Hailey officials are considering rules that would require builders to increase building energy efficiencies by 10 percent.
The city's Sustainable Building Advisory Committee recommended Monday that the City Council adopt a "green building code" of stricter standards for all new commercial and residential construction, including remodels.
Planner Mariel Platt said the stricter efficiency standards would increase construction costs by up to 3 percent.
Council members voiced unanimous support for the committee's concepts, but were divided over whether to make the recommended changes mandatory.
"Voluntary compliance is great," Councilman Fritz Haemmerle said. "Everyone would benefit from an energy audit and could save a lot of money."
But Haemmerle said he was against enforcing mandatory compliance for builders hit hard by the recession.
"Right now they are competing against short sales," he said.
Councilman Don Keirn also cheered the work of the committee, but said the recommendations regarding remodels would create "more administrative problems than benefits."
Councilwomen Carol Brown and Martha Burke both said they would like to see the recommendations eventually become mandatory.
A recent energy audit of Brown's house turned up a carbon monoxide leak.
"For me this is a health-and-safety issue," she said.
The energy audits recommended by the committee would measure a building's energy conservation according to the Home Energy Rating System index, a points scoring system established by the Residential Energy Services Network. The network was created with the help of the National Association of State Energy Officials.
Energy auditors use equipment such as blower doors, which measure the extent of leaks in the building envelope, infrared cameras, which reveal hard-to-detect areas of air infiltration and missing insulation, and a duct-blaster test to assess leaks in the heating duct system.
Platt said the city of Moscow recently adopted a voluntary green building code and is planning to make it mandatory within two years.
The council instructed Platt to make refinements to the committee's recommendations pertaining to remodels, gather more information on the process of Moscow's green building code and explore the possibility of offering local rebates for energy audits from a $38,000 federal grant acquired by the city for that purpose.
The council will take up the discussion again on May 10.
Tony Evans: tevans@mtexpress.com
