According to the National Assocation of Realtors Green Designation:
“70% of homebuyers said they were more inclined to buy a green home in a down economy than a non-green home.”
“62% of all state governments have adopted green building policies”
For more info visit the Green Resource Council
Just days before flying to Denmark for the UN climate summit, Obama spoke at a Home Depot hardware store in Virginia about government incentives for making homes more energy efficient.
“In our nation’s buildings, our homes and our offices consume almost 40 percent of the energy we use and contribute almost 40 percent of the carbon pollution that we produce,” Obama said.
“I know the idea may not be very glamorous, although I get really excited about it. We were at the roundtable and somebody said, ‘Insulation’s not sexy.’”
“I disagree. Here is what is sexy about it, saving money. I told you insulation is sexy!”
For more information: http://news.yahoo.com/
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fW0QQ8onQ[/youtube]
In his speech today President Obama laid out the ground work for creating jobs through energy efficiency and clean energy investments
“I’m calling on Congress to consider a new program to provide incentives for consumers who retrofit their homes to become more energy-efficient, which we know creates jobs, saves money for families, and reduces the pollution that threatens our environment. And I’m proposing that we expand select Recovery Act initiatives to promote energy efficiency and clean energy jobs which have been proven to be particularly popular and effective. It’s a positive sign that many of these programs drew so many applicants for funding that a lot of strong proposals — proposals that will leverage private capital and create jobs quickly — did not make the cut. With additional resources, in areas like advanced manufacturing of wind turbines and solar panels, for instance, we can help turn good ideas into good private sector jobs.”
For more information visit the Wall Street Journal Blog or The WhiteHouse Blog
Advanced Home Energy was interviewed by KTVU channel 2 for the 10:00 pm nightly news regarding our response to Obama’s speech and whether we feel that it will have an impact on our sector.
Many people are interested in insulating vaulted or cathedral ceiling. In this type of structure there is no attic in which to spray insulation. According to the building code, in order to insulate underneath the roof deck you must install an air-impermeable barrier. 1.5″ of closed-cell foam or 5 inches of open cell foam constitute such a barrier.
Commonly in retrofit application the foam is installed from underneath the roof deck. We just completed an application in Piedmont, California where the general contractor tore off the existing roof and built up a 2×4 frame into which we could apply foam. This allowed us to install 3.5 inches of spray foam for a total R-value of R-21 from on top of the vaulted roof. The spray foam works extremely well old and reducing heat loss during the winter and heat gain during the summer.
This 3-day Marketing and Sales Workshop sponsored by CBPCA was adapted from the 1-day class previously provided through PG&E’s training center. The new class was taught by Jay Gentry of Con-Com-T Inc. and our own Ori Skloot, President of AHE. The class was held in Southern California and attended by home performance contractors and people in other trades working toward transitioning into Home Performance and energy efficiency work.
The class provided a balance of conceptual training and theory with real-life examples from AHE’s business. The Home performance industry has great growth potential, but consumers are not educated about home performance as a service and so contractors have to market both themselves and the concept. This is not an easy task as home performance covers a broad array of services. Home owners are accustomed to shopping for a product, insulation or hvac repair, rather than a solution that offers guaranteed efficiency and comfort. The class taught how to overcome typical barriers to promoting home performance services and closing successful sales.
Here is an overview of the topics covered in the workshop:
_______
Day 1: The Big Picture… How the Industry Works
_______
Day 2: Planning… How it can work for You
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Day 3: Consultative Selling Skills… How to make it happen
_______
Some of the workshop attendants included:
We at Advanced Home Energy are committed to helping underserved populations become employed in green collar jobs. After some experience in hiring graduates from several of the local green training programs I am writing this blog letter in the hopes of providing some useful feedback. After participants go through a green jobs training program it is imperative that they have a viable path to employment. In order for that to happen, employers need to feel that hiring participants of a training organization is not only the right thing to do, but is easier and more cost-effective than other avenues for finding and hiring employees.
Here are a few points I would like to share after having hired several employees from various local training programs. I offer this feedback in the hopes of improving the overall process and ultimately proving to funders that green job training is viable path toward employment.
1. The process needs to be as smooth and simple as possible. Though there may be several people working with a participant at the training organization, there needs to be only one contact person with whom the employer is interacting. We found that we were working with multiple people at different stages of the hiring process. Most hiring managers are inundated with candidates and the easier the process the better.
2. Listen very carefully to the qualifications that the employer is looking for and only provide candidates that meet those qualifications. Providing the best possible match will setup candidates for a positive interview experience. Sometimes an employer will not know what qualifications to ask for, in which case the training program should offer suggestions ahead of time. A couple examples include:
a. Has the candidate had a DUI in the past 5 years (insurance companies may not insure them).
b. How important is it for the candidate to live within a certain proximity of the company (my experience is that employees who live 20+ minutes from work find it difficult to consistently show up on time to work).
3. Of the dozens of candidates I have interviewed, the main reason that they were not qualified for the job was their inability to articulate the process, tools and purpose of the work they were trained in. This should be emphasized in the training along with other soft skills. Granted, participants in job training programs may not have any previous training and employers need to have reasonable expectations.
