Skilled Labor Series: Decoding HERS
*This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu. This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure.
Roy Mittleider is the director of training for CalCERTS. CalCERTS is one of California's Home Energy Rating System providers (or HERS), which is an acronym we use a lot in this episode. They operate in the state under the conditional approval of the California Energy Commission, or the CEC. CalCERTS provides specialized HERS training and certification, performs quality assurance on all HERS Raters they certify, and maintains an online data registry of permits and records of energy efficiency work for each home in California.
In this episode, we deep dive into what a HERS rater does, who they work with, what their training is like, and what career paths they can take. We also talk about different types of energy specifications a structure needs to meet in order to be up to the latest energy code. And we end with talking about the role that technology can play in optimizing the workflow in the home energy efficiency auditing space.
*You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded on Aug 17, 2023 (Published on Feb 1, 2024)
In this episode, we cover:
Introduction to CalCERTS and the Home Energy Rating System (HERS)
History of the HERS industry and its development in California
Compliance rating and verification process for existing homes and new construction
Energy specifications and standards for buildings in California
The importance of air sealing and insulation in home energy efficiency
The role of technology in optimizing workflow and improving efficiency in home energy efficiency auditing
Career paths and opportunities for HERS raters
Importance of data registry and record-keeping for energy efficiency work in California
Potential for technology to improve data transfer, streamline paperwork, and enhance the HERS rating process
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Yin Lu:
Hello everyone. My guest today is Roy Mittleider, who is the director of training for CalCERTS. CalCERTS is one of California's Home Energy Rating System providers, HERS, which is an acronym we'll use a lot in this episode. And they operate in the state under the conditional approval of the California Energy Commission, or the CEC. CalCERTS provides specialized HERS training and certification, performs quality assurance on all HERS Raters they certify and maintains an online data registry of permits and records of energy efficiency work for each home in California. So we deep dive into what a HERS rater does, who they work with, what their training is like, and career paths they can take.
We also talk about different types of energy specifications a structure needs to meet in order to be up to the latest energy code. And we end with talking about the role that technology can play in optimizing the workflow in the home energy efficiency auditing space.
Cody Sims:
I'm Cody Sims.
Yin Lu:
I'm Yin Liu.
Jason Jacobs:
And I'm Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey.
Yin Lu:
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Sims:
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help.
Yin Lu:
All right, let's get into it. Roy, welcome to the show.
Roy Mittleider:
Hey, it's great to be here. Thank you, Yin. I really appreciate the opportunity to come onto your show.
Yin Lu:
So we're here to talk about Home Energy Rating System and the work that you do at CalCERTS. So maybe let's define what the heck is Home Energy Rating System and what's the history of it?
Roy Mittleider:
zThe HERS industry was developed out of the crisis in the 1970s. About 1974 was the Warren-Alquist Act was enacted, and that gave authority to the California Energy Commission to develop standards and a way for California to overcome its energy goals and to enact codes related to energy efficiency. A lot of people know that now in California, HERS Raters act as compliance raters, meaning that when the heat pump is changed out or your furnace is changed out and it has a duct system attached to it, it requires that a HERS rater go in behind the installation and verify that the ducts don't leak a certain percentage. And we could be doing refrigerant charge tests, we could be doing airflow tests, WA draw tests to make sure that the systems are running efficiently. That's what a compliance rater is. A home energy rater was basically someone who came out to an existing home and would take all of the parameters of the house, measure the walls, measure the windows, take all the systems in the home, the water heating, the HVAC system, and they would plug all these parameters into an energy model. What came from that was be a home energy score, and that score is based on a scale.
So if you look at now a 2008 built home on a scale is a score of about 100, and we call that the HERS index. So right now we're trying to build to net-zero, which would be down at the bottom, the home that uses absolutely no depletable energy. But as that score goes up, that's where we're talking about the HERS index. And a score of 100 would meet the 2006 IECC codes. So it's basically taking a house that you're going out and doing a HERS verification on it, and it's comparing it to a standard house. That's how we get the number. So if we're comparing it to a house that has a score of 100, how does my house relate to that? So if I score a 50, that means my house uses 50% less energy than a 2006 IECC built home.
