Standard 1101 continued to progress through Standard Development Committee (SDC) 1100 as activity for launching HERSH2O®® accelerated. Twenty-nineteen was a busy year for water efficiency at RESNET. The culmination of this work will be a soft launch of HERSH2O® in early 2020. RESNET kicked-off 2019 working with HERS® Rating Provider Energy Inspectors to provide pilot HERSH2O ratings in Utah and a presentation to the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District in January. February began with SDC 1100 approving all responses to the first round of public comments on Standard 1101; and ended with seven sessions on water efficiency at the RESNET conference in New Orleans. Development on Standard 1101 continued with a second public comment period that opened in March and concluded at the end of April. By the end of May, a contract to develop an online HERSH2O® rater training was executed and SDC 1100 was concluding its review of public comments on the second preliminary draft standard (PDS). Also in May was a joint podcast with the International Code Council on water efficiency standards as part of Building Safety Month. In June, SDC 1100 approved the responses to all public comments on PDS-02 and PDS-03 was approved for the third public comment period. June also saw the completion of draft implementation standards for HERSH2O® which included accreditation criteria for raters and providers as well as quality assurance protocols and software approval. After being released for public comment in July, PDS-03 of Standard 1101 received no comments by the conclusion of the public comment window in August. In September, RESNET staff began the process of finalizing Standard 1101 and the HERSH2O® rater training was completed. October kicked-off with a bang as RESNET partnered with KB Home and Energy Inspectors to provide attendees of the Water Smart Innovations conference with a HERSH2O rating demonstration in Las Vegas. In October, RESNET also received one technical appeal on Standard 1101. SDC 1100 committee members completed a draft response to the appeal in November. In November, RESNET staff also developed a work plan for a soft launch of HERSH2O® which will include formal implementation standards to be voted on by the RESNET Board. In addition, the HERSH2O® rater training integration into the RESNET online training portal was completed. To round-out 2019, December will see beta testing of the HERSH2O® rater training as well as improvements to the calculation spreadsheet that will be used for the soft launch in 2020. Finally, a plan for launching HERSH2O by the end of the first quarter in 2020 will be completed. As we look forward to 2020, RESNET anticipates a full launch of the HERSH2O® rater training for all raters, providers and RFIs in January; while a formal announcement about the launch of the program is expected by the RESNET conference in February. RESNET will also be working with EPA to explore how WaterSense version 2.0 might be integrated with the soft launch of HERSH2O®.
