When we were looking for our new home, the partnership with EcoSmart was a big part of why we were interested in Whisper Valley. Comprehensive community planning and support on our mission to achieve a sustainable, ethical path forward for our family are now being realized in large part because of our relationship with EcoSmart, and we are thrilled with our decisions.

My wife and I were content living in our two-bedroom condo in North Austin and having a low environmental impact just by living relatively small and simple. We figured the only way we would consider moving into a house at some point is if it still had a relatively small physical and environmental footprint, and we knew we wanted a house with solar panels and other energy saving equipment and devices to make the home as energy efficient as possible. A large part of our reluctancy to even consider an upgrade to a house with these features was the belief that we’d have to install everything one system at a time after purchasing the house, adding a lot of extra expense and effort on our part.
When we found Whisper Valley, and the EcoSmart packages provided in each and every home, we loved the turnkey solution of not just included solar panels, but also a geothermal grid and geothermal HVAC system to vastly reduce energy consumption and costs, as well as all of the extras like energy-efficient Bosch appliances, foam insulation, double-paned windows, 50A pre-installed outlets in every garage to charge electric vehicles, and the inclusion of multiple Nest devices to increase the efficiency, convenience, and safety of the house. EcoSmart has been phenomenal in working with us to provide options in the Nest devices installed in our house, optimizing our HVAC system for maximum efficiency, and keeping us abreast of new developments they are researching for future deployment in Whisper Valley.
As a testament to the efficiency of our home (which has an incredibly low HERS rating of 21), we went from spending $60-$80 per month on our electricity bill in our 850 sq ft condo, to only $30-$40 per month cooling our 2-story, 1700 sq ft home in Whisper Valley. That would suggest a roughly 4x increase in efficiency in our house over our condo. When looking at our monthly energy consumption averages for the year and a half we’ve lived here, we have achieved a truly net zero energy home, having consistently produced more electricity from our solar panels than we’ve consumed from the grid. That’s a pretty darn good feeling!