Kind of the same thing is happening with the industry as far as RESNET, a lot of people may have heard of RESNET before. RESNET is a HERS industry that's a national HERS industry, and they really didn't play in California because California had its own HERS industry. So California has always been sitting on this island over here, and we created our scores based on this very specific software. Whereas if I went over to Nevada and I wanted to grade a home over there, I would typically be using a different set of parameters, like Ekotrope, where I would be giving it a RESNET score.
And the beautiful thing that has happened with CalCERTS this last year is that we've partnered with Ekotrope, we've partnered with RESNET to be able to bring RESNET into California. So we're getting away from using the old software that's not been updated for quite a few years and we're bringing the home energy industry back into the 20th century here. So it's pretty exciting for us right now.
Yin Lu:
So in the 1970s in California, there was a law passed called the Warren-Alquist Act that then spurred the state to come up with its own energy efficiency rating system.
Roy Mittleider:
Correct. And start to enact building energy codes related to energy efficiency. And that's what the CEC does.
Yin Lu:
Before the Warren-Alquist Act, what was the standard? Was there anything? If I was a builder and I built a house, what codes did I have to comply with on energy efficiency?
Roy Mittleider:
You basically just had to follow building codes that would be tied to health and safety, not so much energy efficiency.
Yin Lu:
Gotcha. For the rest of the country that was not California, there's an organization called RESNET that created its own HERS rating system based on a different set of standards. So there was this forking of these two different types of HERS ratings, and my guess is that California's was based on a more stringent set of codes that was developed as part of the Warren-Alquist Act. Is that a right assumption?
Roy Mittleider:
Yeah, they typically did. California has always been on the forefront of energy efficiency and tightening up buildings, making wall assemblies more efficient, making the overall building more efficient. I've been here now 12 years at CalCERTS and I've been here through four different code cycles because every three years the California Energy Commission would update their codes and energy efficiency codes. So every three years, they become a little bit more stringent.
I've been here through the transition from 2008 to '13, from '13 to '16, '16 to '19, and now we just transitioned to the 2022 code. And through those four cycles, I've seen quite a bit of change as far as the building assemblies, what they're requiring, more efficiency, much tighter buildings, the introduction of mechanical ventilation because of the tightening of buildings, more insulation levels, lower window values to tighten up the energy efficiency in California because, ultimately, they want to be net-zero. They want to build a house that's as cost-effective possible to bring down that energy use. And then, how they call it a zero energy home would be to offset the rest now in solar. So the goal is to make the building efficient first and then put the solar on the building to finish out that last phase of the energy use that it is using so we can reduce down how much solar we actually put on a building.
Yin Lu:
That's awesome. When we talk about home electrification, you think about solar and you think about putting in a heat pump and you think about induction oven. Those are the things you're like, let me change out the old for the new. What you're saying is, as the codes have evolved, it's really a lot around insulation and weatherization of buildings to make sure that the shell is as insulated as possible before you even think about switching out things that power the house from the inside.
Roy Mittleider:
Absolutely. As a contractor myself and coming from a background of being a builder, I wish I would've known more about that back then when I was starting to do the building because it wasn't until later on that I really realized that the same thing is true for California's energy codes. It's all around cost-effectiveness. What's the most cost-effective thing that I can do to the building and get the best bang for my buck? And air sealing and insulation would be one of them. I mean, that's the low hanging fruit that we pick to make a building more efficient. Throwing a bunch of solar on a roof before I do those other measures doesn't make a whole lot of sense because now I'm just putting on a bunch of panels that I'm having to pay for.
The same thing is true about neighbors of mine. I go by their house and I see 40 panels on top of their roof and they have the same size home I do. It's mind-boggling that they were just sold a bunch of solar without thinking about the benefits of some of the other measures they could've taken on that would've been way more cost-effective to accomplish and made the home healthier too. If I look at the laws of thermal dynamics and buildings and the way that buildings are moving air and energy and the heat, the moisture, the air, everything, the big three that we talk about in building science, those things are still occurring in a building that has a bunch of solar on it but wasn't airs sealed properly. So where's that makeup air coming from? How is the air moving in and out of that assembly? Is it dirty air? We also look at the ramifications of a home being healthy as well because we spent a lot of times in our home.
