What is Home Performance?

After all, homes — probably the biggest investment most of us will ever make — are one of the few things we purchase that don't come with an instruction manual. Is a home comfortable? Reasonably energy efficient? Safe and healthy? These are all considerations that a homeowner will either take for granted (we would assume, after all, that the air inside a home wouldn't be a potential health hazard), or simply neglect.

These are the considerations that a Home Performance Professional sets out to address, while taking into account the interconnectedness of homes, and the relationships between each of the home's components. In accord with this holistic approach, a home performance contractor will assess, and then address, any of these potential problems within a home.

As mentioned above, Home Performance is based upon what we call the 5 pillars of home performance:

1. Safety: Assessing the safety of a home is an important part (maybe the most important) of a home performance contractor's job. Backdrafting appliances that may be sending carbon monoxide into the home, for example, is a potential safety issue that a Home Performance Professional is trained to address.
2. Health: Indoor air quality is listed by the EPA as one of the top environmental threats to human health. A Home Performance Professional can identify issues affecting your home's indoor air quality and recommend remediation to protect you and your family's health.
3. Comfort: Our home is our refuge. It should be comfortable. Drafty rooms, cold spots, unpleasant humidity and heat in the summer, damp basements - are all avoidable unpleasantries. A home performance contractor can help by locating sources of unnecessary air movement, looking for any moisture issues, and identifying poor or missing insulation.
4. Durability: Imperfections within a building, in addition to causing discomfort-raising health concerns, can also have long term repercussions. Moisture problems causing rot in framing, or insufficient insulation causing ice dams, are among the durability concerns that a Home Performance Professional can pinpoint for remediation.
5. Efficiency: Last but not least, home performance is about ensuring that a home is cost effective to live in. If a mechanic told you that a few simple improvements could drastically improve the fuel efficiency of your car, that's something most of us would jump on. That's what a Home Performance Professional does for your house.

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