Riverwood Homes is committed to exceeding building code and energy code requirements to deliver our customers high-performing homes. Our homes also have a minimized impact on the environment because of our energy efficient building techniques and appliances. All of our homes are Energy Star certified and are independently tested and assigned a Resnet HERS score. To us high performance means the following:
With all of these high-performance features, we take care to be mindful of costs. We only choose features that add little to no incremental cost to the house while providing a large benefit to the home owner!
In Idaho, we are being proactive to build above the building code and Energy Star requirements to make your house efficient and healthy. For example, we are now including R-49 attic insulation instead of the typical R-38 insulation. Our houses have 0.27 U-factor windows and advanced air sealing to bring the house's air changes down to less than 3.0 per hour.
We are building our houses with the furnace and HVAC ducting located within the thermal envelope of the house to reduce air leakage and heat loss. Our houses are equipped with a fresh air supply system that brings fresh, filtered air into your house. We use MERV 13 air filters in our HVAC systems to keep smoke, smog, bacteria, and viruses out of your home.
To prevent mold from growing in the crawl space, we install French drains around the exterior of the foundation, and we pipe all rain gutters into a pit drain to make sure runoff water never enters the crawl space. Then we have a mechanical fan in the crawl space constantly pulling air out of the crawl space to ensure the crawl space stays dry and free of mold. The crawl space is encapsulated and conditioned to further keep moisture out.
The state of Washington has one of the most aggressive energy codes in the country that has pushed builders to far exceed Energy Star requirements, and we are complying with and exceeding those standards. All of our homes are heated and cooled with heat pumps, as are the water heaters. Our windows have a weighted .25 U-factor, meaning they have extremely good insulation properties. We seal our homes to have no more than 3.0 air changes per hour, which keeps the conditioned air inside and the pollutants outside.