Yin Lu:
Yeah. Roy, you'd mentioned that you started off your career in construction. And as a builder, how did you get to being in this position doing training for CalCERTS? Take us on your professional journey.
Roy Mittleider:
I grew up in the Midwest. I was born in California, but I grew up in the Midwest in South Dakota. And early on in high school, I dabbled with my sister's boyfriend at the time in doing some construction work, and I loved working with my hands. My dad was a woodworker. I always worked in his shop with him together. And so it was just a natural thing that really fit for me. And I always liked being out in the field. I always liked getting my hands on things and creating things. So I worked in a lot of different trades through the years. And when I moved to California in the very early '90s, it would've been probably about 1990, I was working in the metal industry, specifically metal roofing industry and iron working, doing tilt ups and doing some big public work projects. And my background as a sheet metal fabricator and things came into play. And it wasn't long about the-
... and things came into play, and it wasn't long, about the mid '90s, where I decided to break off with a couple of my coworkers and we started a metal roofing business where we did a lot of public work projects locally here in Sacramento, doing schools and firehouses, and some really large projects. And for me, that was my first partnership, and it wasn't going as I would've expected it to go, and people have to make decisions based on other people's ideas. And the business model wasn't working the way that I really foresaw it going, so I decided to move on.
I was living in the mountainous area here of Pollock Pines, which is kind of between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, and I resigned from my corporation at the time, and from there, I just started doing a lot of what I would call handyman type work. And I got so busy. I just naturally jumped right into being a general contractor. And within a year and a half to two years, I was building houses up in the Pollock Pines area. And so that continued on for quite a while, building homes through the early 2000s.
And I started to see some new technologies. Solar was becoming popular, so I was incorporating some solar into my homes. Passive ventilation air was another one, that running pipes underground so that it can cool the air before it comes back into the mechanical system. That was stuff that was kind of on the forefront and I love that aspect of it.
And then, of course, 2008 hit. The real estate economy collapsed on me, around me, and nobody was building anymore, and I had to reinvent myself. What had really transpired was that through being incorporated, I was looking to be retrained and I was going to get out of the trades altogether and move into a new industry.
And it was through that, that I was able to come through some training that was offered by CalCERTS that helped me become a HERS Rater. I learned more about the BPC program, which is a Building Performance Contractor program, and that's what really lit my eyes up was building performance contracting, just like we were just talking about, being able to go out to a house, make recommendations on how they can improve the energy efficiency of their home, and then being able to do the work without it being a conflict of interest and being able to test in, test out, show results. That's what really perked up my ears when I felt like I didn't have to farm everything out to a subcontractor to get the work done because I loved performing the work and I did a lot of my work in-house with employees. And I loved employing people and helping others achieve their goals too.
So it wasn't long, after I had completed all of those certifications, that CalCERTS Training Center, it was basically a piece of land here in Folsom where they wanted to build a training center, and have a training center to be able to train the workforce on a lot of the topics that we're talking about today. And I just happened to get an interview with the owner and he loved my credentials, and he made a comment to me. He said, "Why aren't you working for me? You have all my certifications." And I was just, like I said, I was just coming out of this 2008 turmoil. There wasn't a lot of work out there at the time. And I just said, "Well, make me an offer."
So he did. He made me an offer and I've loved working here. I've been here a little over 12 years now, and I've done everything from train HERS Raters, and hundreds of them here, through CalCERTS. I've seen a lot of them go on to be successful inspectors and have inspection companies that are basically third party building officials here in the state of California. I've trained a lot of them in BPI procedures and things that are utilized for rebate programs through utilities here in California. There's a lot of credentials that are used for our weatherization, for low-income housing, the Weatherization Assistance Program, that's through the Department of Energy. We are now doing RESNET. CalCERTS also does the Energy Star certification to be able to certify Energy Star homes to qualify builders for the 45L tax credit.
