The Challenge
Aging homes often lack proper insulation and air sealing, are heated and cooled by outdated inefficient mechanical equipment, and rarely utilize renewable energy sources.
Less than 1% of American homes currently receive any sort of energy‐ saving upgrades each year; the US will need to retrofit at least 4 to 6 million homes annually to reach the country’s 50% GHG reduction target by 2030.
Most significant barriers to growing the retrofit demand include: lack of a reliable, trained home performance workforce; low customer demand; and complexity of work scope.
Upcoming Home Performance Workshops:
Wed, July 15th, 2026, 6-8pm–The Retrofit Lab: Preparing Homes for Heat Pump Upgrades – Core Components
Wed, July 22nd, 2026, 6-7:30pm–The Retrofit Lab: Mid-Construction Building Performance Testing & Air Sealing
Sat, Aug 8th, 2026, 10am – 2pm–The Retrofit Lab: Upgrading to High Performance Heat Pumps (In-Person Demonstration Project)
Workshops are provided by Symbi Homes with support from Energy Shrink and DCSEU.
Past Home Performance Workshop
The Retrofit Lab hosted a half-day workshop on converting homes to energy-efficient heat pumps for building professionals in the Washington, DC area. Symbi Homes’ Matt Kulp and Nicole Tysvaer teamed up with Noah Lawrence from Retrotec to share effective practices for planning, implementing, and testing home performance upgrades. Specific topics included:
- Pre-construction energy audit and mechanical design
- Writing comprehensive and integrated scopes of work
- The basic components of heat pump installations
- Educating homeowners and measuring success
The workshop featured hands-on activities to assess home performance using Retrotec testing and diagnostics equipment. This session qualified for 4 BPI continuing education units and was free to DC Train Green participants. Full course description was available here, and DC Train Green program registration was offered at this link. For more information and future workshops, follow @Symbi Homes on Instagram and Facebook.
Help turn inefficient houses into future-ready, green homes
Most homes in the U.S. are decades old and weren’t built with modern energy standards, making them inefficient, uncomfortable, and costly to heat and cool. Despite this, only a tiny fraction receive energy-saving upgrades each year. To cut emissions and improve living conditions, we need to scale up home retrofits with better insulation, efficient systems, and renewable energy.
