The phones stopped ringing for custom home construction about eight months ago at Pusey & Raffensperger Builders.

The downturn in upscale housing hit the Lititz homebuilder early — months before the economy dropped off elsewhere.

Even remodeling work has been slow. What jobs have come have been from previous customers.

But all that is about to change, believes Scott Pusey, son of company founder Dave Pusey. Last week, the company got its first call about building a LEED-certified "green home," and Thursday, a call came about doing an "energy audit" on an existing home.

"I think we have the potential to be overwhelmed by this," Pusey said of what he hopes will be a growing demand for energy efficiency.

Pusey, 31, sees "a perfect storm" coming. Home-energy costs have been rising and are expected to rise sharply in coming years as utility rate caps expire. And now, under the federal economic stimulus package, homeowners are being offered tax incentives to make energy-efficiency upgrades.

The measure, signed into law Tuesday by President Barack Obama, includes $16.8 billion for the Energy Department's Renewable Energy Fund. Of that, $3.2 billion is earmarked for state programs designed to improve energy efficiency and conservation through such things as grants or rebates for energy audits.

The bill also includes tax credits for homeowners who upgrade to efficient Energy Star appliances, replace drafty windows and doors or add insulation. The tax credits are for 30 percent of the cost of the upgrade and are capped at $1,500. The cost of switching to geothermal heat or adding wind generators or solar panels is not capped.

Pusey said he saw it coming, or rather, he was told it was.

"My sister and her husband really gave us a heads-up about what was coming up," he said.

Pusey's sister is a "green energy" consultant in Washington. Her husband runs the state of Maryland's residential energy-efficiency program.

It was in Maryland that Pusey took a four-day course in August to become certified to do energy audits. In the following months, the economy tanked and the nation elected a new president.

Things changed the first time Obama mentioned weatherization — "making existing housing stock more efficient" — in a speech, Pusey said.

Previously, weatherization had meant adding weather-stripping to doors and windows in a government-funded program for low-income housing. It's been more than three decades since the last time a president talked about the subject. Now, it's a different time, Pusey said.

"At the conferences I go to, they always start by saying this is not the Jimmy Carter 'put on a sweater' approach," Pusey said.

The current approach is conservation, but using high-tech efficiency to maintain comfort levels, he said. It is the "house-as-a-system approach."

In doing his energy audits, Pusey uses a device with a fan set in a blocked doorway to draw air out of a building. Using an infrared camera, he can see where heat is escaping. Another device allows him to test the efficiency of combustion appliances, such as oil furnaces or gas water heaters.

After taking extensive recordings, he loads the data into a computer program that can determine the extent of a home's energy efficiency and the cost of inefficiency and calculate savings from making improvements.

Pusey said it is important to take a holistic look at a house, because changes made in one area will affect other areas. And the per-dollar benefit of some changes, such as adding an air seal to an attic, may be much higher than other, more costly fixes, such as replacing windows.

Getting homeowners the information to make an informed decision takes time — possibly as much as eight hours at the home and later in the office — and doesn't come cheap. Pusey's audits start at $350 for a small all-electric home and could be as much as $1,000 for a large home with several combustion appliances.

But, he said, the cost of improvements can be offset by savings on utility bills. Typically it takes five to seven years to recoup those costs, he said.

Before doing an audit, Pusey said, homeowners should go through an initial screening process. He recommends they consult the Energy Star Web site, a joint program of the federal Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency.

Homeowners can enter information about their home, including the annual cost of utilities, into the Home Energy Yardstick to calculate the costs and savings of increased efficiency. To find the yardstick online, visit www.energystar.gov, look under Home Improvement and click Home Energy Audits and then click the link under Do-It-Yourself Audits.

The last several months have been a learning curve for Pusey, who was a psychology major at Rutgers University. He started with his own home, a 1960s split-level in East Petersburg.

Having grown up in a homebuilding family and done construction work himself, Pusey thought he knew what to look for in buying the house. When he did an audit, he found poorly insulated pipes and walls. The insulation standards have changed significantly since the 1960s, he said. "It wasn't even a thought when I bought the house," he said.

He added air sealing and insulation to renovate an office room into a nursery for his and his wife's second child, expected in June.

The move to "green building" and remodeling work is a shift for the 32-year-old company, Pusey said.

But, he believes, the timing is right.

E-mail: bharris@lnpnews.com or call 481-6022