For years, Del Holland lived in an old Victorian house in Iowa City with his four children, but as the kids got older, he decided it was time for a change.
“As they grew up and moved away, got on to their own lives, I was living in this big old house by myself,” Holland said on River to River. “And I thought, ‘Hmm, this doesn't seem like a wise carbon situation. So I should move into a smaller place.’”
Holland moved into a bungalow built in 1928 and made some modifications, but he still wasn’t satisfied with his energy usage.
“I could not see how as a person by themselves, I could get there. But I found this group — the cohousing community in Iowa City — that was just forming and going to hire a LEED architect and a LEED consulting green person and build a place that seemed like my dream place.”
Holland joined the project in 2011. After more than a decade of work, he and over 50 other Iowa City residents have taken up life at Prairie Hill Cohousing.
A new type of dream home
Several houses in the Prairie Hill community have received a Gold level certification from LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).
LEED certification is a rating system used worldwide to determine if a building is green. The rating considers a building’s insulation, heating and cooling systems, water usage and energy efficiency. It also factors in infrastructure, such as if a residential building is walkable to a grocery store. The LEED rating system was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, which is a private nonprofit organization.
The Prairie Hill houses are airtight to retain heating and cooling, which also limits sound pollution into the house. They are all electric, and do not use any natural gas.
To cool their homes, Prairie Hill residents have used a ductless mini-split air conditioning system. Mini-splits have two main components: an outdoor compressor and an indoor air-handling unit. Some units also have baseboard heaters for warmth during extreme cold conditions in the winter. While their primary disadvantage is start-up cost, according to the Department of Energy, they avoid the energy losses caused by the ductwork of central air systems — which can be more than 30% of energy consumption in the house.
Some residents even choose to let the natural breeze regulate their home.
“We open the windows up at night and cool it off. And then in the daytime, close it back up and keep that cool air inside. It's so well insulated that it stays cool,” Holland said.
In addition to being all-electric, some residents — like Holland — have installed solar panels, helping them to be net-zero carbon emitters.
“We produce as much energy in a year as we use in a year, even though we're all electric. It's all offset by what we make from the solar panels on our place.”
Though there are up-front costs of building a home that meets these energy standards, when it comes to paying the monthly bills, the residents save on water and utilities. But what’s more significant to Holland is reducing his environmental impact.
"I'm not a young person anymore. So I'm seeing what's going on. And I think we need to do things differently in America if we're going to have a world that's anywhere similar for humans going forward.”
Updating federal energy standards
The Midwest Newsroom reported last year that research has shown that within about 30 years, the Midwest will face heat indices of 125 degrees or higher with greater frequency. And while some private citizens have taken it upon themselves to make energy efficient changes in their homes, doing things differently on a large scale requires federal support.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently updated energy standards for new single and multifamily homes to make housing structures more resilient when faced with extreme weather, minimizing both health and life risks. These updated standards apply to newly constructed HUD and USDA-supported projects, and impact both homebuyers and renters.
In addition to making homes more livable in a changing climate, building energy efficient homes reduces the gas and heating bills that disproportionately impact low-income families. That cost reduction is especially impactful for cost burdened and severely cost burdened families.
Holly Edgell, managing editor of the Midwest Newsroom, joined host Ben Kieffer on River to River to discuss her reporting on the new codes. She said the new codes will have a positive impact for people who will live in HUD-funded projects in the future.
“They're gonna go into a new place that has much tighter and stringent codes,” she said. “... Right now HUD supports affordable housing for more than 4 million families through public housing, rental subsidies, voucher programs. So it's a lot of people who already are in this housing, and then more people will be able to benefit as they go into housing in projects that are built... henceforth.”
While states including Iowa and Nebraska have statewide building codes, which are minimum requirements for construction primarily enforced for the safety of home occupants, some neighboring states like Missouri and Kansas don’t have a statewide code, leaving decision-making to counties and cities. Going forward, those states will be subject to the new HUD rules.
“What this does is says any kind of housing that is funded by HUD must now meet a certain standard," Edgell said. "And that's for everything from insulation, air sealing, efficient windows, lighting, heating and cooling systems — all of these things now have to come up to a better standard than we've seen in the past.”
Edgell said among builders she spoke to, there was a lack of consensus about the up-front costs of using energy efficient standards in construction, but that she believes builders should go into new projects with consideration for the long-term life of the home.
“The life of the house has to be taken into effect, and so it may make a lot of sense to put that money in on the front end of construction and know that it's going to pay off.” she said.
Mark Kresowik, senior policy director at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, said most homeowners assume that when they purchase a new house that it is being built with the most energy efficient methods in mind, but without code enforcement, homebuilders will be more focused on turning a profit.
“If you're a home builder, you don't necessarily have an incentive to be concerned with what happens in the home after it's sold, how much it costs to live there. Whether somebody can stay safe and comfortable inside their home isn't necessarily something you're worried about,” Kresowik said. “Your interest is building a home at the lowest possible cost and selling at the highest cost. And so it's important that these decisions are made that require adequate insulation and duct and air sealing, to keep people safe and comfortable. And to save them money over the long term.”
Kresowik also said these code changes will deliver real savings to households that need them. HUD estimates households will save up to $950 a year on energy costs.
“It's very exciting, because it means that households that are purchasing new homes backed with HUD support will now be saving a significant amount of energy every single year. Their housing costs will be lower as a result of this decision, and they will be more able to withstand the kind of extreme temperatures that we're experiencing right now in Iowa and across the country.”
Constructing affordable housing
One contractor who has already set energy efficiency as a priority is Tamara Brunow, the president and CEO of Brunow Contracting in Council Bluffs.
Her company completed renovations on an apartment complex with 24 affordable housing units in the rural community of Hamburg after destructive flooding in 2019 inundated the town. Rural households spend about 40% more than metropolitan ones on energy bills, with low income rural residents experiencing the highest percent of their monthly income on utilities costs. During the renovations to the apartment complex, Brunow and her team focused on energy efficiency, including installing tankless water heaters, new insulation and fully LED lighting — all components that impact the cost of utilities.
The complex used to rack up a gas bill of $1,650 to $2,200 a month during winter. Last winter the highest gas bill was under $500 a month.
Brunow said as a young adult supporting three kids on her own, she personally experienced the burden of “those huge gas bills in the middle of January/February for heating and the monstrous electric bills in the summertime for my air conditioning.”
“So as we started thinking about what type of home we felt made an affordable home, we focused on affordable to live in versus affordable to build. I am of the opinion that both can be done together. It is not one or the other.”
The private constructing firm has also been collaborating with Iowa State University and Iowa Central Community College since 2022 on the 3D Affordable Innovative Technologies Housing Project, which seeks to address a lack of affordable housing in rural communities. This includes a demonstration home in Hamburg.
Brunow said unfortunately, she is currently in the minority of contractors when it comes to this approach. But as technology advances, the prices for the equipment are decreasing.
“A good builder is going to know weatherization-type factors that go in to building a house on the labor side — the equipment, the lighting, the HVAC equipment, Energy Star rated appliances, they've really come down in price,” she said. “So I hope to see more builders coming this direction, and I think the market is going to dictate it as energy gets more expensive. Homeowners will see a value in this.”
Listen to the full conversation on River to River, hosted by Ben Kieffer. Samantha McIntosh produced this episode.
