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That leads me to one of the other parts of this, which is the question of "What sorts
of certification is out there?" And that's a question...
Now, when you're talking about certification, now do you mean licenses or do you mean green
certification? What types of certification do you mean?
Well, what I was talking about is when somebody is making a claim that there is something
about their house, there's a difference between "I built this to be as good as..." and "This
house is certified as...." And so you will see houses where there is the claim that this
is just as good as an Energy Star house, and you need to make sure you're understanding
what they're saying. Because when it's a third-party certification, there has been an independent
pair of eyes verifying that the things that are supposed to be in there are in there.
And ultimately, anybody with good intentions can sometimes make a mistake, and not every
certified home is a perfect home, but that is something I would look for-- which certification
programs are available and which do you want to have on your home?
Okay, and I would imagine that the builders themselves have to go through some pretty
involved training to be certified to build a certified home?
Well, that's an important thing to understand, is that ultimately the certification is structure
by structure. So, in other words, the builder him or herself is not being certified-- it
is that house that's being certified. So, each house is an individual creature. It's
out there outside being built, and ultimately if the insulation is not done right in your
house it doesn't matter that the builder was certified, you need somebody to be checking
that the actual installation was correct.
So, there's a third party that comes out and certifies that the windows are right, that
the insulation was right...
They're there checking off specific things that the certification programs, EnergyStar,
any of the rest of them, have various lists of things you have to include in order to
earn that certification. And so those things go beyond building code. So, each of the jurisdictions
have a good inspections department and they're checking for the NC building code and trying
to make sure that the house was built in conformance with that. But the independent verification
gives you the confidence that what you have bought-- because these things that are being
certified typically are beyond the building code and therefore may be adding cost to the
house-- that you've paid for that and therefore with the third party certification you can
have that level of confidence that that's actually there.
Okay, perfect, perfect, well, Nick, thank you very much. Hey, we've covered key things
you need to know in building a home or getting ready to build a home and also in certifications
and what they mean. Nick, thank you so much.
All right, Jim Enright and Nick Tennyson saying see you later.