Information on how to build an energy-efficient home is easy to come by these days — but what if you can’t start from the ground up? What about the 18 million homes that already exist in California? Are those of us living in existing homes relegated to changing lightbulbs and adjusting thermostats?
Not at all. Enter the “home performance” contractor. Home performance is the discipline of applying building science and retrofit techniques to existing buildings, and the results can be dramatic; numerous case studies cite total measured energy used by the home reduced by as much as 70 percent!
Building science developed in the 1980s along with sophisticated equipment, making possible the measurement and study of buildings. By applying these tools and scientific principles, we now know how to transform the energy performance of buildings.