So there's a lot of exciting things that are happening. To me, it's really an exciting time, with the Inflation Reduction Act that has just been passed and a lot of things that are coming out to help homeowners improve their energy efficiency, and like you said earlier, going towards electrification and getting away from fossil fuel usage. So it's really an exciting time.
So that's how my journey landed me here at CalCERTS, and I still work here at the CalCERTS Training Center. I'm the director of training, handling a lot of the curriculum and things for not only CalCERTS and the HERS program, but Energy Star and RESNET and the Building Performance Institute, and others here. So it's been an exciting time.
Yin Lu:
It's cool to see how CalCERTS started off doing HERS training and now is growing in the different types of training that one can get. How many hundreds of HERS Raters do you train on average a year, and how long is that certification process?
Roy Mittleider:
Well, for CalCERTS, we have a pathway for certification. We typically start them off with alterations to existing homes, which is mainly tied around the HVAC system and doing compliance ratings for existing homes, and that's mainly tied to an HVAC change out or piece of that particular installation. The next phase of that training would move on to newly constructed buildings. And that's where the doors, I think, really open up as a third party special inspector for them to really go out and perform additional verifications on top of that that are related to the HVAC system. Like QII, QII is a pretty big verification now that's required in California.
Yin Lu:
What does that stand for?
Roy Mittleider:
That's your Quality Insulation Installation. So HERS Raters are basically tasked now with looking at the air sealing of the building and the insulation quality and how it was installed, the floors, walls, and ceilings. And it's a pretty stringent application in how it should be done. And that's a big verification that happens on multiple stages of a project because you can't just go out and verify everything all at one time. So it requires them to come, just like a normal building official might come at different stages. The same thing is true now for a HERS Rater.
In new construction, there's a lot of what we call performance credits that could be taken. California has a very interesting way of pathways that can demonstrate compliance to the energy code, whether it be prescriptive or performance, and you can think of prescriptive as a prescribed set of measures that must be done, but if you use the performance approach, you can kind of trade off those measures.
And I'll give you an example of that. Let's say I'm building a house, and it has a whole wall of windows that I want because I have a nice valley that I'm overlooking. Performance wise, from a design standpoint, makes more sense because if I were to build a house prescriptively, I can only put 5% glass on a west wall. Well, that would be looking out of a ship's porthole at this beautiful valley. I want a whole wall of glass. But what's going to happen on the west side of the building when I put a whole wall of glass up? I'm going to have a lot of solar heat gain. I'm going to use a lot of energy on that side of the home, and it's not going to meet code for California's energy code. So I can basically take that prescriptive requirement and I can trade it off for something that's better performing.
And I'll give you an example of that. We have prescriptive requirements like insulation. I must put in R-38 insulation, but what if I put in an R-49? For that difference, now, from R-38 to R-49, I can get additional compliance credit. So if I'm using the performance approach, I can increase other prescriptive measures and trade those offer things that may not be so energy efficient, like the windows on that west wall.
So that's a really cool thing about how California moves and shakes the... It's kind of like a shell game. You know you're moving things around to be able to get it to comply with the energy code, and that's where energy consultants come into play. So now we have a whole nother industry of energy consultants that are able to help builders achieve the goals that they want to achieve energy wise by still making the building a building and not have any windows in or something of that nature.
The other side of it, too, is that we have things that are called mandatory measures, things that must be met, like our duct leakage standards or our watt draw standards for HERS Raters. These are all mandatory things that must be met. They're not negotiable. So builders or installers must meet these stringent targets, so that kind of bumps up the game in installation. They've got to start installing things a little bit better, especially mechanicals. It requires good design. It requires good implementation of the installation to be able to get it to pass some of these targets.
Yin Lu:
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When we look at the different types of HERS Raters that you train, there's the baseline compliance raters whose main job it is to go into existing homes and do testing on, it sounds like mostly HVAC systems because a homeowner might want to change out a system, extra system Y, and they want to get rebates. Is that a fair common use case?
