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When Mother Nature came up with wood it gave it magical properties that try as we might we mere humans find it difficult to improve upon or to transfer to other materials we come up with.1 One of… Read More

"I've looked at life from both sides now . . ."~ Joni Mitchell1Walls can get wet from the inside, walls can get wet from the outside. Walls can start out wet. Wet happens. Because wet happens walls… Read More

“If there is a pile of manure in a space, do not try to remove the odor by ventilation. Remove the pile of manure.” Max von Pettenkofer, 18581Gotta love those Germans. Especially the really old ones… Read More

Excessively high exhaust flow in a tight enclosure. Surely no one would be dumb enough to do this? Quick quiz. What is currently the most common ventilation approach in houses, apartments and… Read More

If you take rocks and melt them and blow air through them you get fluffy rocks. And fluffy rocks don’t burn. If you take gypsum and make it into sheets you get “sheet rock”. And guess what? Rocks don… Read More

One of the dirty little secrets that never gets talked about is that water leaks through building papers, building wraps and housewraps and runs down between them and the sheathings that they cover.… Read More

To claim that something that has holes in it can act as a water control layer is a pretty interesting argument. It is both true and untrue.I have it on good authority, that for there to be a leak you… Read More

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