The Building America Solution Center grew out of the Department of Energy’s Building America Program. A Program that has been a source of innovations in residential building energy efficiency and performance for over 25 years. The Building America Program leverages cutting-edge building science research to develop the solutions and best practices needed to advance energy efficiency in the homes we are building today.

The Solution Center is the platform the Department of Energy is using to disseminate and provide access to the expert information on hundreds of high-performance construction topics, including applied building science, air sealing and insulation, HVAC, windows, indoor air quality, and much more. Recently the Solution Center added the Building Science Advisor which is a no-cost, web-based tool that provides expert guidance on the moisture durability and energy efficiency of new and retrofit wall assembly designs. The Building Science Advisor helps teach building science principles and can inform residential building designers, builders, engineers, and students of building science, on how to specify energy-efficient, moisture-durable wall systems, with a simple, intuitive user-interface. The tool leverages expert knowledge and a database of thousands of pre-simulated hygrothermal models to provide rapid feedback and expert guidance on wall assembly design, tailored to your specific climate zone. If you use this simple modeling tool you can fail fast and move forward quickly while limiting risk exposure and increasing cost effective design.

It was a pleasure speaking with the national lab team of experts that help bring this tool forward for our collective use and who guided me through their carrier pathway as well as us through the Building Solution Center and specifically the Building Science Advisor tool.

Building America Solution Center

Building Science Advisor

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Washington State University