Here is the text version of the Zero Energy Ready Home webinar, "Voice of the Builder - Affordable" presented in December 2017. Watch the webinar.

Alex Krowka:
Presentation cover slide:
... Energy Ready Home training webinar series. We're excited that you can join us today for our final Voice of the Builder webinar of 2017, focusing on affordable homebuilders. We have a treat for you today, as our presenters, Rick Wertheim of United Way of Long Island and Michael Sollitto of Habitat for Humanity of South Sarasota County, Florida, will discuss how they build some of the highest-performing homes for a segment of the population that in many ways needs it the most. Today's session is one in a continuing series of training webinars to support our partners in designing, building, and selling DOE Zero Energy Ready Homes. My name is Alex Krowka, and I provide account management support for the program. I'll take a moment to cover some general notes on webinar housekeeping. All attendees will be in listen-only mode, however, we do invite you to ask questions throughout the session in the questions section of the GoToWebinar program. We'll monitor these throughout the webinar, and after the presentation we'll have some time to go over your submitted questions that weren't answered. This session is being recorded, and it will be placed on the resources page of the Zero Energy Ready Home website. Please allow some time for this, since it does take a week or so to go through the process of being added online. We will notify everyone once everything is uploaded. Now, I'm going to do a quick introduction to Rick. Rick's been involved in the affordable housing sector for 25 years, starting as an architect working on community development projects, then moving on to be the construction director for Habitat for Humanity on Long Island. And now presently, he's the senior VP of housing and green initiatives at United Way of Long Island. His passion for high-performance, affordable homes is only matched by his desire to improve the housing condition for all Long Islanders. And we are very excited to welcome Rick to our webinar. So go ahead, Rick; take it away.

Rick Wertheim:
First presentation slide:
Thanks, Alex. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm just going to cycle right through to our first slide and just jump in. At United Way Long Island we serve a suburban population of 3 million people.

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So we have a whole lot of residential homes here, and we happen to be one of the most expensive segments in the nation, probably second only to San Francisco. Our housing costs are very high. Our utility costs are very high. The cost of living here is extremely high, too. So the need for affordable housing is dire. We do building and developing of primarily three segments. We'll do special-needs homes. That's like developmentally disabled housing, physical or mental disabilities, autism, HIV or AIDS, substance abuse, those type of projects. Special purpose homes, on the other hand, are housing for seniors or veterans, some group homes, domestic violence shelters, short-term emergency housing. You can kind of package all the other type of special purpose homes into anything that doesn't have to do with special needs. And the topic we're going to focus on today is affordable homes. And that is a difficult segment to address because how do you do affordable housing in an area where the costs are really high?

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We can look at the macro of affordable housing. And the macro says that communities need affordable housing to house folks who are low to moderate income who are sort of workforce housing participants. We need to develop a workforce to support the economy, so we also need to have housing for those folks. So how do you do that, where it's really high-cost? And that's what I'm going to try to sort of dive into and discuss today.

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Just to throw out for some comparison, just give you an idea of what we're dealing with, with high-cost areas: Our income is typically 75 percent higher than the nation, but our home costs are 250 percent higher. And that's really difficult, because we pay disproportionately more for housing than anywhere else in the country. Therefore, we have to come up with affordable housing solutions. We have to come up with a way to get people to survive on Long Island. And we have something called the "Brain Drain," where young people coming out of college with their degrees are choosing not to come back. They're going to other areas of the country. We're losing our talent on Long Island because we don't have the capacity to come up with an affordable housing solution. That's why United Way of Long Island has really made it a community impact initiative, a way for us to target what's a real problem in our suburban areas to get our young people the opportunity of housing, that they could come in once they're starting their careers, once they're starting to look for their first-time home, as opposed to just leaving the area. So it's interesting when you kind of look around and it seems that everyone looks to the Internet today for the definition of anything.

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Wikipedia has an interesting kind of definition: Affordable housing is deemed affordable to those with a median household income as rated by the national government or some sort of jurisdiction that gives you an affordability index. They're just trying to gauge the type of housing in an area to some sort of index. I like HUD's definition, which pretty much says housing for which the occupant is paying no more than 30 percent of his or her income for gross housing costs, including utilities. So that's a good indicator, and that pretty much will tell you where you are in the affordable housing sort of barometer, where it is you would be regionally. And I just want you to pay attention to the red segment, which talks about utilities, because we're going to spend a little time on that.

