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Can a 150-year-old house approach zero energy use? Three case studies point the was from the 19th to the 21st century. Reprinted with permission from Fine Homebuilding, April/May 2008, pages 51-57.

OVERVIEWSpray foam insulation has significant advantages over other insulation systems due to the spray foam ability to provide continuity of the water control, air control, vapor control and thermal… Read More

Houses are environmental separators – they keep the outside out and the inside in.   Houses have walls, roofs and foundations that each have to be connected to each other (Figure 1).  To function as… Read More

The purpose of this guide is to provide useful examples of high performance retrofit techniques for the building enclosure of wood frame residential construction in a cold and somewhat wet climate.… Read More

Exterior insulation retrofit is a reasonable step if a recladding of the building is already being done for aesthetic or ongoing maintenance reasons. This paper presents many of the lessons learned… Read More

At the most basic level a building is an environmental separator – it keeps the outside out and the inside in.  Why?  Well, sometimes the outside sucks and we want to keep it from getting into the… Read More

  I, as an engineer, am born with a genetic defect….as all engineers are…the “efficiency gene”.  We can’t help ourselves.  The more efficient a thing is…the better it is…in our engineering brains….I… Read More

Dirty Harry Does Insulation[1] “A good insulation always knows its limitations….” After all these decades thermal performance should be pretty non-controversial.  How complicated can it be to… Read More

Wall assembly design and construction needs to consider rain, temperature, humidity as defined by the hygro-thermal regions, annual rainfall and the interior climate classes as environmental loads… Read More

We looked at exterior spray foam previously (BSI-048: “Exterior Spray Foam”, April 2011). Exterior spray foam typically is used in commercial applications.  Most residential applications use interior… Read More