An official adopter of the Architecture 2030 challenge

2030adopterlogoEarlier this month I decided to become an official adopter of the Architecture 2030 challenge.  So here it is, the official adopter logo.

Architecture 2030, is a non-profit, non-partisan and independent organization, that was established by architect Edward Mazria in 2002. 2030’s mission is to rapidly transform the US and global Building Sector from the major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions to a central part of the solution to the global-warming crisis. Our goal is straightforward: to achieve a dramatic reduction in the global-warming-causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the Building Sector by changing the way buildings and developments are planned, designed and constructed.

As an adopter of the program, it becomes my mission to continue the work I have been doing on the past few projects to drastically reduce the overall energy usage and apply that to all of my future projects and to hit specified benchmarks.  With the first being an overall reduction in energy consumption by 50% of the regional (or country) average for that project’s buildings type.  However it is not only the projects that I work on, but to also encourage that every project that comes into the office to hit the same benchmarks.

If you would like to learn more about Architecture 2030, visit the website and see who else has adopted challenge.  www.architecture2030.org

Bid phase hurdles and results

With the state of the current economy, who would have thought that we would have so much trouble bidding a residential project?  When we first started this project in the fall of 2008, the intent was to have this project bid to multiple contractors to let them determine the overall price, because at the time with the housing industry in a slump and with forecasts just projecting things to get worse, we thought we would have a plethora of contractor hungry for work, which in turn would yield us a much lower construction cost.

Boy were we wrong!  First we had trouble locating three reputable contractors in the area.  Now we don’t know if it was our lack of personal connections in the area since the project is an out of state job for us or just that the project was remote enough to warrant increasing our search radius from the site.  However we did find three contractors within an hour of our site.  So hurdle one cleared. Read the rest of this entry »

Building Science Sunday: The Perfect Wall

A great article that should help all of us to build a better performing wall for our clients.

BSI-001: The Perfect Wall

By Joseph W. Lstiburek

The perfect wall is an environmental separator – it has to keep the outside out and the inside in.  In order to do this the wall assembly has to control rain, air, vapor and heat.  In the old days we had one material to do this: rocks.  We would pile a bunch or rocks up and have the rocks do it all.  But over time rocks lost their appeal.  They were heavy and fell down a lot.  Heavy means expensive and falling down is annoying.  So construction evolved.  Today walls need four principal control layers – especially if we don’t build out of rocks.  They are presented in order of importance:

  • a rain control layer
  • an air control layer
  • a vapor control layer
  • a thermal control layer

A point to this importance thing here, if you can’t keep the rain out don’t waste your time on the air.  If you can’t keep the air out don’t waste your time on the vapor.

Continue reading the article at buildingscience.com

Hot off the presses

For the past three years I have been volunteering with a local not for profit organization, the Home B.A.S.E. foundation and assisting will all aspects as it relates to design and construction of a LEED for Homes Pilot project.  We just received our certification, (post to come shortly) however we just received word that through the Real Estate & Construction Review, we have been chosen as one of the best new green projects in the Midwest region.  The teams hard work is starting to pay off.  So read the press release below the fold and watch for my upcoming post that will announce the projects official LEED rating as well as dig into some of the techniques that were used to make this a successful project.

Read the rest of this entry »

Building Science Sunday: New Light In Crawlspaces

Here is an article that I found very useful on a recent project where the goal was to drastically improve the performance of a home, as well control the moisture levels within the crawl space.

BSI-009: New Light In Crawlspaces

By Joseph W. Lstiburek

Crawlspaces stink, they rot, and are just plain icky.  Photograph 1 shows the modern crawlspace, which is a forest of water droplets on the underside of fiberglass batt insulation.  The exposed wood floor joists are rotting.  The house over this crawlspace is not shabby.  Did I mention that this is a vented crawlspace?  Oh, by the way, there is a continuous plastic sheet ground cover and excellent drainage.  Everything in this crawlspace was done “right.”  It has code specified ventilation, a continuous impermeable ground cover, excellent drainage and still we have a mess.  What caused this mess?  The floor insulation.  No way.  Yup.

Photograph 1: Icky Crawlspace—Note the condensation on the underside of the fiberglass insulation and the rot at the exposed portions of the crawlspace floor joists.

Photograph 1: Icky Crawlspace—Note the condensation on the underside of the fiberglass insulation and the rot at the exposed portions of the crawlspace floor joists.

Continue reading the article at buildingscience.com