Roy Mittleider:
Let's say their furnace breaks down and the mechanical contractor goes in. As long as that mechanical contractor pulls a permit for that installation, it's going to trigger a HERS verification. And that HERS verification better be done when that building official looks at what we call a project status report. They basically can log into CalCERTS and go, "Did this HERS verification get done?" It's either yes or no. If it didn't, he's not going to sign off and finalize that permit. That's true for alterations, but it's also true for new construction. You have compliance raters in non-residential buildings, high-rise, residential, multifamily. All of these different things are triggered through the energy efficiency standards or energy code that trigger these third party building inspectors to come out and do testing and verification for compliance to the code.
Yin Lu:
Who typically hires a HERS rater? Is it the homeowner themselves?
Roy Mittleider:
Typically your mechanical contractors that would hire the HERS rater because everything's tied around the HVAC system.
Yin Lu:
So not the homeowner necessarily as I thought, but the people that are putting in swapping in the new system saying, "Hey, I got to meet code, otherwise I might lose my license, so therefore I will need to hire a HERS rater to come in and do the pre and post assessment of the unit [inaudible 00:22:53]".
Roy Mittleider:
Correct. And fill out the paperwork. So that's the other part of CalCERTS too, is we as an organization are a HERS provider. So we have a online data registry that is used to fill out forms that comply to the energy code that are given to inspectors. And the same thing would be true for housing, all of these things. So let's say we build a new house, there's a lot of forms that are filled out that are not only HERS related, but there's a lot of non HERS related forms too, like window fenestration and insulation. Solar would be another one. Water heating. There's a lot of forms that get filled out that sometimes they're not necessarily tied to a HERS rater, but our data registry is really meant to handle both so that anything that's HERS related gets pre-populated in our registry. The building departments have direct access to these builders, architects, engineers, energy consultants, raters, installers, everybody has unique accounts to be able to access pertinent aspects of the forms to be able to do whatever work they need to do in those forms to expedite the process.
Yin Lu:
Wow. So there's a record for every single house in California as part of that registry?
Roy Mittleider:
There is.
Yin Lu:
Fascinating.
Roy Mittleider:
There's dozens of forms that are related. Let's say to a newly constructed building, I think the last time we added them up there was over a hundred forms or pieces of paper. Building departments, typically now they don't require hard copies of things. That's where the data registry is really robust in that they require digital copies, they can access what they need to access, see that they've been completed, and now they don't have to take up a 10,000 square foot building for storage space to house all these forms. It's amazing how much paperwork that would be.
Yin Lu:
I'm a sucker for good data systems that bring people together and bring transparency to complex problems. So it sounds like the data registry has been serving that purpose. Is it data registry available to the public? Could I go and look up the information from my house in California?
Roy Mittleider:
Absolutely. Let's say your HVAC got changed out. You could absolutely go on there after the job or project would be closed out. The only person that has access to those records would be the person that owns that home. So the homeowner could go in and access their records for a particular installation. Through our data registry, we have ENERGY STAR, we have the California Advanced Homes Program. We used to have what was called the NSHP, that was the New Solar Homes Partnership Program. All of these different programs require paperwork and paper trail.
Right now with the RESNET Home score, people can come through our registry to be able to create that paperwork to be able to create the score, create the checklist, whatever it is that is needed in order to qualify for, let's say like ENERGY STAR. If a builder was building a home, they're not only going to get their HERS forms, but they're also going to get the ENERGY STAR forms that are required to qualify for that 45L tax credit. So it's a pretty robust engine that our IT department creates and maintains and has over since the inception of CalCERTS back in the early 2000s.
Yin Lu:
Do other states have similar types of registries as this one?
Roy Mittleider:
I know that the energy codes are starting to be implemented in other states like Texas and Oregon and Washington and some other bigger states. But whether they have a data registry, I'm not privy to that. I particularly work in California and haven't worked in any other state. But as far as the home energy rating system, here's another little tidbit fact you might find interesting. There are now cities like Portland, Oregon where when you buy or sell a house, you have to have a home energy score attached to that house. And there's places like Berkeley here in California that have reach codes that are requiring that now. So that's an exciting thing for us too. That would help drive home energy scores and home energy raters to be able to go out there and process these and to be able to perform these type of inspections.
