Dodge County native builds most efficient home in nation

For his entire life, Berne native Dave Derby has always been in the construction business. 
For the last 18 years he has owned his own business, Derby Builders out of Rochester. 
Earlier this year Derby, won perhaps the most prestigious honor of his career thus far, when a house that his company built was named the 2019 Best Home Energy Rating Score in the Nation for a Custom Built Home. 
Humbled by receiving the honor Derby said that they never expected to win the competition and instead, their goal was to build the most efficient house they possibly could. 
“I didn’t see us winning the national award, that wasn’t necessarily our goal,” Derby said. “Our goal was to make a house that was sustainable.” 
Like many people in the business Derby explained that they look at many different ways that they can go about making homes as efficient as possible, something that is becoming more of a trend today. 
Derby explained that one big factor for people when it comes to building a new home is how much more efficient it is compared to an older home. 
Luckily for building companies, and potential home buyers, efficiently built homes is on the cutting edge as of recently and there has been new techniques developed to complete the goal. 
The way Derby looks at it is that the more money people can save on things like utility payments the more likely they will be to want to build a new home. Through having homes that are more efficiently built it means that they are more willing to build a home. 
“When you can get them in a situation where they have  big savings in utility payments it makes a big difference in deciding to build a house that is efficient,” Derby said. “By building homes that are more efficiently built the reality is that is allows us to provide our clients something that is cost effective for them. It’s nice to be able to provide those services.” 
The competition was based on the Home Energy Rating Score (HERS). After all was said and done, the home they built had a very impressive score of a negative three. 
“The HERS score on this house was by far the best we’ve had,” Derby said. “The average HERS of a house being sold is about 130. The lower the score, the better the efficiency is. This one was 32 and then with the solar panels installed, it was a negative three.”
Derby explained that there are a lot of different things that go into calculating that score. 
“There’s a lot of things that goes into that, all the way from the windows, to the insulation, to the products your putting into the house, all get equated into that score,” Derby said. 
Some of the features in the home includes double-stud walls, 9 1/4 inch thick walls filled with insulation, triple-pane windows, an electric pump water heater, and two ductless independent electric air-source heat pumps instead of central air and a furnace.
The Triton graduate said that the company builds about 6 houses a year on average. 
“The lord gives us what we can handle,” Derby said.