Apollo Assist
What is Apollo Assist
Apollo Assist is our holistic approach to home energy assessments and upgrades associated with California's Energy Upgrade California (EUC) initiative. Forty percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from building energy use and 85% of that come from single family homes. The EUC program is designed to help lower your homes energy use and thus the GHG emitted from your home. It offers rebates to help offset the costs and has trained those general contractors who asked to be Home Performance (HP) contractors so they can install the energy efficient upgrades in a way that differs significantly from what's been done traditionally. All building upgrades adhere to traditional building codes. But an energy efficiency upgrade takes a different approach to building a home. It views your home as a system where the air conditioner, furnace, water heater, windows, lighting, insulation and air flow all affect how your homes uses energy. Apollo Assist guides you through the upgrade process with professional energy consultants that work independently of the HP contractor to make your home as energy efficient as you can make it without breaking the bank. There are contractors out there that will replace a 62% inefficient water heater with a new 62% inefficient water heater replace the 13 SEER air conditioner with a new 13 SEER air conditioner. That's not an energy efficient upgrade and our Apollo Assist eliminates that from ever occurring.
How Apollo Assist Works
There are two tests called a test-in and a test-out that need to be done when you do an energy efficiency upgrade. The test-in typically uses a BPI Energy Assessment which also looks at your home and includes testing procedures on all gas appliances and looks for dangerous levels of carbon monoxide. You can also have a HERS II Energy Assessment that looks at how your home uses energy and includes your appliances and lighting. Both the HERS II and BPI tests overall each other by 95%. We combine both the HERS II and the BPI Energy Assessments into one assessment thereby allowing us to collect all the data necessary once. The HP contractor only focuses on the BPI test and has a third party HERS II rater verify the energy savings without any knowledge of what was on the work scope. So they won't know if the contractor charged to install a energy efficient measure and then either did not install that measure or did a terribly poor job. If the contractor is a Building Performance Contractor (BPC), the third party verification is all done in house. So if there's an issue that causes injuries or death, no one is going to find out about it until it's too late. To us that's like having the fox guarding the chicken coop. We believe just doing a BPI Energy Assessment or having a BPC do the work creates an inherent conflict of interest and defeats the intent of the Legislature when they enacted the HERS regulations requiring an independent third party verification of the contractors work when installing energy efficiency measures.
Independent and Unbiased Assessments
Our Apollo Assist works by independently conducting the energy assessments, both before the work is done and after the work is done. We model the home, make the appropriate upgrade recommendations so that you get the best bang for your buck and do not spend money upgrading your home needlessly. We will sit down with you and review our assessment, explain what we found and why we are making our recommendations, have it all priced out, and show you how to leverage the available resources that can often times defer the cost of the upgrade for several years.
Our energy assessments collect the necessary data to apply for the maximum rebates possible. We will arrange for financing if needed. Even people with a foreclosure, upside down on the mortgage, or just emerging from bankruptcy can get financing for energy efficiency upgrades. We can show you how and handle it for you. We only work with HP contractors who have integrity and understand what it means to be energy efficient. The contractors we work with walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Even still, when the contractor is done we conduct a work scope verification which makes sure the items listed on the work scope were completed before moving on to the test out, which again combines the HERS II and BPI Energy Assessments. The test-out finalizes everything so you can get the rebates and the financing is necessary. The entire process can take less than 60 days.
House as a System
You understand that your car's engine is made up of interacting components and systems all acting as one. When one component fails, it affects the performance of the entire engine or your comfort while driving, like the air conditioner compressor going out can make for an uncomfortable ride and costly repairs. The same goes for your house. High energy bills, uneven temperatures from room-to-room, drafts, that phantom breeze that seems to come out of nowhere, moisture, mold, mildew, poor indoor air quality, ice dams, pest infestations, seemingly uncontrollable humidity levels all have a negative effect on the comfort of your home and causes you to spend more money on utility bills. It can even cause premature deterioration of the building materials.
When one component in your home has a problem it impacts the other systems’ ability to function properly. Treating the obvious symptom without knowing the real culprit behind it can actually make the problem worse or create new problems. The process of elimination approach just causes frustration as you try solution after solution investing more time, money and energy without resolution. Properly diagnosing and fixing the root cause requires a house-as-a-system approach based on building science. Apollo Assist provides a roadmap on how to make your home energy efficient for the least cost.