Yin Lu:
I mean, it's just mind-boggling that when you buy a car, of course you're going to look for that MPG sticker to know how efficient your car is or the range that you could drive a car with one charge. But for homes, you don't have that. But can you imagine going on to Zillow or Redfin and be able to score at the flood score and the school system score and the energy efficient score? That would be very useful, I presume. But we haven't had that and it sounds like the tide perhaps is turning slowly but surely.
Roy Mittleider:
Well, a couple of years ago, the Metro Listing Service did start including lead HERS and other green addendums that are now recognizing, "As you know, I'm going to buy a house. When I walk into that house, I can see that nice granite countertop and the fresh paint and the new carpet, but I can't see the air ceiling and I can't see the extra insulation and how things were built." And so there are now some green addendums within the MLS to be able to highlight those and appraisers are starting to become more privy to it. Your home inspectors that come out and do a home inspection for a buyer are now becoming more privy to it. They're starting to utilize tools like we use in our industry like infrared thermography to be able to test things that a typical home inspector might not do because they're learning more about home performance.
Yin Lu:
I want to jump back to a topic, we talked about the existing homes and the role that our HERS rater plays with the mechanical systems installers. For a new construction, what's the role that HERS rater plays and how they interface with, let's say the architect, the builders, the HVAC, plumbing folks as a house is being put together? What step of the process do they come in?
Roy Mittleider:
Mandatory measures would be something like duct testing, airflow, and watt draw and refrigerant charge in specific climate zones of California. A newly constructed building is going to have a brand new mechanical system installed. So obviously, those mandatory measures are going to be driven along with refrigerant charge as long as it was in a climate zone that required it. Now, prescriptively QII, like I mentioned earlier, the Quality Insulation Installation is required. If a builder or the energy consultant said, "Hey, I don't want to do QII and I'm going to trade that measure off for something else," it's such a huge compliance deficit if we don't do it. It would be hard for a building to comply if they didn't perform it. So there are a lot of things like mechanical ventilation and measuring that. That's a mandatory measure. So whether we are in new construction or in an existing home, as we move more towards new construction, the mandatory measures increase and the amount of measures that we inspect for increase as well.
And it's really important, especially in new construction for a HERS rater to be on board early with the builder or the energy consultant or architect to be able to make sure that the building is being built and they're being called out at the proper times of inspection. Because if they get called out to inspect the insulation and the drywall's all installed, then it'd be hard to see, "But I'm not superman. I can't see behind drywall." So that's where the builder really ends up in a lot of trouble and that's when they call us and go, "Hey, I didn't know I needed to call a HERS rater out." And a lot of times these are owner builders, the person that's the owner and trying to do the build themselves. They call us saying, "Hey, I didn't have my insulation inspected and my drywall's up. And alls I can really tell them is, "I'm really sorry to hear that because there's no workaround. The HERS rater must see it. Otherwise, he's falsifying a document that's state law. He can go to jail for that. That's falsifying documents."
So it's very important for raters to get there early. Here at CalCERTS we're very much on the front lines of that in giving raters documents to help them through that process. Especially people that are new coming into the industry. If they don't know everything there is to know about construction, that's okay. You can learn it. Same way that I learned it, although I had a little headstart being a builder. I do train a lot of people that come, they might work in McDonald's one week and they're looking to be a third party special inspector the next week and we can train them for them to be successful to do that. And so it's an exciting time that people can actually move through training past the courses, get certified, and to be able to start a business for a little amount of investment.
Yin Lu:
So if I started off and I said, "Hey Roy, I want to become a compliance rater," from the day that I start a course with you at CalCERTS to the day I graduate, how long does that take?
