The IECC insists that the three-year cycle is needed to keep up with new technologies and many inspectors agree. “I’ve heard this complaint for years about how often the code changes,” notes Wayne Richardson, president of the New Hampshire Building Officials Association. “Would you prefer to go to a doctor that updates his education every three years, or one that only updates his education once every six years?”
Others think a better approach would be to keep the current cycle, but be more gradual with the changes. “We can get [to the ultimate goal] by more modest gains— say 7% per code cycle rather than 15%,” says Bill Fay, head of the Energy efficient Codes Coalition. “It would give technology more of a chance to catch up.”
Getting Builders on Board
Whatever the pace of change, the truth is that most people in the code community prefer to get compliance voluntarily. And they believe that properly educated builders will see the work necessary to meet code, and even to go beyond it, as good business practice. “Adding requirements that add hard costs while everyone from banks to homeowners are beating up on builders is not, in the long run, going to work,” says Richardson.
Sivigny’s comment that you don’t get compliance if builders don’t understand the code is just one side of the coin. He says that the key is writing the code so that it’s easy to understand, and teaching builders the skills needed to implement it. “I prefer to get compliance through education rather than enforcement,” he says.
Education includes state-sponsored training given by people like DeWein and Turns. It also includes programs such as LEED, that reward cutting-edge builders for trying new technologies and building methods—methods which can be included in future updates of the code.
Ultimately, buildings will become more efficient when home buyers demand that they be, so that educational effort has to include creating that demand. Builders can play an important role if they understand the economics of the code. Fay says that various studies have been done on this. For instance, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that building a house that was 30% more efficient than the 2003 IECC—that is, one that met the provisions of the 2009 code—would add $4,000 in construction costs, but save over $700 per year in energy costs while adding just over $200 per year to the mortgage—a net savings of $500. The problem is that such savings aren’t figured into home appraisals. Fay says his organization is working on getting legislation introduced in Congress that will encourage banks and underwriters to take it into account.
As DeWein puts it: “Once they learn the advantages of doing things this way, they tend to buy in."
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