For more information, visit the Eco Institution web site at www.ecoinstitution.com or contact us by email at info@ecoinstitution.com.

A Certified Green Home Inspector is a person who is trained primarily to inspect residential properties, like single-family homes, and small business workplaces in order to identify structural and design elements, appliances, fixtures, products, and related behaviors that can be modified in order to reduce energy and water consumption within the residence or place of business. By conducting a comprehensive "Green Home Inspection" or "Green Business Inspection," the Certified Green Inspector identifies and catalogs each of these potential energy and water savings and makes recommendations to implement them, with the goal of saving the homeowners and business owners money even as these changes also benefit the environment. It's a process that the Eco Institution encapsulates in the phrase: "Saving Green by Living Green."

The Eco Institution recognizes that there are many environmentally positive steps that homeowners and business owners can take that do cost a great deal of money—at least in the short term and sometimes in the longer term. While Certified Green Home Inspectors may reference and recommend some of these steps, the Certified Green Home Inspectors primary focus is to identify ways in which homeowners and business owners can reduce their energy and water consumption and costs—at least in the long term and usually in the shorter term—while simultaneously reducing or eliminating any adverse effects on the environment. As such, Certified Green Home Inspector recommendations are intended to be put into place both because they are helpful to the environment and because they offer the prospect of saving homeowners and business owners money.

Yes. The Eco Institution can private-label the course so that schools, businesses, and non-profit organizations can offer a custom-branded version of the course to their students, staff, clients, and the like. Additionally, the course can be offered as a curriculum addition in schools, colleges, or universities. Discounts are available for high-volume orders.

The Eco Institution's Certified Green Home Inspector course provides all of the foundational information that future Certified Green Home Inspectors will need to know in order to enter and to begin succeeding in this new and exciting profession. Among the topics covered in the course are:

• The importance of environmentally sound living in all phases of everyday life and business—and how these steps and behaviors can result in reduced energy and water usage and costs.
• The construction, electrical, plumbing, and engineering concepts that underlie energy and water use in the home and workplace.
• The principles and practices required in order to reduce energy and water use in the home and workplace.
• Effective ways by which Certified Green Home Inspector may inspect homes and small businesses in order to identify and catalog opportunities for saving energy and water.
• The architectural, design, appliance, fixture, and product changes that can be made in a home or workplace in order to reduce energy and water consumption.
• The attitudes and behaviors that homeowners and employees need to adopt in order to consistently reduce energy and water use over time.

Yes. The Certification Course is designed to be self-paced. Most students complete the course in 2- 4 weeks, however you have as much as 3 months from the initiation of the course in order to complete it and pass the Certification Exam..

The Certified Green Home Inspector certification has been designed primarily for graduates of high school or the equivalent, or anyone who has been serving in a related professional capacity for at least one year, regardless of educational attainment. That said, some of the course concepts and materials are challenging, and students will be expected to carry out extensive reading of additional materials on their own. The Certification Exam is also designed to be quite challenging. And so, while any reasonably well prepared and dedication student can successfully complete the course, doing so does require commitment and hard work.

In order to protect the professional privacy of its Coaches, the Eco Institution operates on an "anonymous coaching" basis. Your Coach's primary role is to view and evaluate your assignments and to provide you with personalized, online feedback. The Eco Institution maintains a Student Support Department, which you can email at any time if you have questions, are experiencing problems, or require assistance in any way. The Student Support Department can forward any course-related emails and assignments onto your Coach on your behalf and send you any Coach responses as required..

The assignments are open-ended and of varying lengths, and are submitted on your own schedule to the Eco Institution through the Secure Student Center. The final Certification Exam is a two-hour, timed, online examination and, unlike the basic coursework, must be completed within two hours of beginning the exam, although you can begin taking the exam at any time..

There are neither formal requirements nor pre-requisites for training to become a Certified Green Home Inspector. Indeed, future Certified Green Home Inspectors come from all walks of life—business professionals, employees, entrepreneurs, and even homemakers and college students. These individuals and many others have the capability of becoming a Certified Green Home Inspector if they apply the necessary effort and acquire the skills and knowledge essential to the discipline.