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So what we found through trial and error and really working through different scenarios is there's an underlying formula for affordability. We choose to produce a home that incorporates good design practice. And good design practice on affordable homes is key, because everything for us starts from the plans. We like to build to a module. We're working toward a house in the box. And "house in the box" is coming up with our kit of parts that we can take from project to project that's consistent. We get familiar with the installation. If we have parts, they go from house to house. It's just a good way to be efficient and a good way to start on your affordability journey. The second point is, super energy efficiency is really paramount for us. An affordable home can only be affordable if it has the best energy efficiency. And for us, it's easy to build that in on the front end, and while we're framing, we want to have a very high- efficient building envelope. Once we have a building envelope that's really efficient, we could then move into right-size mechanicals. And mechanicals that really push the envelope for what it is that they're looking to perform. So 90-plus percentage efficiency is what we always want to do. We're looking for natural gas whenever available. We do see that there's opportunities for some other technologies like geothermal and heat pumps. And depending upon your region, your utility rates, and the resources required to get those different technologies done, those can be a consideration for affordable homes. Number 4, speaking to many of my colleagues and many of the folks at DOE and many of the folks who struggle with this, is you really need a highly trained workforce. Your folks have to be really good at what they do, to come in at price point, and you have to be able to produce a house in a most efficient way with the workers that you have. You really have to invest in your staff, really have to get them trained. For this point, you want to have better deliverables with less man-hours. And there really is no skimping. The affordable housing mantra in the past was, let's come in at a low cost, let's see if we can beat up all our subs, and see if we could lower the costs that way, and that really works in reverse. The last point, and I know there's been many seminars and there's been much talk about the quality in a high-performance home, especially when it relates to affordability. You cannot skimp on quality. I'm going to say that's last but certainly not least on this list. The less callbacks you have, the less money that you're going to have to put out, and the less time and effort that the project is going to require.

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What I've also found with some of the ingredients for the recipe of affordable housing is that there's some pretty prescriptive paths out there. And some of them really take you from A to Z to help you to get to a great product that is sustainable. It's green, whatever that means. What else you can do to a home to give it the efficiency that it needs. Some global considerations. I'm going to say of all of the prescriptive paths and all of the methodologies to get to high-performance home, my favorite by far is the U.S. DOE Zero Energy Ready Home protocol. We've had a lot of success with this program. Many of our building professionals are able to access the resources behind Zero Energy Ready Homes. I use the Building America Solution Center often. That's the basics for some of the most important components of the homes that we put together. And the success is really a function of what I'm able to pull from that resource to deliver a better product. The best national labs from Pacific Northwest Labs to Oak Ridge Labs, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Brookhaven Labs in our own backyard here in Long Island, contribute to the great work that needs to go behind a high-performance home. And especially with the challenges of building a high-performance, affordable home.

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Our marketing strategy: I'm going to just really simplify this for us, because it's easy. Affordable homes get gobbled up really quickly. So our marketing strategy is just education and awareness. Our homes will 99 percent of the time sell themselves just by virtue of the fact that they have an affordability component to them. And I keep throwing around the term "affordability." I want to talk about that in a little bit. But we're lucky enough to have not only a waiting list, sometimes for some of the projects that we produce, we have to have a lottery. We have to pick from a hat to see who will be the lucky family or the recipient to get that home. Because we're producing a home that is superior in many ways, that is at an affordable price and has savings and comfort and value that last well into its life cycle.

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What I'm going to suggest now might be a little different, which might be a little different in the way that we talk about affordable housing. Most of the time, especially in high-value areas or high housing cost areas, there's actually a negative connotation with affordable housing. The "not in my backyard" syndrome is alive and well. Many areas don't really understand what affordable housing truly means. They associate affordable housing with a specific clientele or a homeowner that might have some negative perceptions. But the fact of the matter is, affordable housing is just housing that needs to be at a price point where people coming out of college can buy them. People who are firemen, policemen, nurses. Basically our blue-collar workforce, our low-, mod-income folks have every reason to have available to them an affordable housing solution. So for the next generation of affordable housing, or the next generation I should say of high-performance, affordable housing, we need to pay a lot of attention to its affordability plus its sustainability. And what we've done here at United Way of Long Island is we've kind of banged those two concepts together and merged them to come up with what's now called attainable housing.

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Attainable housing is just the combination of affordable and sustainable. It's really a great idea for how to change the narrative from what can be construed as a negative connotation to just a very neutral sort of title for the type of housing that is available to many, many people.

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Continuing on with our marketing, we find that besides talking about housing in a different way, we like to do education and awareness as far as events go. Events are really great. If your affordable housing department has any sort of event department or marketing department or if you could recruit folks who could put events like this together, they really work well. They really spread the word. People get to touch and look and feel, and they get to walk through and see what an affordable, high-performance home looks like. When we're out at our events, we always want to have visibility. The best way to do that is with our trucks. Our local utility was happy to donate a very nice large utility national grid. I'm very happy to get this on-board generator, on-board compressor. We basically build our affordable homes right out of that truck. And that truck has a lot of visibility, and I think the messaging for what it is that your housing strategy in your affordable housing program, should translate right to the trucks that you drive around with and park in front of your sites.

