Neighborhood Pilots

Eight-Home Pilot Whole-Neighborhood Retrofits

SustainableWorks is currently retrofitting 8 houses in South Perry. The houses were selected from a door-to-door campaign and contacts with Spokane Alliance institution members in the neighborhood. SustainableWorks also received authorization to get energy use histories from Avista and basic info about each house. Then SustainableWorks took the amount the homeowner paid annually for energy and divided it by the square footage of the house to find a dollar amount per square foot per year. The eight houses were selected from those with the highest ratio, ranging from $2.50 - $3.20 per square foot per year. Twenty journey-level workers from the IBEW, UA and Sheet Metal Workers used neighborhood homes to learn how to conduct energy audits with training from Dave Hales of WSU Extension Energy. After the training was complete, the journey-level workers conducted official audits of each home. The retrofits are scheduled to be complete the week of September 21, 2009.

Sustainable Works plans to expand the project into the larger neighborhood surrounding the pilot homes. Much of the organizing, customer service and contracting process will be the same, only on a larger scale and more efficient due to lessons learned through the pilot project. Homeowners who participated in the pilot project will be invited to share their experiences with the rest of the neighborhood.