The Sixteenth Annual Building Science Summer Camp Has Begun!

The 2012 Building Science Summer Camp began last night as people from around the US and Canada arrived in Westford Massachusetts for what is officially called the Westford Symposium on Building Science. I got in at about 7 pm and got a chance to catch up with several people I know and meet a few new ones. A couple of people, including Joe Lstiburek, told me how much they enjoyed reading about the Turbo Thermo-Encabulator Max. Mostly, though, I was a listener.

I love coming to events like this and the RESNET and Affordable Comfort conferences because I get to hear a lot about what’s going on in other places, what kind of projects people are working on, and what the state of the industry is. From now through Wednesday evening, I expect to hear a whole heck of a lot more, in both the regular sessions and the informal networking that happens every evening (sometimes into the wee hours) in Joe’s backyard and Deep-Energy-Retrofitted barn.

The regular sessions go from 8:30 to 4:30 on the first two days and then 8:30 till 2:30 on Wednesday. The topics to be covered include:

• Passive House, by Katrin Klingenberg
• Zero-energy homes
• Case studies of building failures and retrofits
• Standards and reality
• Relative Humidity is for Sissies 
• Window restoration
• Secrets We Should All Know by Henry Gifford
• Thermal metric, a talk about replacing R-value with something more comprehensive, based on research that Building Science Corporation has been doing for the past 4 years
• Still Fixing My House, by Joe Lstiburek

The ones that interest me the most right now are the ones about humidity, thermal metrics, and Henry Gifford’s talk. Even if you can’t be here at Summer Camp, you can still keep up with what’s going on by following the live tweets on Twitter. Use the hashtag #bscamp (full URL below).

In addition to the day sessions, though, there will be plenty of networking and good building science discussions in Joe’s back yard every evening. I’m guessing that at some point we’re going to eat this beautiful cake of Joe’s barn, which was evidently made by some famous TV cake maker in New Jersey. (Great photo below of Joe standing next to it courtesy of Stephen Davis!)

There also happens to be a great band that plays every evening in the barn — the Building Science Boogie Band. The clip below is from last night.

I plan to do a lot of learning here. It’s going to be a great week!

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