In order for your new Tartan home to be Energy Star® certified, there are numerous energy-saving building techniques and products that go into the home. Some of them are obvious, and easy to understand, like more insulation, higher-quality windows, and Energy Star® rated appliances.
Others are a little more complicated, or are completely invisible, and are therefore not so easy to appreciate.
In terms ensuring the efficient and proper operations of the various building systems in your home, these underappreciated features are very important.
I’d like to talk today about the heat recovery drainpipe. This is one of the ugliest and most underappreciated features, but it is also one of the most effective.
Rather than try and explain it myself, please have a look at these two links.
http://www.renewability.com/residential.html
The heat recovery drainpipe sits there by itself in the basement, quietly doing its job.
At Tartan, we put in the heat recovery drainpipe as a standard feature in every home. We don’t need to do it to attain the Energy Star standard, but we feel it is a good and reliable product, and has an immediate effect on both reducing the costs of running your home, and cutting carbon emissions generally. One of the links describes a single heat recovery drainpipe as reducing carbon emissions by one ton per year.
In a good year, Tartan will build 200 homes. That’s 200 tons of reduced carbon emissions. If you own a tartan home, you are joining us in taking one of many small steps in the right direction.
In my next blog, I’ll talk about some of our insulation techniques.