However year after year my wife and I torture ourselves and attend the local home and garden show.  Now if you want to experience high pressure sales and be steered into the cheapest way to do things, you must attend a home and garden show.  Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good home builders and remodeling contractors out there, but I seriously doubt you will find one at one of these shows.  Because the good ones out there don’t need to attend because they get work through referrals.

With the exception of a new home energy auditing company and few insulation contractors, I couldn’t even tell you the headache I had after I left.  So many of us out there are trying to do good quality work and try and reduce our footprint on this earth.  But I couldn’t believe a conversation that I had with a remodeling contractor.  I asked if they had any experience installing fiber cement siding over 2-4 inches of foam.  Now I will give you a second to think about what his response was…….  They actually remove the foam board insulation.  Can you freaking believe it?!  My wife walked away when she saw my jaw drop.  I mean seriously?  So we hopefully improved the look of the home, but we  just removed at least 20% of the wall insulation and increased the home owners utility bills.  He continued the conversation that if you install the siding over furring strips, the siding will snap.  So I politely took his business card and told my wife, this goes in the do not hire pile.

So where does it start?  Do we continue our efforts and try and educate the home owner or do we need push harder to get people in our industry on board and bring them up to date on today’s building practices?

The second week was a week of shadowing an auditor.  Although I had to cut it a couple of days short due to my presentation at the AIA Ohio Convention, it was a great way/best way to learn how things are and should be done.  As well as a quick lesson into the utility rebate program that CSG is running.

The third week was the first of solo audits.  Expecting new employees to take a little bit longer at first as they get use to what is expected in an audit, as well as the program, our first week consisted of one audit a day to get our time down to 4 hours to conduct the audit.  The audit includes everything in a full comprehensive BPI audit as well as a report generated at the customers house and discuss it with them.  Let me tell you that first week was a trial by fire.  All the homes I audited my first week ranged anywhere from 1,500 to 4,000 square feet and all were built anywhere between 1910 and 1960, all with older systems and little to no insulation.  Most were very complicated houses.  So let’s just say my first week of audits was taking 5-6 hours to complete.  So I was getting nervous by the end of the week knowing that the next week I would be doing two audits a day.

Thankfully by the beginning of the fourth week something just clicked.  And that is when they started to fail.  Water heaters were failing the worst case draft testing left and right.  A few were not even drafting is quite conditions.  Now with some of these larger homes that have multiple exhaust fans, it is my opinion that we are creating un-natural conditions that the home owner would never create.  However that is the BPI standard that we work by, to turn on all exhaust fans to create the greatest negative pressure in the home.

All in all it has been a very busy 6 weeks getting use to the pace and getting my body to build its endurance to keep up the pace.  But I am seeing all types, sizes and ages of homes.  So it has been a great experience so far and I look forward to continuing to work for Conservation Services Group.  I am learning a lot and seeing how many things have been built, good and bad.  So if I get the time, I have some good ideas for some future posts.  So keep me in your RSS feeds for future updates.

So here are a few photos that I thought I would share from my recent site visit.

The Case for Affordable Housing & A National Energy Standard
They must go hand-in-hand. ( October 2009 )

Certain items are needed for all people to live a decent (modern) life: decent housing, decent (safe) food, clear (safe) water & air; fair wage/job; access to health care.  All other things are possible (for a people) from there.

Making a (high end designer) commodity of any of the aforementioned, makes those items inaccessible by lower income people and the poor, and now we see, inaccessible to even the middle class in America.

Behind affordable health care, Affordable Housing is the largest problem facing our nation.  When jobs are harder to get, it makes it that much harder to maintain one’s health, and to maintain a decent place to live.  Basic, decent housing, healthcare and  food are a human right.

Continue reading the article at ShantyWorld

I also believe you need to prepare for the worst.  Now for a lot of us, stashing money in a savings account is not an option.  But there are other things that can be done.  My local AIA chapter (AIA Columbus) recently held a seminar for the recently unemployed on various issues to consider if you decide to work for yourself.  Believe it or not, a lot of architectural firms get their start during a recession (article).  Attend AIA meetings and other events and start networking with colleagues.  Let them know who you are and what you are up to.  Even though they may not have work to take you on at that time, keeping an open line of communication with others will put you in the loop when new jobs are available and that personal connection may help you get your foot in the door.  Because it truly is not always what you know, but who you know.

So you may be asking yourself at this point what does this post have to do with the title “INTERN”.  Well I find myself to be in a diffulcult sittuation as I came to realize after my recent interview.  The position that I interviewed for was an intern architect position.  However I am a mere four exams away from becoming a registered architect and have been out of school for a little over 7 years.  So in a lot of cases that makes me overqualified for the postition that they want to fill, which also translate they will not want to pay me for that experience.