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Here's our challenges. Our challenges, I'm not going to say there've been many, but there's a significant amount of challenges, especially when we walk through the building department. High-performance homes, especially for an affordable house, you bang a lot of stuff into a small, let's say, 1,100, 1,200, 1,300-square-foot envelope, it gets very challenging for the building departments. I'm talking about hot roofs, talking about different double-wall strategies, talking about all of the components that many of you on the call who know what I'm talking about have challenges with, building science as it relates to affordable housing project. The trade reluctance is significant. A lot of our subcontractors are not really willing to entertain the notion of high-performance home detailing. The underskilled workforce or the lack of a skilled workforce for contractors who are building affordable housing is a real problem. And I've heard that often across the country. One of the bigger challenges is the cost of the high-performance equipment. How can you actually build a price point product that has component parts that actually cost more than a code-built home? And what complicates and makes things even worse is that the design professionals that you're looking to get your plans drawn up and gotten through the building department are not only unfamiliar with what your product and mission are, but they don't know how to convey and communicate that well enough to get through the building department without incident.

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So we like to just meet with the building department, get the inspectors on board with what we're doing. We walk them through as a pre-meeting, and they actually entertain the idea of meeting us in advance of submitting the plans for plan review. And we work through some of the challenges. We work through some of the differences in opinion between some of the code versus building science issues. And once we get them involved, they take more ownership, and it's been working out really well. And I suggest you do that at any cost possible. On that same note, we like to involve the trades in our processes, as well. We'll have at least one kickoff meeting before we start. But mostly we'll involve them in the 80 percent portion of the construction documents, to ask them what they think about the different mechanical systems, the different building envelopes, how we put in rigid insulation and hanging windows. The more we involve the trades in the process, it leads to a better product for our decision-making process. I'm going to talk a little bit about utilizing some innovative workforce options. And we'll get to that in a couple minutes. But I really think that we as a group need to rethink our cost versus value equation. We really have to think about that we can't just put low-priced items into homes and call it affordable housing. We have to think about what the value of the equipment we put in, the value of the building materials that is, as it relates to a different analysis. All I can tell you is that I work at a pretty big company; we have 50 people here. And our CFO, who knows very little about construction, he just looks at our spreadsheets. He looks at our numbers, and he looks at how long and how little we pay in operational costs, and if our CFO tells me that this is a no-brainer, why doesn't everyone else do this, then I think that's a really good entree into how it is that we lay out our costs and look at it from a different perspective. The last part, coming from that song we all know, "breaking up is hard to do," we do need to divorce ourselves from the folks who put our projects together on the professional level. So our architects or our engineers that we've been dealing with. And really pushing them to keep up with us on building science developments, or high-performance homebuilding detailing. You should just do it, you should just look into finding like-minded professionals who have the same passion for building affordable homes. Coming up with that really difficult solution of balancing cost and value. And leaning on each other to come up with a great product that will be flying right through the building department.

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So here's a great workforce development option. There's a program out across the entire country called YouthBuild. And these programs are already funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, where we take low-income, minority 18- to 24-year-olds who are out of school, out of work, and they get OSHA training, they get pre-apprentice vocational training. They are basically a brand-new workforce that's being trained for you. I would just go on the YouthBuild website, go type in by your area. There's local programs across the entire country. You have a workforce that's ready, willing, and waiting, and they have been trained. And they've been trained in many programs across the country in high-performance homebuilding, some green building. And many of them not only know what a blower door is, they know how to operate them.

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There's plenty of veteran programs out there. And "helmet to hard hat" programs, a Hard Hat Heroes. We run a VetsBuild program right here. And veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan are very willing to enter a field where they have high-growth, high-demand opportunities. So I would encourage you, from your workforce problems, to look for many of the veteran programs where they have very robust trainings to support this high-performance homebuilding initiative. And if you don't have either of those two programs available to you, just look through your local department of labor. Different counties have regional department of labor offices. And there's plenty of tech school options, as well. But workforce and getting efficient on a job site is really important.

