If your looking to save energy you are in the right place! Olthof Homes has built a package so you now have the choice of an ENERGY STAR® home.

To earn the ENERGY STAR, a home must meet guidelines for energy efficiency set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. These homes are at least 15% more energy efficient than homes built to the 2004 International Residential Code (IRC), and include additional energy-saving features that typically make them 20–30% more efficient than standard homes. Our current Energy Star home in our Hearthstone community was built to the 2012, Version 3 ENERGY STAR standards. We expect it to be the first in Indiana!

The graph to the right shows the HERS (Home Energy Rating System) Index. The HERS index is a national standard for measuring the energy efficiency of a home, new or old. Every 1 point on the index translates into a 1% energy savings. We had an independent company, Energy Diagnostics, come in to rate our new ENERGY STAR home.

The rating on our ENERGY STAR home is a 53! So what does this mean? Well, the Estimated Annual Energy Consumption for the home in Hearthstone (rated at 53) is $1,951 per year...this is an estimated $2,300 annual savings over a existing used home (rated 130) or an estimated $925 savings over a standard new Olthof home with an estimated rating of about 80 (offical results coming soon!).

The total ENERGY STAR qualified homes built in 2010 are the equivalent of:

• Eliminating emissions from 65,252 vehicles
• Saving 394,709,952 lbs of coal
• Planting 107,866 acres of trees
• Saving the environment 774,105,584 pounds of CO2