EarthCraft Homes

Building an EarthCraft House is about constructing a healthy, more valuable home while minimizing environmental impacts. EarthCraft House follows a systems approach to home building that stresses an understanding of how the different components of a home work together. This approach results in a home that performs better, is more economical for the homeowner and costs little more to build than a comparable home built with standard construction practices.

Any size or style of home at any price point can achieve EarthCraft House certification by meeting these criteria. These guidelines are flexible to allow for a variety of approaches to environmental construction. EarthCraft House guidelines address energy efficiency, durability, indoor air quality, resource efficiency, waste management, and water conservation.

EarthCraft House allows builders great flexibility in achieving environmental performance. To achieve EarthCraft House certification, homes must meet ENERGY STAR certification criteria, including achieving passing scores from diagnostic tests for air infiltration and duct leakage.

In addition, each house must achieve a minimum of 150 points from a scoring sheet. Select and Premium status are awarded to homes that meet additional criteria and achieve 200 and 230 points, respectively. All EarthCraft certified homes will also be awarded ENERGY STAR certification.

The energy sources used by homes can contribute to global warming and other serious environmental problems. Also, the materials used in the construction and maintenance of a home can deplete natural resources. EarthCraft House can increase the energy efficiency of a home by 30% which can result in a reduction of over 1100 pounds of greenhouse gases introduced into the atmosphere each year. In addition, EarthCraft homes can conserve water and reduce stormwater pollution. Finally, by promoting recycling and the use of durable, low maintenance, recycled, and rapidly renewable materials, EarthCraft House helps to ensure our homes conserve natural resources and protect ecosystem biodiversity. EarthCraft homes are truly "sensibly built for the environment."

EarthCraft Communities is a certification program for larger planned residential developments, usually over 35 units, with a variety of building types and mixed uses. Projects with multiple buildings of a single-use or single building type are addressed in the building level programs of EarthCraft Multifamily or EarthCraft House.

Initially, EarthCraft House focused on single-family and multi-family buildings with limited attention to site development issues. However, in 2003, the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association, the Atlanta Regional Commission, the Urban Land Institute, and Southface initiated a pilot program to develop broad sustainable community development guidelines. The pilot process brought together policy leaders, land developers, environmental groups, and other stakeholders to address low impact development issues around site selection, land disturbance, water quality, storm water management, energy, water and transportation infrastructure, community design, open space, green space preservation, pedestrian design, transportation, and other related issues. Five communities representing a diversity of development models in north and middle Georgia participated in the EarthCraft Community pilot program to help test the criteria for applicability and relevance. Since the pilot communities, the program continues to expand across the region.

Given the success of the EarthCraft Piedmont Communities program, alongside development pressures on the coast of Georgia, Southface engaged in a second round of stakeholder meetings in 2005; this time focused on the specific hydrology, climate, and consumer preferences of the coastal areas. With the input of local stakeholders, unique coastal development issues were integrated into the existing EarthCraft Piedmont Communities structure and have resulted in a unique set of development criteria- EarthCraft Coastal Communities.

The EarthCraft Communities program, both Piedmont and Coastal, is a voluntary market-driven initiative that rewards responsible developers with a well-known and trusted certification for green development.