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The main takeaway for attainable housing is that it just cannot be first cost anymore. You have to strike the dialog of square foot cost from your repertoire. You have to really look at building affordable homes based on its lifecycle cost. Because affordable homes by definition will have savings built in for the life of the project. And that's true for affordability. First cost homes, and I've gotta say in my early career as an architect, I have a lot of guilt for building pretty much HUD vanilla boxes. Because our directive was, let's do as many housing projects as we can for the lowest cost, get people into homes, and that model is not successful, because those homes now have the highest costs, the highest maintenance, and they waste the most energy. They're the energy hogs of the neighborhood. I was sort of complicit in making those projects. So I really stress that getting away from the square foot cost model is what really needs to be done. Change the narrative, change the dialog, to it's all about lifecycle costs. When I have housing authorities and community development agencies and other housing providers ask me, well, Rick, how much per square foot is this house you're talking about? I said, let's really not look at it from that perspective. Let's look at it from a lifecycle cost perspective, because this house is actually cheaper to live in the day you move in. The picture that I have on the screen right now is one of our experimental projects where we try to really, really push the envelope. This is a (inaudible) skinned six-panel, not unlike what they rebuilt in New Orleans after Katrina. So this is six-inch walls waterproofed, this is 10-inch roof panels, this is really super-high-performance home. It was affordable because our crews were able to erect this and we were able to put it together. The challenge becomes when you put this into production, if this particular housing affordability model would work for you.

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So that's pretty much what I have today. I'm going to just say that anything that I was not able to cover, feel free to call me, email me. You can look at our website. We have a lot of training resources. We actually have a 5,000-square-foot energy-efficiency smart build training center that's available to the region. We host trainings there. We invite people from all over to come by and look at smart build and high-performance homes. And with that, I would like to thank everyone, and thanks again.

Alex Krowka:
Alright, thank-you so much, Rick. That was a fantastic presentation. A lot of quality lessons to be learned, whether it's not skimping on quality, making sure you're communicating with everyone involved in the process, looking at the value of the homes versus their initial costs, finding like-minded individuals to work with -- certainly much, much easier than butting heads with someone who will disagree. Workforce development -- we've heard from a lot of our builders that the workforce, especially for subs, is aging, and it's hard to find quality subs who you know will be around for a while.

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So those were definitely some great options that you presented us. And then the concept of attainable housing, you know, taking affordable and combining it with sustainable and communicating it as attainable. Just really, really great stuff there. So thank-you again, Rick.

Cover slide of second presentation:
Our next presenter is Michael Sollitto. Michael has been engaged in the construction industry for over 25 years. He's a sustainability advocate, a Florida Green Building Council and NAHB-certified green professional, and currently the director of construction for Habitat for Humanity South Sarasota County in Venice, Florida. Since joining Habitat in 2008, he has built over 90 homes, enabling low-income families to live in affordable, energy-efficient, durable, and sustainable homes. Michael manages staff and volunteers to build homes certified to ENERGY STAR^® version 3.1 and Florida Green Building Coalition Platinum standard, and has taken efficiency to a higher level by participating in and certifying all new construction to DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program. Additionally, the homes certified to the Florida WaterStar water conservation program and the USFAS Florida Friendly Landscape designation. Under his leadership, 65 new construction homes have been built, 25 have been reconstructed with the neighborhood stabilization program, and three veteran homes have been repaired through the Legacy of Valor veteran repair initiative. New construction homes have won the U.S. DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Housing Innovation Award for affordable housing in 2014, '15, and '16. Michael is an FGBC certifying agent and operates certified green building consultant firm in Venice. He serves his community by devoting his career to developing energy-efficient, durable, and sustainable housing, while overseeing all phases of Habitat's multimillion-dollar diverse construction program. So, without further adieu, go ahead, Michael. The floor is yours.

Michael Sollitto:
Well, good afternoon and thank-you, Alex, for reading that whole bio -- I thought you might have edited it a little bit. But we're very proud of what we do here at our affiliate. I want to thank you and also the Zero Energy Ready program for having us today. We're similar in a lot of ways to the United Way. Sounds like Rick and I may have had many conversations over the years about how we approach and do the things. However, Habitat for Humanity is a volunteer-based organization. And that workforce, if you will, is really what allows us to build these high-efficiency, durable, and sustainable homes, because those volunteers help us reduce our labor costs. And it's very important. We have a great group of volunteers that help us to perform our mission.

First slide of second presentation:
Our goal always is to keep it simple. Simplicity works best for us. As Rick had mentioned, the home-in-a-box concept, well, we basically do build the same home, same features. We don't get crazy with introducing all of these newfangled technologies that are out there, because sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. We really can't afford to experiment. So we have to really lean on the tried-and-true techniques that we use. The picture you see is a typical house that we build here in Florida. Our goal here is to build a very durable home because we have to build to certain wind standards. I don't think that they do that in many other areas in the country. 160 miles per hour is what we're building to now. So all our homes are built utilizing concrete block and we have many different techniques for tie-downs for the trusses and so on. Our mission is to provide safe and decent housing. And of course now we want to make sure that they're efficient. For those folks that are in need of this type of product, we too have a waiting list. People come through to our program, mostly by word of mouth. We don't have a big budget for advertising, marketing, and so on. And we do it in different ways. And it works for us. Our commitment to ENERGY STAR and Zero Energy Ready Homes is 100 percent. We started ENERGY STAR I think back in 2009, 2008, and the Zero Energy Ready program I believe was around 2013, '14. So, moving on.

