Video

Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) is a nonprofit developer, owner and operator of 20,000 affordable homes in multifamily buildings in twelve states and the District of Columbia. Julie is an architect and Vice President of Design and Building Performance for POAH. She has been involved in the retrofit and rehabilitation of thousands of existing homes and multifamily buildings and the design and construction of thousands of new affordable homes and multifamily buildings. Julie will discuss lessons learned and how to preserve affordability through high performance.

Duncan Prahl is an architect and the Director of Technical Services at the CUNY Building Performance Lab. He will share research projects and results conducted by the team at CUNY BPL...such as how well do those thousands of buildings in NYC actually perform and are those energy audits in NYC actually leading to any retrofits?

Keith Simon, FAIA is an architect, VP of Design Phase Services for Salas O'Brien, and adjunct faculty at the UT-Austin School of Architecture. He has some thoughts on how to design buildings to last for an extremely long period of time. As a Fellow of the AIA, he has some strong opinions on some of the priorities of architectural firms and architectural schools.

We can build a house so tight even Germans would be impressed. And then we forget about how to deal with a clothes dryer. Or we put in a kitchen range hood. Or we build a house with a fireplace. Or then we attach a garage. What are the odds that a house will have a clothes dryer, a kitchen range hood, a fireplace or an attached garage? I have news for you installing a cheap exhaust fan does not fix things. Installing an expensive one does not fix things either. Sucking does not work.

Things have evolved considerably since the Eisenhower and Diefenbaker years. Hutcheon taught us about air flow that decade but it took more than a half century to get it right. We needed air control. We needed an air control layer – an air barrier. We started off with locating it on the inside, moved it to the middle, and finally ended up with it on the outside3. We started by combining it with a vapor barrier on the inside then we finished by combining it with a weather resistive barrier (WRB) and continuous insulation on the outside.

Thirty years ago I said the moldiest buildings in the United States were air-conditioned hotels with vinyl wall coverings that operate under a negative air pressure….they literally “sucked”…. Not much has changed. For me to point that out is amazing. Maybe we need more attorneys…we are building them wrong faster than we can litigate them. That is not meant as a joke…some of the most effective “technology transfer” to practitioners in the construction industry is through the legal profession. Some of the physics is obvious…some not so much.

Reservoir claddings are not easy especially with sun and air conditioning where it rains. Pretty much everywhere folks want to live… It is sunny in Minneapolis and we have air conditioning and it rains there. It is sunny in Miami and we have air conditioning and it rains there. It is sunny in Memphis and we have air conditioning and it rains there.

Water is weird…and I point this out in an admiring manner… Water by itself is weird…it is a “polar molecule think “tiny magnets”….but when it changes phase from a liquid to a solid or from a liquid to a vapor the weirdness goes to levels that mere mortals are left shaking their heads….or it leads them to drinking….apparently wine. More about the wine drinking later. Freeze-thaw damage, spalling and efflorescence are related in an amazing strange way. In freeze-thaw damage water changes from a liquid to a solid. In spalling and efflorescence water changes from a liquid to a vapor.

Ice dams happen when the outside temperature is below freezing, the roof deck temperature is above freezing, and there is snow on the roof. The warm roof deck causes the snow on top of the roof deck to melt, and the melt water runs down to the edge of the roof where the water freezes leading to a buildup of ice and a backup of water, hence the term “dam”.

When I was a young punk kid in my 20’s and thought I was a builder the local building official would show up on my project site before I screwed up - he kept me out of trouble - he taught me enough building science that I became hooked. I was an engineer with a big time degree from a big time school but I did not know what I did not know. I respect building officials big time. That is why I am involved in the code process…I owe the code folks..it is my way of giving back...