How Green is it?

How green is a tankless water heater? NAHB's scoring sheet gives it 4 points. Is the 4 points worth the cost of the heater? Wrong question. The questions should be is the investment in the home enhanced by the energy savings that a tankless water heater provides? Am I sacrificing convenience for energy savings? Is it worth the sacrifice? Everyone will have a different threshhold to meet in order to answer these questions.

So here it is another day, and you were promised an answer. How green is it? The truthful answer is, I don't really know. I did not fill out the scoring sheet with that in mind. I did the sheet based on how green would the house have been if I had known what the categories on the scoring sheet had been and to what extend would I have implemented each item. So with that in mind, and remembering that I am your typical value oriented central Pennsylvania Dutchmen, there I said it. I admitted it, I am a Dutchman. Now there is nothing wrong with that, it just needs to be remembered that a Dutchman is not cheap, he just wants value. And we all realize that the least expensive item is not always the best or most valuable. For example, the cost of a 30 year roof on your home is typically of more value that a 25 year roof. Just look at the cost per year of the roof. And a BMW is an expensive car, but if you look at the cost to drive it per mile, it compares very favorably with the typical less expensive car that only gets 80,000 miles on it before it is worn out. For those of you who do not know, a Beamer typically lasts for well over 150,000 miles. And by the way, there is no truth to the rumor that copper wire was invented by 2 Dutchman fighting over a penny.

Now that I got that out of my system, How Green is it??? According t0 the NAHB Green standards, this house needs 237 points for the Bronze level, 311 points for the Silver level, and 395 points for the Gold level. I think since this is a green program, that the designation for the top level should be "Emerald". But what do I know? So I slogged thru the paper work, answered the gazillion questions, all 7 categories, and who knows how many subcategories and pages, figuring out that yea, we did that, or yea, we could easily have done that, or no, we do not do that, only to get the end and get a warning statement that I do not meet some criteria, obviously skipped over. After I found my way back to the very beginning and found the box I had not checked, I was back in the grove. Points, POINTS. How many did I get? Hopefully I made at least somewhere in the high Bronze level. Wow!! 425 Emerald points, whoooooops, they are Gold. Success!! We can actually do this.

After the elation, now what? How do we use this good news to actually benefit clients? How do we help our clients do what is right for the environment? How do we. . . . . . . ?