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We work throughout the community, and we have many different events that we put on, like Women Build Week. We built a community in our local area here, in 18 townhomes. We went back several years later and purchased and installed a playground for the children that live in the community. We have a lot of different community partners, and we hold it in these events. Participation in the building program, physical work for the partners and volunteers, emotional benefit is the realization of completing a home and providing a safe and decent place to live. And the economic benefit to the new homeowner and to the community. Our families pay taxes and insurance, along with a mortgage. Our homes are sold and not given away. Some people think that Habitat is a give-away program, but it's not. And when we've built better homes, the families can then use their earnings to support their family and spend the money in the communities in which they live. And because our homes are built better, it lowers the cost of maintaining the home.

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Our program has been featured in many publications and blogs, recently in Green Builder magazine, in their building science blog. They did a wonderful write-up about our homes, based on the Department of Energy's Tour of Zero and our participation in the Housing Innovation Award program, and we've also had local stories done by media, newspapers. And we also do a dedication when we build our homes. So we invite a lot of the local dignitaries and elected officials, and they come out and they get to do a hands-on and see the houses that we build. And they truly are great houses.

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So we like to call our homes -- yes, we are in the affordable housing business, but we really strongly believe that energy efficiency equals affordability. So we've kind of just basically leaned on the performance aspect of the home, calling them performance homes, which are very affordable, by the way. And so this is another photo of a typical home that we've built here in the area.

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This particular house won a Housing Innovation Award and I was honored to have the award presented by Mr. Rashkin, Sam Rashkin. And I just wanted to pass that along.

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Zero Energy Ready Homes. We build our homes to the ENERGY STAR protocol, but we take it to the next level. When we first started this, I had met Sam at a conference in Orlando, and we were looking at the requirements, and I just thought to myself, how would we ever do this within the world that we live in, because we don't profit on any of our homes. Everything is done with donations, grants. And it seemed to be an impossibility. But I said, you know, I'm going to give this a shot. So we did our first home, and I saw how much better the home was. I saw how intuitive and smart the choices were that we were making, looking at the building envelope, and the duct systems, the water efficiency, the lighting and the appliances. The indoor air quality. And giving our homeowners the ability to install a solar system if they should so desire at some point. It really was a no-brainer. I know everybody uses that term. But it really was. We were building much better homes that were performing better, that were scoring better, better HERS scores. We introduced the Florida Green Building Coalition's green building program, and combined with the others that we certify to, like Florida WaterStar and the Florida Friendly Program for Landscaping, we have homes that are built that are actually better than the homes that are built here by the local national builders. They don't know how we do this. And I love talking about it. I love telling them all the time: Why can't you do this? We're a nonprofit and we're able to produce a beautiful home. It's a good-looking home. And it's efficient, and it's durable. Our goal was to come up with a model that would outlast the mortgage of the home for the homeowner. Because most of our homeowners stay in beyond the mortgage. We went back and we looked at some of the older homes that we had built, and my God, what was happening -- the homeowners spending so much money on maintenance and repair, because of no controls over the work, the techniques, the equipment that was being installed. This opened our eyes to a lot of different aspects to homebuilding.

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And a couple of photos here of some of the techniques that we used, the sort of the meat and potatoes. If you look during the building process, we cover all of our vents to prevent any contamination. That's a green building requirement. Our garage, the top of the walls, a B wall is built, and then insulated to separate the garage space from the actual conditioned space. We use a batt insulation throughout the walls in the home, for a lot of reasons, but mostly for privacy. And we also use a blue-board insulation. We ferret out in the inside wall, and then we cover it with this product by Fi-Foil, which is a foil-based perforated vapor shield.

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This shows some pictures of the (inaudible) plumbing system that we've adopted just recently. Prior to this, we were using just standard CPVC, and my God, this made the world of difference, not only is our water system more efficient, it's so much easier to install. Our volunteers do electrical, they do plumbing, they do framing. They do all the trim-outs, the flooring, the drywall. Everything except the air conditioning, which is done by a professional company that is ENERGY STAR-qualified. So of course, we have our duct systems designed by a local energy professional. And as I always say, as a builder your relationship with an energy professional who's going to guide you in the proper sizing of your equipment, they're going to guide you with a duct design, they're going to do your blower door testing. And if you're working with ENERGY STAR or if you just want a HERS score, these are the folks that you're going to be talking to very often about changes you may want to make to your homes, how to make them more efficient, what better windows to use, so on and so forth. So the relationship with that company or that person, that energy professional, is key to building an energy-efficient home.

