EarthCraft is a regional green building program developed in 1999 by the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association and Southface, focused on the hot-humid Southeast climate zone. EarthCraft has grown into one of the most widely used green building programs in the Southeast US, with three tracks: EarthCraft House (single-family), EarthCraft Multifamily, and EarthCraft Communities. Certification is performance-based, with a strong emphasis on measurable energy and water savings.
EarthCraft certification is required or incentivized by a growing list of state and local programs, including Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. For affordable housing developers using LIHTC in the Southeast, EarthCraft Multifamily is often the simplest, most cost-effective path to compliance. EarthCraft projects typically achieve 20-30% energy savings over code-built homes.
HECS is an accredited EarthCraft Verifier with experience on single-family, multifamily, and community-scale projects. Our role is to verify that the project meets the EarthCraft technical requirements through plan review, on-site inspections at the right milestones, and diagnostic testing at completion. We coordinate with the design team early in the project to set realistic targets and to identify the measures that deliver the most points for the least cost.
EarthCraft shares substantial overlap with NGBS Green and ENERGY STAR for Multifamily, but is a distinct program with its own documentation requirements. If your project is targeting EarthCraft, the good news is that much of the verification work also satisfies portions of NGBS and ENERGY STAR. HECS can coordinate a unified inspection and testing program that meets all the target certifications in a single workflow — saving you time on the construction schedule and reducing the total cost of third-party verification.