Roy Mittleider:
Well, it used to take at least a week if it was face-to-face. You would be in classroom for a number of days. But after COVID hit, we were kind of forced to put things online. And so we do a blended approach where we give you a lot of the front end content that you would need online first, the bookwork, the laws, and just the stuff that's not as exciting. It lets you get through that. It's about 16 hours of content that you can learn at your own pace. And then we have you come in for hands-on labs. Those are designed right here at the CalCERTS Training Center to be able to see all the different equipment types that you're going to see from gas furnaces to heat pumps to small duct high velocity systems, be able to touch and feel all the equipment set up for tests, extract results, and utilize all the tools and resources that we've created in our training program to be able to help them get to that point. The paperwork process can be a little daunting for some people, but-
The paperwork process can be a little daunting for some people, but we've created lots of worksheets and things for them to help them really understand it in a easy way.
Yin Lu:
That's great. The training is shorter than I had expected. I thought perhaps this was a multi-month process, but you could do it, it sounds like, in as little as, in the before times, a week. But now, since COVID, the process might take a couple of weeks, three, four weeks?
Roy Mittleider:
Yeah. It just depends on how much time you're going to take online to get through the 16 hours of content, which I don't want people to rush through that portion because there's a lot of code stuff in there that you really need to learn to be effective as an inspector out there. But once you're done with that, it's two days of hands-on lab, you come through and do a field exam, and then, the last requirement would be to be EPA 608 certified so that you can handle refrigerant and be able to work with refrigerant gauges.
Yin Lu:
And then, what are the career paths for someone who has the HERS certification? You mentioned earlier, people can open up their own inspection businesses, but what other paths have you seen your students take?
Roy Mittleider:
Well, we have a job board here at our location where there's always a HERS firm that's looking to hire HERS raters, and some of them actually send the raters through training. And once they get through the training, they buy them the equipment, they give them a car, they give them all the inspections that they're ever going to need, and they just pay them an hourly wage. Or in some cases, they may split part of that inspection with them.
It depends on their business model, but I know a lot of times, through our job board, if a HERS rating firm is looking for a HERS rater that may have one credential or two credentials because like I said before, they could have an alteration certification, then they can have new construction certification. Then, we have non-residential certification. The more certs that you acquire, just like a building official, they might start off at somewhere around 25 to $30 an hour, have all the equipment given to them, have a car, and benefits, and things of that nature. And for that type of job, that's a pretty good wage, and they might do two to three inspections a day.
Yin Lu:
What are some of the cool career transitions that you've seen for people becoming HERS raters?
Roy Mittleider:
Not to mention any names because I don't need to, but I had a young gentleman come through here, I'm going to say, probably five or six years ago. He was pretty down on his luck. He wasn't sure what he was going to do. He was younger. He was only about 22 or 23. He decided not to go to college, and he was kind of stuck. And he found the HERS program. He came through my training. We hit it off. He was somebody that lived fairly close to our location. And within a couple of years of him going out and just pounding the pavement, he did his homework, he may or may not have been the best business person, I don't know, but obviously, from where he is today from where he was five years ago, the beauty of what we do do here is that each HERS rater has their own certification. They take that with them wherever they go.
So, if you wanted to become a HERS rater, and I was the owner, I could hire you on as a HERS rater, and I could hire another one, and another one and another one. And now, I can have 10 HERS raters on my staff that now would be working under my umbrella as a business owner. And that's what he did. He has, I think, 10 raters now that work under him in his business model, and he pays them a pretty good wage for each inspection, but he makes double that back. So, if you take 10 raters, and you give each of those raters four inspections a day times five days a week, and you're making 100 to $200 per inspection, per guy, we can do the math here. Can be a pretty lucrative business.
Yin Lu:
Yeah. And I should mention how we got connected in the first place, Roy, was one of your students who's an MCJ community member, Laron Briche, who's had a background in software and investing, took one of your courses, and became a HERS rater himself. So, yeah, I think that's a great opportunity for folks that really want to deep dive into the home energy efficiency space and make a really great career out of work that you do.
