Athena Building Performance, Inc.

A 1925 house with nooks and crannies everywhere. A deaf elderly customer whose crew switched to gestures, texting and written English so she could follow what was happening in her own home. A 65-year-old house where the team found problems buried in the old insulation and cut the air loss roughly in half. Athena Building Performance's reviews are unusually specific about the buildings — which is what you want from a company whose entire trade is finding where a house leaks. The South Hadley company air-seals and insulates existing homes and multifamily buildings, runs diagnostics like blower door and infrared testing, and teaches building science. It was founded by Margo Valdes, who says she has worked in building performance since 2008. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration is active, and the state's Supplier Diversity Office shows an active Women Business Enterprise certification running to August 2027. The site also lists a Massachusetts construction supervisor licence and a BPI Multifamily Building Analyst credential for Valdes — the company's own listings rather than registry checks. Much of the work comes through Mass Save, and reviewers repeatedly credit the office with carrying the program coordination and paperwork. Across 38 Google ratings averaging 4.9, a dozen of them in the past six months, the same crew names keep surfacing: Josh Larriu, Devin Sicard, Darien, Colin, Jose, Wilson. The pattern customers describe barely varies — scope explained before the work, explained again as it proceeds, the house protected, and a real cleanup at the end. In August 2025 one homeowner walked through a four-day job that covered insulation throughout the house, weather stripping on the doors, added attic ventilation and a rebuilt basement door under the bulkhead. Two entries say more than the rest, because they are about what happens when something goes wrong. In May 2024, a homeowner wrote that a previous Mass Save contractor had left parts of their walls uninsulated and Athena was brought in to put it right. And in a July 2025 updated review, a customer described the owner reaching out after the first attempt fell short, then sending a crew that redid the entire attic in a day. The lone dissent is a one-star from March 2024, and it reads as an insider rather than a customer: it questions the owner's hands-on installation knowledge while allowing that she is educated in the science of it, and predicts difficulty managing a growing crew. It describes no job of its own. The stated service area is the Pioneer Valley — Amherst, Northampton, Holyoke, Chicopee, Easthampton, Ludlow and neighbors — so this is a western Massachusetts company. If you are going through Mass Save on an older house there, few local options are this well documented. Confirm what the program covers versus what lands on your bill, and ask which crew lead is assigned to your job.