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On the next slide, we have our windows, which we purchase from a company here locally in Florida. These are very high-performance windows. And the doors, of course they're impact-rated for hurricanes. And our doors are all fiberglass with a synthetic jamb, so they'll never rot or have to be replaced. Our bath fans -- we use a Panasonic bath fan, in conjunction with a fresh-air intake to take the balanced approach for introducing and exhausting fresh air into the home. And we're currently using a Mitsubishi minisplit system, which is fully ducted. We don't use the wall units or cassettes or whatever they call those. We've designed a system for the minisplit air handler to be installed in the attic, which you see in the bottom right. And that is fully ducted just like any conventional air conditioning system. The unit that we use right now is rated at a 17.5 SEER. And it has a cooling capacity, radiant capacity of 17,200 Btu. So we pay a little more for air conditioning. We pay a little more for better windows. We pay a little bit more for treating our trusses. As you see in the photo, the trusses are borate-treated. We pay a little bit more for doors, insulation. But in the end, this saves the homeowner a good deal of money every month on their energy costs. It also saves them on maintenance costs, because we're putting better products, better technologies, into a home. And the key is allowing those folks, these first-time homebuyers, to buy a home, to get into a home, and not have to worry about things, about inferior equipment, inferior kitchen cabinets, lighting. Every light bulb in our house is LED. It's a package. And we want to make sure that they're happy and they live in a healthy home. We don't put carpeting in our homes. We use ceramic tile.

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Here's just a quick photo or slide about how windows are rated and what to look for. As you can see here, our windows currently are very high-efficiency, rated with an SHGC of 0.19 and a U-factor of 0.33. I think those numbers have come down a little bit since this photo was taken. The better window you have, the better efficiency, the better quality of a home that you're going to build. Habitat for Humanity is very fortunate because we have a lot of folks that want to support us in what we do. So relationships for us are key. And we go out into the community and we speak to these local manufacturers and vendors, contractors and so on, and of course, we ask them for help. And because we have great relationships throughout the local community, we're able to purchase different types of equipment and materials at a reduced cost. So with our volunteer labor and the help that we get, we can make better choices and put better materials and equipment into our homes.

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And the summary is, basically, better windows, better insulation, better doors, better HVAC design and equipment, better process control, is a better home, period. Now of course, that kind of goes without saying. You have to pay attention to what you do. You've got to learn from some mistakes that you may make. Our main goal here in Florida is to keep humidity out of the house. We don't have these great delta temperature swings where we have to be concerned primarily with wall insulation. However, using the products that we do, we average out at about an R-13, R-14 for the wall. Our spray foam insulation, with ENERGY STAR we go on the performance stage method. And our HERS score now in our homes is somewhere -- I guess it's around 46, which is kind of incredible considering that we don't use PV. And maybe someday we will. But right now, PV is just too expensive for us to introduce into our home. We also use a heat pump hot water system made by AO Smith. It costs a little bit more, comes with a better warranty, and certainly is energy efficient. So the challenge we faced in the early days was convincing our board and our executive director that this was the way to go, to build a better home, a longer-lasting home, a healthy home, and an energy-efficient home. And we had to get everybody on board. But once they saw the product and they understood that our homes have a $40 to $50 a month energy bill. And of course, we don't use a lot of heat here in Florida. But with air conditioning, is the key, and it's on every day. Once they realize that, and we started getting the success stories from the partner families that were purchasing our homes, it was a no-brainer. Our volunteers had a little tough time adjusting to all the little techniques that we wanted to do, but once they got on board with it, once they heard the stories, met the homeowners, came to the dedications, we just will never look back. So our commitment to ENERGY STAR, to a lower HERS score, to the Zero Energy Ready program, will continue at least for as long as I'm here, anyway.

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Basically, you know, I can talk all day about the houses that we build, but I think you probably heard enough. We've been featured in some different blogs and stories. We work very closely with the Florida Solar Energy Center, with the Florida Green Building Coalition, with the Florida WaterStar program. We work as consultants. People call us from all over the country, and we explain to them what we do. We're featured on the Tour of Zero. We won the Housing Innovation Award for three years. We skipped last year, but I think we're going to submit again in this upcoming year. And we also have some Zero Energy Ready case studies that are available online. So if anybody's interested in some of the techniques or materials or things that we do, please give us a call, send us an email. We'd love to talk to you. And really, that's about it.