Now I know what you are thinking what took so long?  I am not going to go into that (However I do blame NCARB for a full years delay just to get my authorization to test).  So I am going to take advantage of the down time in the office to get a little extra studying done on a daily basis as well as getting back into my routine of studying after the kids go to bed at night.  Because with my first 4 exams, I learned pretty quickly what is successful for me to study and pass the exams.  For those of you who are concerned about hitting the books again, here is a good post I found to help you find your study style (Three rules for studying for the ARE).  So my goal is to complete my last four sections of the ARE by the end of the first quarter of 2010.  Which should allow me more opportunities to work for offices looking for registered architects or even start my own firm if I so choose to, or even forced to do.  So wish me luck.  In the meantime my blog posts are going to be much more sparadic than they are now.  However when I get back into full swing again, I hope to have a new look for the blog as well as my website (Sym-Home) with updated content to actually show some of the projects that I have completed around the house.  And lets not forget a new title Registered Architect!

Although it uses a great organizational method that covers attributes including Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, and Indoor Environmental Quality, LEED does not cover the entire life cycle of the project. www.storyofstuff.com was mentioned to emphasize that one needs to view the project from the stand point of the entire life cycle.

In the future, LEED will move toward a multi-attribute focus. ISO standards are beginning to address these attributes through LCA, and to look at products more comprehensively. Today’s owners do not necessarily understand that the products they are getting are not as green as they are made out to be. Michael Fuller, CSI, AIA., NCARB, CDT, LEED AP, member of the GreenFormat Program Management Task Team, believes that in the future, there will eventually be more comprehensive definitions of what constitutes a green or sustainable product.

Continue reading the article at CSI Blog

Brutally Honest Attack on Homebuilders?

by Mr. Dorris via Consilience: The blog

As I have previously posted, the 20% of homebuilders who build 80% of all homes are not in the business of building homes, they are in the business of making money (increasing shareholder value) and, therefore, do not necessarily know how to build.

Continue reading the article at Consilence: The Blog

Posted on Aug 25 by Lynn Underwood, GBA Advisor

A newly adopted provision in the 2006 edition of the International Residential Code (IRC) requires that a permanent certificate be posted on the electrical distribution panel. This certificate is for the express purpose of identifying the efficiency of various energy components of the home and must include the following:

energy efficiency certificate

Continue reading the article at Greenbuildingadvisor.com

Foam Sill Sealer/Capillary Break

A buildings durability and energy efficiency believe it or not can be greatly affected by some of the smallest and least expensive products out there, and sill sealer is one of these products.  As pointed out by James over at Greener Structures, approximately 90% of buildings today do not install a sill sealer or also known as a capillary break.

For a little over $5.00 you can buy a 50′ roll at most hardware stores and even online shops (here).  So you may be asking what the big deal is over a sill sealer.  Well the product was designed to reduce air infiltration between the top of your foundation wall and sill plate by filling in any gaps or cracks. This product can also be used for slab on grade applications as well where there will be some imperfections in the slab.

Metal stud wall with no sill sealer

As you can see from this image, there is an obvious gap between the concrete slab at the bottom of the new wall being installed. This is going to let in a life time of uncontrolled, unconditioned air that will have to be dealt with by the mechanical equipment, causing it to utilize more energy over the life of the building.

Even though air infiltration is an important aspect of energy efficiency with today’s tight buildings, a sill sealer also acts as a capillary break, stopping moisture from moving from the concrete into the next material.  Moisture migration is another big issue that we as building professionals have to take into consideration.  So my question to you is, how many of you know that moisture can travel almost 6 miles through concrete?  That is a great distance and a whole lot of water that can potentially rot out the wood sill plates or rust the bottom track of metal framed walls.  Now you are right that the building codes do not allow for un-treated wood to be in contact with concrete.  However pressure treated wood only protects it’s self from rotting out.  It does nothing to stop moisture from migrating directly into your band board or floor joists that sit directly on top of that.

Interior wall on concrete slab

Here is a detail that I used on my own home when renovating my basement that I first laid the sill sealer and then attached the pressure treated wood to the concrete slab.  Now with the sill sealer, you do not need the pressure treated wood, it just made it easier for me to lay out the walls and take care of some of the irregularities in the floor surface when erecting the interior walls.

Exterior metal stud wall w/ sill sealer

Another small benefit to the sill sealer when it comes to metal wall framing, it will also act as a thermal break between the cold foundation and the steel studs.  As I stated, it is a small benefit because the product at most has a value of R-1.  However it will provide some resistance between the two highly conductive materials and reduce the chance for condensation to form on the metal studs.

So next time you are working on your next residential or commercial project, make sure you draw that extra thick line and call out the sill sealer/capillary break and get it into you exterior metal stud spec section under “miscellaneous materials”.

The majority of architects that you talk to are passionate about design.  It permeates every aspect of our lives.  However as I move forward into my career, I am finding I pay more attention to the details.  Now I have an appreciation for design, it is just not my strong point.  I find it more satisfying to be working on building and wall sections.  Taking what the designer has come up with and generating the details to make it reality and really focusing on the details that will help to insure that the building will be durable and energy efficient.

With that said, I plan on starting a new series of posts titled “Attention to detail”.  These posts, if you have been following the blog at all, at no surprise will be focusing on energy efficiency and durability.  I will be bringing the attention to small details that can make a big difference in the energy efficiency and durability of a building over its lifetime.