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 I was sick and tired of having an outdated bathroom that was beginning to fall apart.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…
Today I have a special treat for you. These two music videos give a whole new meaning to the term "home performance." The first one came out in 2009, just as the ARRA program was about to crank up. The…
Well, I really stirred things up with my last article on insulation and global warming. My intention was to explain why Alex Wilson's results could be doing a disservice to the green building community. In the end, I was rightly…
I always look at the bathroom ventilation when I'm staying in hotels. Last month I was at the Air Barrier Association conference in Baltimore and took the photo above. Can you tell anything about what might be happening by looking…
The first ever Humid Climate Conference is being held next month in Austin, Texas. Kristof Irwin and I have been kicking this idea around for a couple of years now, and he's making it happen. It's a one-day event on…
A water resistive barrier (WRB) provides protection against water damage for water that gets behind the cladding of a building. But what if it doesn't really resist water? I've written a lot about installation problems that can lead to compromised…
A couple of weeks ago I caught up with Anthony Cox at the Air Barrier Association conference in Baltimore. You may know Anthony as the inventor of the House of Pressure, a great model for demonstrating backdrafting, zonal pressure differences,…
Conventional thinking says putting insulation in a building prevents heat loss in winter and heat gain in summer. This comes from the 19th century physicists who invented the laws of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics in particular gives us…