Wathen-Castanos, Inc. Joins U.S. Department of Energy as partner in new Builders Challenge
Wathen-Castanos, Inc. joined with U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman as part of a new national energy-saving initiative—the U.S. Department of Energy’s Builders Challenge.
“For Wathen-Castanos, Inc., building high-performance homes has been a core business model for the last 10 years,” said Rich Wathen. “We welcome this voluntary initiative for builders, and look forward to working with DOE to build consumer awareness of the benefits for buying highly energy efficient homes.”
The EnergySmart Home Scale, or E-Scale, serves as a tool for marketing energy-efficient homes. Consumer interest has been increasing in the top energy-performing homes, and now there is a tool that clearly allows builders to differentiate their products in the marketplace.
Wathen-Castanos, Inc. believes it is possible to build new homes that are more efficient than code by 30 percent or better at little or no net cost,” continued Rich Wathen. “Achieving these efficiencies does require sophisticated design and installation techniques that go beyond standard industry practice, but the competitive advantage of these homes with their high quality means faster sales. And, we believe this kind of high-performance building is the right thing for our nation, our natural environment, and our customers.”
The Builders Challenge encourages U.S. home builders to adopt the E-Scale on a voluntary basis, and also to utilize best practices for home design and construction. The initiative seeks to accelerate use of successful whole-house design and construction practices that have been developed and verified through DOE research in its Building America program.
About Wathen-Castanos, Inc.
“We at Wathen-Castanos, Inc. pride ourselves on providing a quality that performs for our buyers. This is why we put so much effort into choosing what manufacturers we partner with and what products we build into our homes. For decades, Wathen-Castanos, Inc. has only used brands that we can trust, products that we believe in and manufacturers that have proven themselves over time.” says Laura Mather, Director of Sales & Marketing
For more than 70 years, the Wathen name has represented excellence in home building in the Central San Joaquin Valley. But today, Wathen-Castanos, Inc. faces a whole new set of challenges. The cost of energy, in both economic and ecological terms, is on the rise. We’ve responded by reinventing the way we build.
Rather than simply tacking on a few “feel-good” features, we take a systemic approach in making our homes extremely efficient. Within this site, you’ll see just some of the features we incorporate into our homes, helping owners spend less by using fewer precious resources.
About the U.S. Department of Energy’s Builders Challenge
The U.S. Department of Energy has posed a challenge to the homebuilding industry – to build 220,000 high performance homes by 2012. Homes that qualify for the Builders Challenge must achieve a 70 or better on the EnergySmart Home Scale (E-Scale), meaning that they will use at least 30% less energy than a typical new home built to code. The E-Scale allows homebuyers to understand – at a glance – how the energy performance of a particular home compares with others. Through the Builders Challenge, participating homebuilders will have an easy way to differentiate their best energy-performing homes from other products in the marketplace, and to make the benefits clear to buyers.
Through industry partnerships and existing programs, the Builders Challenge will promote the use of market-tested and cost-effective energy efficiency strategies. The Challenge will support, recognize, and reward builders for achieving higher levels of energy efficiency. DOE’s goal is that, by 2030, new home buyers will have the option to buy a cost-effective Net-Zero Energy Home (NZEH) anywhere in the United States. Learn more at: www.buildingamerica.gov/challenge. Or visit a Wathen-Castanos, Inc. Sales Center, daily from 11am-5pm. www.wathen-castanos.com