EcoSmart - Southern Development Homes

Creating Quality and Sustainable Homes

At Southern Development Homes we believe that Pearl Certification provides our homeowners with the peace of mind that they deserve in their new home.

Transparency: In addition to the HERS score, Pearl Certification essentially provides a “full report card.” This means transparency and ease in seeing all the home’s high performing assets that make it healthy, safe, comfortable, energy and water efficient.
Dynamic Certification: Pearl Certification allows homeowners to understand and track how their home performs for years to come, not just one day. This allows improvements to be made over time, thus maintaining and/or adding to the home’s value.
Results: We exceed standards including a blower door test to ensure air tightness, a duct leakage test twice performed to ensure conditioned air is delivered where planned, thus providing lower utility bills.

What is Pearl Certification?

Pearl Gold Certification:

Pearl’s certification system evaluates and provides homeowners resources to view how products that are used to build the home provide value. Building features such as cooling systems and insulation are evaluated on the efficiency of its performance and installation.

Each home earns a Gold Certification based on verified high-performing features that enhance the quality of comfort and savings for its owners. Pearl’s certification system groups the features in your home into four categories. Each homeowner receives a Pearl Certification packet that provides information and scores that fall within the four categories.

Building Shell

The building shell consists of the roof and attic, exterior walls, windows, doors, and basement or crawlspace. These assets provide an air, moisture, and thermal barrier that separates the inside from the outside.

Heating & Cooling

A home’s heating and cooling systems include furnaces, air conditioners, and heat pumps. This equipment heats and cools air, water, or steam. The ducts and pipes that circulate the air, water or steam through the home are also part of the heating and cooling system.

Baseload

A home’s baseload includes devices that run year-round, not just in the heating or cooling season. Water heaters, refrigerators, dishwashers, clothes washers, lighting, and other features contribute to a home’s baseload.

Home Management

A home’s management assets include “smart” devices that control heating and cooling systems, lighting, and other technologies: dashboards that provide information about energy use; and plans for improving the home’s performance assets.

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