That said, certain professionals are usually more well prepared for becoming a Certified Green Home Inspector than others. This includes any professional whose business involves working with residential properties—including real estate agents, home developers, home inspectors, architects, interior designers, landscape architects, landscape maintenance professionals, pest-control professionals, plumbers, electricians, and others. In addition, anyone trained in the arts of construction, engineering, environmental design, and related domains will be well prepared to master the skills and knowledge required to become a Certified Green Home Inspector. Nevertheless, the Eco Institution welcomes anyone with commitment and an inclination toward the Certified Green Consulting profession into its programs..

Only basic computer skills are required in order to complete the online course. You need to have a dedicated Internet connection and, while not required, we recommend a high-speed (broadband) connection, as it will speed any downloads. As you progress into the Certified Green Home Inspector profession itself, you will find that you will need to be able to use at least Microsoft Word® and Microsoft Excel® in order to prepare reports and to carry out certain calculations..

Because the Certification course is delivered online, you can live anywhere in order to take the course, sit for the exam, and be credentialed as a Certified Green Home Inspector. That said, the course materials are currently available only in English, and the course is focused on English-speaking, industrialized nations, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. However, the course materials are suitable for most industrial nations and Certified Green Home Inspectors are welcome to provide their services in any other country as well. .

Yes. The Certification Course is designed to be self-paced. You actually have up to 12 months from the initiation of the course in order to complete it and pass the Certification Exam. This is ample time to complete the course however most students complete the course in 4- 8 weeks..

Becoming a Certified Green Home Inspector can serve as a platform for a wide variety of income-earning opportunities—from part-time assignments that supplement your main income stream to an eventual full-time profession. As Green / Eco Consulting are relatively new professions, there is little concrete data that documents earning patterns from these pursuits over time. However, field surveys suggest that Green / Eco Consultants can make anywhere from around $75 to $250 per Green Home Inspection or Green Workplace Inspection, or from a few to several hundred dollars per day depending upon the number of clients and jobs that they have. General introductory consulting session charges are between $40-$75 per hour. These numbers can increase substantially for Certified Green Home Inspector who train and hire employees, and who build a multi-employee green inspection firm. That said, earning capacity and actual earnings will be based on a number of individual- and situation-specific factors, including:

• The Certified Green Home Inspectors commitment, passion, and work effort.
• The Certified Green Home Inspectors knowledge, experience, and skills.
• The demographic and economic profile of the Certified Green Home Inspectors likely client base.
• The Certified Green Home Inspectors ability to persuasively communicate with both potential and existing clients.
• The Certified Green Home Inspectors ability to retain existing clients and to sell additional services to them.
• The Certified Green Home Inspectors ability to market and promote his or her services and to generate positive word of mouth.
• Economic conditions, technological developments, local competition, and other associated contextual parameters.

The Certification Program includes a range of professionally designed, high-quality materials that acquaint future Certified Green Home Inspector with some basic techniques for marketing, promoting, and selling their services to potential clients—as well as tools that Certified Green Home Inspectors can use in order to directly market, promote, and publicize their services to their target audiences. The goal of this suite of tools is to enable Certified Green Home Inspectors to "hit the ground running" in their practice, and to effectively and cost-effectively promote their services both via traditional media and channels as well as online in order to "get their phone ringing" and clients coming through their doors. Included among this suite of tools are following:

• Detailed lessons the provide the necessary training for undertaking traditional and online marketing, promotional, and sales campaigns.
• Sample green inspection guides and green inspection forms.
• Summary tip booklets that can be private-labeled with the Certified Green Home Inspectors name and contact information for distribution to clients.
• Marketing, promotional, and publicity templates that can be used to market and promote the Certified Green Home Inspector services.
• Sample speeches and presentations for presenting to individual clients or groups.
• A free, customizable, professionally designed Certified Green Home Inspector web site.

These tools and documents can be used by any individual entering the profession, including those who are launching an entirely new business. However, many Certified Green Home Inspectors already operate a successful practice—whether as a real estate agent, interior designer, architect, environmental engineer, or related profession—and so will be using the green-inspection services as a means of supplementing their existing income stream, in many cases by offering Green Home Inspection and/or Green Business Inspection as an add-on to the services that they already provide to their clients. In these circumstances, marketing, promotion, and "getting the phone to ring" will be a much more straightforward proposition than for individuals undertaking a new business venture. Yet even in the situation of established firms, those who combine the Certified Green Consulting practice and services with their existing line of business will find the marketing, promotion, and publicity tools included within the Certification Program to be quite helpful.