Third Party Performance Testing: An Austin Case Study

 In 2006, then-Mayor Will Wynn and Austin’s City Council committed the City of Austin to improving the sustainability of its residential building stock by requiring all newly constructed residential buildings to be zero-energy capable by 2015.
 
A Zero Energy Capable Homes Task Force (ZECHT) was convened and met from October 2006 to April 2007. The task force developed a package of local amendments to the IECC 2006—along with incremental goals to be incorporated during each code review year through 2015—that could help bring about the energy efficiency gains needed for new homes to become zero-energy capable (Figure 1). In recognition of the role that energy code compliance plays in achieving increased energy efficiency in newly constructed buildings, one of the Task Force’s key recommendations was the adoption of a performance testing requirement for all new residential single- and multi-family homes. According to this testing requirement, all new homes built in the City of Austin would need to pass a variety of performance tests administered by third-party companies prior to final mechanical inspection by the City’s Planning and Development Review Department. The results of these tests would verify a new building’s compliance with energy code provisions regarding mechanical systems and a building’s thermal envelope. The IECC 2006 and the local amendments recommended by the ZECHT were adopted in October 2007 and became effective on January 1, 2008. An eventual goal for Austin Energy is to require residential energy code plan reviews during the building permit application process. Finally, the commercial code is expected to have performance requirements with the adoption of the IECC 2015. 
 

The testing requirement was designed to maximize the energy efficiency gains associated with the City’s building energy code while minimizing the administrative burden placed on the City’s Planning and Development Review Department. Like many municipal building departments around the country, Austin’s Planning and Development Review Department was already underfunded and overworked. Therefore, responsibility for overseeing performance testing was not assigned to Department staff. A number of factors contributed to this decision: the training hours and capital expense associated with in-house performance testing; the difficulty of retaining skilled testing technicians during lulls in the building cycle; and the time demands imposed by the energy code inspection duties already assigned to Planning and Development Review staff.
 
Placing the performance testing requirement in the hands of private third-party contractors was identified as the best alternative to developing an in-house capacity.