teams work with builders to achieve the desired efficiency goals. They use a whole-house, systems engineering approach to select the least costly and highest value home features including:
- Climate-specific designs
- Super efficient walls, foundations, windows, and roofs
- Passive solar heating and cooling
- State-of-the-art heating, cooling, hot water, appliances, and lighting systems
- Solar thermal and solar electric systems
- Moisture resistant construction techniques.
|
Learn more about incorporating these features into your homes through the Best Practices handbooks. |
Benefits for Builders and Developers
As a developer or builder, constructing homes that are better designed and more energy-efficient will help your business through:
- Enhanced competitive advantage in the marketplace by offering a unique, beneficial product
- Cost savings from making the best materials and equipment choices and from less construction waste
- Reduced risks, increased productivity, and fewer callbacks
- Improved building performance
- Greater profit margins on energy efficiency and other upgrades
- Increased customer satisfaction and referrals.
Through proper design and selecting the right materials, cost trade-offs allow you to offer these higher quality homes with little or no additional operating cost for the homeowner.
|
Learn More
|
Benefits for Homeowners
Customers are very satisfied with homes built using Building America strategies because they offer:
Building America has assembled a list of Web sites for homeowners that offer tips and ideas on making new and existing homes more energy-efficient.
- Reduced costs—Building America homes use less energy which translates into large reductions in utility bills
- Improved comfort—Building America homes are constructed to reduce temperature fluctuations and room-to-room variations
- Higher quality—Building America homes utilize strategies and materials that improve the overall structure and operation
- Durability—Building America homes are designed to resist long term degradation caused by weather and age
- Environmental sustainability—Building America homes save energy and reduce pollution.