The Building Performance Institute (BPI) recently introduced a new certification called the Healthy Home Evaluator. It's not a standalone credential, though. Anyone looking to add it to their list of credentials must already have one of three other BPI certifications: …
If your home is old enough for a bathroom renovation, you may want to go ahead and completely gut it. I started my bathroom remodel last month with a complete demolition. If I hadn't, a number of problems would have…
Matt Risinger is a home builder in Austin. He builds great houses and is also famous for his videos. He has over 26 thousand subscribers on his Youtube channel. I was in Austin last week for the inaugural Humid Climate…
It’s hard enough to control humidity in humid climate homes when they’re just built to code these days. The air conditioner traditionally has handled the dehumidification, but increasing requirements for insulation and air tightness affect the sensible load more than…
Can an article on building science be out of date just because it's from 2010? Well, sure. If it's a news article about a program or code or standard that has since changed. But the principles of building science aren't…
The Green Builder Coalition has been working hard on their Water Efficiency Rating Score — the WERS — for homes. The inaugural WERS training happened in Santa Fe, New Mexico in March. I was in that class, and I learned a…
Professor John Straube is one of the smartest guys in building science. On top of that, I think he's the best presenter in the field. At the Air Barrier Association conference in Baltimore, he gave one of the best building…
Most of the moisture management problems I've written about here are ones that occur because of poor installation. When builders don't integrate window flashing with the drainage plane, for example, water can find its way in and rot out the…
We talk about R-value all the time. "I've got an R-19 wall," or "Code requires R-38 in my ceiling." But what are those numbers? As it turns out, when we talk about R-value we usually give the R-value of the…
Last week I spent a lot of hours in my bathroom. I was sick. Really. I was sick and tired of having an outdated bathroom that was beginning to fall apart. So when my wife hit the road last Monday…