Alex Krowka:
Great. Thank-you, Michael. That was another great presentation. Touched on a lot of important points. Simplicity is something that we've heard multiple times from multiple builders.

ZERH contact info slide:
I think a former speaker of ours, Jay Epstein, mentioned the simplicity of the build. Don't overcomplicate things, can certainly save costs, make things easier. You know, you touched on the higher initial costs; they allow for reductions -- significant reductions, in a lot of cases -- in energy and maintenance costs over the lifetime of the home. You know, you focus on how this can be done, and it should be done. And if you guys can do it, everyone else should be able to. I guess a last point I wanted to touch on is, similar to Rick's, working with like-minded individuals. When you were speaking about working with your raters, and it's not just about making your life easier but there's also kind of a knowledge share that can be had when working with other like-minded professionals in the industry. So again, thank-you both very much for these two wonderful and informational presentations. We've had some questions come in, so I'm going to read through some of them. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to hit them all, but I'll try and get to as many as possible. Some of them are for you, Rick. Some of them are for you, Michael. Others are for both of you. So I will try and distinguish when I can. So the first question, for Rick: One of the homes that you showed had six panels, and the attendee was wondering what the foundation was for that home.

Rick Wertheim:
That particular home, we did two of them. And they were identical. One, we did a full basement with Superior walls, which is a pre-engineered, drop-in-place foundation system, no footing, just right on a compacted 10-inch gravel bed. And the other one was slab-on-grade.

Alex Krowka:
Perfect; thank-you. And then for you, Michael: What's the cost difference for building to EF-3 versus EF-1?

Michael Sollitto:
I'm not sure I know what you mean -- what do you mean, EF-1?

Alex Krowka:
I believe they mean the Enhanced Fujita scale. So sustaining hurricane-force winds.

Michael Sollitto:
OK. You're talking about the wind code. Well, here in Florida, we have mandatory wind codes. And the minimum that was put through with the Florida building code was 130 miles an hour. So our structures exceed that in many different ways. And we're looking at now, with the impact windows and the hardware tie-downs that we use for our trusses and so on, including the structure of the building, the block, we will withstand 160 miles an hour. So the cost difference on that -- well, when it's mandatory, you really even can't consider that, because you have to build it to that. But building a block home is more durable in our area than doing a stick build. We really haven't costed that out, because we're looking to build a better house, and we feel that block is better. I don't have a number for you on that, but I would think that if you had to go between the 130 and the 160 it would be minimal. Just be a stronger strapping and things like that in a concrete block, poured cell, poured (inaudible) home.

Alex Krowka:
Got it; thank-you. And you mentioned being better. And some people understand this as just equating to being more expensive. So what's offsetting this? Is it the voluntary labor pool? Is it the lifetime savings that homeowners have on their energy bills, and their maintenance costs? Maybe their health costs? What's your answer to that?

Michael Sollitto:
Well, yea. I mean, it's a combination. It goes right down the line. Reduced energy costs, reduced maintenance costs, replacements. That return on investment. We're putting in a better air conditioning system. But because we use a Mitsubishi Diamond dealer that's ENERGY STAR-qualified, we get a 12-year warranty. OK? We don't pay extra for that. You know, and it goes on and on. The hot water tank is 10 years. These houses are solar-ready, so if and when the market for solar panels comes down, then we can truly make it a net-zero home by doing that. Incorporating some of these techniques. You know, the houses are much more durable than stick build. I know stick build can go faster and it may be a little bit of a cost difference there, but for us, it's a no-brainer. We feel that we're building a much better product. And actually, in our area most houses are block now, anyway, because of the hurricane requirements and so on.

Alex Krowka:
Got it. And Rick, do you have anything to add to that?

Rick Wertheim:
We're not production builders. We consider ourselves demonstration homebuilders. So a lot of the homes that we build are meant to be a case study for the industry. And we've done ICF, we've done SIPs, we've done stack framing, we've done just about every high-performance housing model. And I could tell you from the affordability side, the stack framing is really the best way for us to go. And it produces a good, better product at the lowest cost.

Alex Krowka:
Perfect. And that kind of segues into the next question: What's your typical cost per unit for these homes?

Rick Wertheim:
I was waiting for someone to ask that. One of my least favorite questions, because I'm going to tell you that we are typically 10 to 15 percent minimal over code for every single house that we do. And we justify the additional cost by the value that we provide in the lifecycle of the cost to the owner the day that they move in. So the additional money that we put in is usually recouped at the day that you move in, based upon the energy saved. Because we are low- to no-energy. We are near the net-zero on all of our homes. And that in and of itself is enough to justify the additional costs. It's just, I'm going to give you a number that's so obtuse to the market, because where some folks -- and don't ever say that I use square foot costs -- are building to $125 across the country. Some of them are doing it for $110 a square foot. We're up to the $130, $140s, and some of our larger products, $150 a square foot. And for the folks on the call, they will gauge that properly, but if I speak that to someone else, their brain shuts off and then they just don't even entertain the notion of high-performance homes and what they really mean.

