Document Search

I remember sitting around listening to stories my dad and his friends would tell when they were hanging around in the basement playing cards. They would laugh uproariously, tease each other, get… Read More

This all started pretty innocuously. I just wanted a client to have a warm floor. How complicated could that be? Well some seemingly innocuous code language made things irritating but not difficult… Read More

Seventeen years ago we bought an old house—a fixer upper—over a hundred years old—in Westford, MA. I was going to make sure it would end up energy efficient. Did the rubble foundation thing well—very… Read More

It is a beautiful building. Quite stunning actually. It is an embodiment of everything that is right and wrong with architecture.1 An orgy of glass and concrete. It is a thermodynamic obscenity while… Read More

 Walter Payton[1] does Permeance - Reservoir claddings are not easy especially with sun and air conditioning where it rains.  Pretty much everywhere folks want to live… It is… Read More

Oh the games people play nowev’ry night and ev’ry day nowNever meaning what they say, yeahnever saying what they mean.

How hard can it be to insulate a flat sheet of concrete? I mean you only have three choices – on the top, on the bottom, or on the edge. OK, you might have some combination of the three as well.Ah,… Read More

The Parthenon was constructed around 450 B.C. as a temple to the Goddess Athena (Photograph 1). More recently a temple overlooking Vancouver was constructed by the contractor Gauvin the Younger to… Read More

A hockey1 puck is 1 inch thick and 3 inches in diameter (Photograph 1). You can easily slip one into the airspace between a brick veneer and building paper. Now a single puck in an airspace like that… Read More

It was the ants that finally did it.1 It wasn’t the shingles that needed to be replaced. It wasn’t the three-dimensional airflow network in the roof assembly. It wasn’t the lack of racking resistance… Read More