4. If the employer is going to receive OJT reimbursement, the process needs to be as seamless as possible. If the process is cumbersome that employer will be turned off from working with any training program.
In summary, in order for green collar training programs to succeed, organizations needs to make relationships with employers a top priority. At Advanced Home Energy we promise our clients top notch service and then get referrals when we have delivered on our promise. If a training program can provide our company with excellent service then we certainly will be inclined to use that organization as a resource for hiring new staff.
Ori Skloot, President
Advanced Home Energy
I was asked by a colleague the other day if I could share a few tips on how we have increased our close ratio over the past few months. This question comes up a lot in the sales and marketing class I teach so I thought start offering a few suggestions via this blog. These are in no particular order.
1. Are you able to give your whole home performance report on the spot? we found that are close rate jumped 15% when giving the report on the spot versus one week later
2. Consider bundling up the items in your work scope so that clients are less prone to price shop. Another way to do this is a good, better, best package deal.
3. To close the sale ask the client three questions that will get a yes answer, then ask them for the sale. For example:
4. When we sit down at the table to present our report, below is the order in which we discuss things with our clients. As always, the key is to ask a lot of questions and only discuss items that are directly related to the client’s concerns and issues in the home.
5. How can you increase your close ratio if you don’t know what a close ratio is? you have to have a method for tracking the number of leads, home visits or tests, and jobs closed. We do all of this using an Excel tracking sheet
I thought it was a great meeting yesterday with everyone from CBPCA. By my rough count we had about 45 people attending. Thanks so much to Pat Colburn for all the organization and effort in making it a “green” meeting (most everything was recycled or composted after the meeting). If you haven’t signed up yet to be a member of CBPCA I highly encourage you to do so.
We did a demonstration of wall spray and dense pack cellulose insulation in our warehouse on a mock wall. Many good questions come up from the audience. Please post any more questions or make corrections to any of my answers.
Regards, Ori Skloot
Cellulose Wall Spray Cellulose Insulation (open cavity)
Question: There appears to be a lot of wasted material coming off of the wall, how can this be green?
Answer: Part of the process of wall spray insulation is having extra cellulose bounce off the wall and land on the floor. This then gets vacuumed up and recycled back into the machine and so none is wasted. In fact, we need to have this material mixed with the new material that we are using in order to get a good mix of wet and dry material.
Question: How long do you have to let the material dry before you can sheet rock over it?
Answer: according to the manufacturer you need to let it dry for a minimum 24 hours and make sure it reaches 25% or less humidity. We have always requested that the days remain open to three days and we prefer the humidity be under 15%. We use a GE Protimeter and extended probe to test the humidity level of the installation.
Question: How does the cost of this application compared to installing fiberglass?
Answer: it depends on how much of a QII job the Fiberglas installer is doing. Most lowball installers can insulate the house in one day. This is the classic poor installation example that we learn in class, lots of voids and compression. In this case, you are looking at a 50% premium for doing the wall spray cellulose. However if a Fiberglas installer is doing proper QII, then the price can be comparable because of the labor time it now takes the Fiberglas installer. You have to look at Apples to Apples.
Question: How long does it take you to insulate the walls of a 2500 sq. ft. new construction house?
Answer: Typically we can get that done in about two days.
Question: how is the performance of this cellulose insulation compared to Fiberglass?
Answer: because no one is installing fiberglass correctly (even when we have to do it I have a very hard time getting our crews to do quality fiberglass installation), the cellulose spray will be Fiberglas hands down 99% of the time.
Cellulose Dense Pack Wall Insulation (closed cavity)
Question: how do you differentiate your installation from the low cost bidders when doing close to wall insulation? How does the client know the difference?
Answer: great question! We recently bid on a job where we estimated it would take us three full days to complete the work for the wall insulation portion of our work. At insulation contractor came in and gave a bid for one day of work. The client gave them back piece of our contract. We were on site when they did their work: two guys worked seven hours to finish the job. I peeked in their truck at the end of the day and estimated that they used about 30 bags for what should’ve been a 50 bag job. Obviously, the client didn’t know the difference. In order to differentiate ourselves we try to educate the client about what we’d do that is different. We train our crews on our demo wall and make sure they understand what to do in order to get a minimum of 3.5 pounds per cubic foot. When we are close to being done with our job we use the IR camera to find any missing gaps or under-insulated areas.
Question: do you blow with the insulation and wet so it does not settle?
Answer: we always to dense pack installation without any water. What assures that it does not settle is that we are achieving a minimum of 3.5 pounds per ft.³. When we are doing our trainings we are often finding that we are achieving even greater density than that. We had a client do a kitchen remodel this year and opened all wall that we had insulated in 2006. She called us to tell us how surprised and pleased she was to watch the wall come down and have the insulation stay up and packed in the wall.
Question: I read that the best method for dense pack installation is using the fill tube, you are using a nozzle, does that achieve the density?
Answer: we have practiced on our own demo wall and also on a real house and been able to open the wall to verify our work. What we found is that using a cone nozzle is just as effective as a fill tube in most applications. When we have a very large bay we may use a fill tube.