Alex Krowka:
Got it. And Michael, do you have anything to add on top of that?

Michael Sollitto:
I do. Our homes are about a little over 1,700 square foot under roof. And so the conditioned space is just a little over 1,300 square feet. And we have some challenges here locally. I don't know in New York -- I'm sure that they have similar. But we have a whole bunch of fees that we have to pay when we build homes. In addition to permitting fees, we have impact fees. And I'm sure they have them across the country. And they're based on the square footage of the home. So if you look at it without the land development, without those fees, we're just a little over $100,000 to build this house. And that's incredible. Because we're making that up with volunteer labor and whatever donations we get, and so on and so forth, and go down the road. But if you took the real numbers the under-roof square footage, and then you divided that by what we budget per home, which is about $140,000, give or take, all-in, you're looking at just under $80 a square foot. And for me, that's incredible. So that's why, you know, with the partnerships we have, with the local vendors, the manufacturers, the contractors, that's how we're able to build such a great house. And continue to build it, you know, working within our budget. And that house will probably appraise out down here for about $200,000. But of course, we don't sell it for that. We sell it based on the median income, so we don't do a cash-at-closing on these homes. So we never get that money back. Habitat holds the mortgage at a 0 percent interest. So we get it back in a payment of $400-$500 a month, with taxes and insurance. That's how we get the money back on our homes. And then what we do is we have a program where we work with local banks that maybe will purchase our mortgages. We'll sell them to them in bulk, and we'll get funding back and then we put it back into the building program. It's a very complicated business program, but it works.

Alex Krowka:
Yea, and you guys are very successful at it. And here's kind of a little bit of a different question, but we're starting to see it more and more: For both of you, are you choosing to install electric vehicle charging systems? Or have you considered doing that, at all?

Michael Sollitto:
I'll take that first. No, I have not. We build to a very specific clientele. They are very young, mostly low-income, and extremely first-time homebuyers -- meaning that they don't really have much experience with the operation of a home. And to me, that's a bell and a whistle. It may be something that we would consider. I would even think about, if it was something that was needed, we may even go back and install it for them. However, now we don't see those folks spending that kind of money to buy that kind of vehicle. Do you follow what I'm saying? Those vehicles are very expensive, and we're working with folks that are not -- don't have the ability to purchase that kind of a product. I'd love to do it, but -- it doesn't make sense in our world.

Rick Wertheim:
Alex, it's interesting you ask that question, because our first project on the boards for 2018 is a partnership with Suffolk Country, Long Island, New York, where we're doing a 1,200-square-foot ranch that's completely solar, going to be net-zero with a charging station. And this is really meant to be for first-time homebuyers. It's meant to target Millennials. Again, our problem is with a "brain drain." It's keeping our young talent here. And a lot of young people do see the value of EV vehicles. And right now, they do happen to be a lot of -- like, there's a nice (inaudible) rebate for vehicles. I just did the math, and you can get a brand-new 2017 Prius Prime for $19,000 out the door. And plugging right into the house charge that has zero impact on the electric usage of the house as a whole. So you have free commuting with this vehicle. And then again, if you do the math, it really makes sense, because now we have young people who are living in a net-zero home, and they have net-zero transportation costs. And when you factor that all in, it actually does start making sense.

Alex Krowka:
Yea. From a holistic point of view, I think a lot of people would completely agree. But again, also, it varies state by state, whether there are rebates out there that people can take advantage of, and whatnot. But as I mentioned before the question, it's certainly something that we're hearing a lot more about and a lot more people are starting to think about that. With that being said, we're about five minutes past our schedule end-time, so I'm going to close off the questions here. I appreciate everyone's engagement. I do apologize for those whose questions we weren't able to answer. But feel free to contact me directly or either of the speakers. Both Rick and Michael gave their contact information during their presentations. If you didn't write it down, that's OK. We've been recording this webinar. And we will post that recording within the next week or two on the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home resources page. There will also be copies of the presentations, as well. So with that, I thank everyone for attending, for your interest and your engagement. Michael, Rick, I thank you guys so much for participating in this. You guys are fantastic presenters. You're fantastic builders. And we really do appreciate you guys taking the time out of your day to do this. So with that, I hope everyone has a happy holiday, a happy rest of your 2017, and we will see you in the new year.