Roy Mittleider:
Yeah. And I've been here long enough, Yin, to tell you stories like that all day. They do keep in touch. They come back and say, "Man, I really am so grateful at what I've learned and being able to take that up into the industry, and to be able to apply it to real life, and to be able to start my own thing. Now, I got my own schedule, and a lot of freedom is gained by that and running your own business." And I've run my own business too for a long time. It does come with some headaches, but it also comes with a lot of freedom and a lot of joy.
Yin Lu:
Yeah. From where I sit, I'm seeing people talk more and more about home energy auditing as an area that technology can help make better, namely software, and using machine learning, and artificial intelligence, and lots of datasets that we have around homes in general. What do you think about that, and is there a role that you think technology could play in making HERS raters jobs' easier, better, faster?
Roy Mittleider:
Absolutely. This has been a topic on my mind for quite a few years. As a compliance rater in California, the raters that we train to go out and do inspections that are part of complying to California's energy code, they do a lot of diagnostic testing, and that requires tools that measure certain things like manometers, and duct testers, and flow grids, and things that take airflow readings, and refrigerant gauges, and all these different tools that a HERS rater must possess. Going back to when I first started, we started off with needle gauges for refrigerant charge, analog gauges, where now, we're using digital gauges. And now, we're using tools that have no hose connections. They're Bluetooth. They can run through apps where I can now just download all the information over to an app and not really have to record anything in the field. As part of being a compliance rater, I do have a quality assurance team at CalCERTS that's going to follow a rater around and make sure that they're doing their job.
And so, being able to take data and having a way to house it, a place to store it rather than always relying on just a photograph of a digital gauge or something that I got to take a picture of to show compliance. I hope the technology will evolve us a little bit more, is the uploading of that directly into forms and things that could be utilized. Part of that is just approval of the Energy Commission approving stuff like that so that the data can't be compromised. If I were to measure something, and it's automatically uploaded to a registry and into a form that the HERS rater has to sign and legitify, then it's got to be something that can't be tampered with in protection of the homeowner and what they're actually getting, and also, for complying to the energy code. There are a lot of apps out there, like measureQuick, that work with a lot of different tools across the industry, not just one tool.
They have the capabilities of being able to take data and say that it complies with a RESNET 310. RESNET 310 is a new HVAC standard for grading an HVAC system. And now, you have measureQuick. You have The Energy Conservatory and other manufacturers like this now that have apps that embed that stuff into their app process so that when I run a particular test, it comes back saying that this qualifies and meets a 310 standard, which is awesome. Now, I don't have to do any calculations. I don't have to think about the process. They've done all that work for me. So, as we continue to move on and evolve, I think the technology, and like you said, AI and all this stuff is just, it's taken us along for the ride, and we can't help but conform to it at some point to help us.
Yin Lu:
Are there any points of frustration or friction in the current work of a HERS rater that you think someone should leverage technology to improve upon? I'm seeding potential entrepreneurs that might be thinking about problems to solve in this space with whatever answer you're going to give.
Roy Mittleider:
I see that there's got to be a way to be able to transfer data across space to be able to have it not be compromised, and be able to have it uploaded to a particular location to where it's secured, to where a rater will be able to access it, specifically, our data registry, and being approved to be able to upload this data directly to it so that it saves them a lot of time and energy because let's face it, the forms in the compliance process, they really bog down the process.
And personally, for me as a contractor, when I first heard about HERS, I was a builder. All that paperwork that came along with it, I didn't want to have anything to do with that stuff. It's like, "Just take care of it. Just get it done and sign it, and get me the copies that I need in order to get my project signed off." And the HERS raters still kind of feel the same way. I think sometimes, they feel a little bogged down in the paperwork process. So, any way to help expedite getting that paperwork to the right people, to the right builder, and getting it done, and out there, and getting it finalized is probably one of the things that would help them out the most.
Yin Lu:
Okay. We'll leave that an open request. Roy, thank you so much for spending time chatting with me today. I learned a whole bunch and just really appreciate the work that you do, and how many people have gone through the program, and now, have a new skillset that they're applying to helping us with building out an entire grid that's more energy-efficient. Really appreciate all that you do.
Roy Mittleider:
Thank you so much, Yin. It was a pleasure speaking with you today.