For some time now we have been receiving $1,200 bills from AT&T on top of a $300 bill from Covad for our DSL service. This is not for anything special, we have a half dozen cell phones and hunting group in our office. Our DSL from Covad is not that fast. Everything has worked sufficiently well to date but I figured we could get more for the amount we are paying.
After learning all about VOIP (internet phone) vs. PBX (analog phone lines) systems and the various service providers, we finally decided to go with a VOIP system and CBeyond for our service provider. CBeyond will provide us with our landline service, cell phones, email, and a T-1 line for Internet.
Our transfer to the new system happened yesterday and so far I am very impressed. I am just learning about all the features of the Cisco VOIP system, which are extensive, but already I can tell that this new system is going to significantly improve efficiency at Advanced Home Energy and provide our company with a more professional feel. We received a 2 year interest-free lease on the phone system and our service with CBeyond is costing us 3/4 of what we were paying before.
Finally, I have to make a plug for the company that we chose as our Cisco system installer. I worked with Ken and Richard of Monster IT. Ken did the installation and did not leave until all the glitches were worked out and all my questions were answered. By the end of the second day of the installation he gave me a tutorial of the system. I asked him if he could e-mail me all the instructions and passwords because there was too much information for me to remember. That evening I received a long e-mail with all the instructions and information typed up that he had already gone over with me. Very impressive customer service.
Interview with Mimi Frusha, COO of Renewable Funding –
Question: In brief, what is the stimulus bill everyone is talking about and what is its purpose?
What is typically referred to as the stimulus bill is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which was created to stimulate the economy in a number of areas by providing $787 billion in economic investment nationally.
The key goals of the ARRA are:
1. To increase green jobs 2. Reduce U.S. oil dependency by promoting energy efficiency and renewables 3. Reduce green house gas emissions.
Question: How are the stimulus dollars for promoting energy efficiency and renewables allocated?
Most of these stimulus dollars flow through the department of energy (DOE) as well as state energy commissions. Many cities and counties got allocations from the DOE based on population size. In addition, there are competitive grants that cities and counties can apply for. The total pot of money in California received from the DOE is $3.2 billion.
Question: With all the acronyms floating around regarding stimulus money it’s hard to keep track. Could you enlighten us?
Certainly, a few that you may have heard include SEP, CEC, EECBG, NSP and WAP.
State Energy Program (SEP funds). In California, the CEC (California Energy Commission) got $275.6 million. Some of this money was allocated to cities and counties, and some will be offered through competitive bidding. For the competitive bidding, the government agencies will be applying within three program areas: 1. municipal financing programs (this is what Renewable Funding assists cities in implementing) 2. Comprehensive residential building program 3. Municipal and commerical retrofits.
Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG). California local governments got $302 million and the CEC got $49.6 million to distribute among smaller local governments. This money is specifically allocated for reducing energy consumption (not renewables) and may be used in a number of ways, including: marketing, rebates, incentives, loan funds, etc.
Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) – $2.08 billion nationwide for the purchase and redevelopment of foreclosed and abandoned properties. Cities will be allocated this money and will also bid competitively for this funding.
Weatherization Assistance Programs (WAP). California will receive $185 million, which will be passed on to the existing state weatherization programs such as LIHEAP which provide free weatherization assistance to low-income households.
Question: bottom line, what does all the stimulus money mean for home performance contractors?
Essentially, there are three areas to consider.
1. Cash Incentives: There will be more rebates and incentives for home owners and commercial properties. This will include money to pay for audits and additional incentives for remediation work based on energy savings potential.
2. Loan Programs: There will be financing available through cities and counties to property owners to pay for remediation projects. This will help cover the upfront costs.
3. Job Training: There will be money for job training, which will subsidize entry level salaries. Most likely this funding will be for workforce development “Green Jobs” helping underserved populations become involved in the green economy.
Question: How do you position your company to take advantage of these upcoming funding opportunities?
First, make sure you have all your certifications and credentials in order. In California, most likely HERS II will set the standard and nationally ResNet and BPI. Then, you should be talking with your local government about their strategic plans for using these funds. Some cities have already created their plan, but many cities are still developing their plan and looking for input from community stakeholders. Develop a plan for your company that will integrate with these funding opportunities and then get your company on the approved vendor list of the city. Finally, stay involved in the local government stakeholder meetings, trainings, etc. so that you understand how homeowners can tap into these funds.
Question: What about all the people coming through training now who are just starting new home performance companies? How should they position themselves?
How cities and counties use their funds will be public information. New contractors can find out which governments are applying their funds to residential building retrofits or financing programs (versus commercial and municipal projects). These programs will offer opportunities for property owners to pay for the retrofits and will make marketing and sales in these cities easier and more cost-effective.
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Its very difficult these days to feel like businesspeople really care about you AND the work they do. If you work with AHE, you'll get the pleasure of both. I highly recommend Advanced Home Energy! |
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Our utility bills went way down during the winter and our house is finally comfortable! |
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Our house is much quieter and I’m averaging a 25% savings in energy costs since this work was done. I simply couldn’t be happier with the work AHE performed for me. I am pleased to recommend them without qualification. |
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