Healthy Indoors Magazine
Issue link: https://hi.healthyindoors.com/i/958488
Healthy Indoors | 33 completion, and what the energy usage will be one year post-project. Then they track to see how close they came. • Are accountable for results. While accountability is shared with homeowners because decisions are made jointly, their reputation is built on delivering results for clients. • Rabidly look for feedback. We only know if something worked or didn't work from what clients tell us. While ob- jective measurements give us a good idea if something worked, your subjective feedback is what we need to know. • Aim for having very strong reviews. Average reviews should be at least 4.5 out of 5 stars with detailed feedback about the success of the projects, not just that they were nice and cleaned up after themselves. • Are more likely to be individuals. Getting good results is hard, and takes intrinsic drive. Until their performance can be compared to others with a tool like a JD Power survey, which gives an extrinsic reward for excellence, individu- als are likely to outperform larger companies. How to Solve Complex Problems Solving complex problems takes a different thought pro- cess than buying a product like a TV or a light bulb. A slow- er, more thoughtful path is the best way to a solution that works the first time. Think of it like being a doctor. Does a doctor throw a bot- tle of pills at you as you walk through the door? Of course not. They ask questions to find out what ails you. They take your height, weight, and blood pressure. They may run more tests. They diagnose first. There is a saying in medicine: "Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice." Practicing Home Performance is similar to practicing medicine on your home. Home Performance is based on Building Science, which is the physics of how your home works. A high-performance home is like a healthy body. We Home Performance Specialists need to diagnose before we can prescribe, or we are doing you harm. Please don't ask us to skip steps. After diagnosis, a doctor will discuss the treatment plan with you. Together, you finalize the treatment plan and she will help you execute it, following up to see if it works. Again, this same process is needed to solve complex prob- lems in your home. Break this process, and you're likely to get the equiv- alent of fen-phen pills causing heart attacks. A single pill can't make you lose weight; no single product can solve a complex problem. My industry has tried a lot of shortcuts, as have I. Shortcuts fail. This is the complex but correct path - diagnose, prescribe, treat, follow up. Home Perfor- mance work gets the systems of your home back into bal- ance, just as a good doctor does the same for your body's systems. Design for People, Good Buildings Will Follow That's the mantra of Robert Bean from HealthyHeating. com. We fully agree. Our homes should be our refuge. They should be comfortable, safe, and healthy. If a house is a comfortable refuge, typically most other building per- formance problems were already solved, and the home is naturally efficient. It's a good building. Consequently, we focus heavily on comfort. Good comfort requires good bal- ance of the many systems in your home. Nate Adams is the founder of Energy Smart Home Perfor- mance in Cleveland Ohio and of NateTheHouseWhisperer. com. Rather than focus on energy efficiency, Nate focuses on solving the root causes of client problems like uncom- fortable rooms, mold, wet basements, and icicles. As a fan of radical transparency, he has published the most detailed case studies in the industry on these projects. Nate has recently published The Home Comfort Book, a guide showing people how their homes really work and how to truly solve problems, instead of putting band-aids on bullet wounds. It is meant to create consumer demand for this work rather than the traditional supply focus that has been taken for forty years. Learn more at: http://energysmartohio.com/ "Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice." i