BUILDTank / buildCAST

Gayathri Vijayakumar is a Principal Mechanical Engineer at Steven Winter Associates. For over 17 years, she has specialized in evaluating residential and multifamily buildings with an emphasis on high-performance construction and renewable energy systems.

Early in her career, Gayathri provided technical assistance to sustainability projects by performing energy modeling and conducting cost-benefit analyses of

Gayathri on LinkedIn

Steven Winter Associates

EnergyStar Multifamily New Construction

2024 IECC

RESNET Standard Development Committee 300

How Codes get Made a Buildings and Beyond podcast from SWA with Gayathri

Keith Dennis, President of the Beneficial Electrification league finds himself translating the languages of law, engineering, and business to pursue a vision where electrification has broad market acceptance as a necessary strategy to meet the economic, consumer, and environmental goals of our country.

Keith and the Beneficial Electrification League help to educate the wide breadth of policy makers and stakeholders on the benefits of end use electrification. They target and support research and development that brings new understanding to the topic of electrification, and they provide education, and toolkits to help craft messages that are inclusive to diverse stakeholders and programs that effectively bring the message of beneficial electrification to local communities.

Beneficial Electrification League

Weatherization and Electrification

WE Together Video:

WEATHERIZATION/ELECTRIFICATION TOGETHER INITIAL FINDINGS

Beneficial Electrification: Electricity as the End-Use Option (2015): 

Beneficial electrification: The dawn of ‘emissions efficiency’ (2016): 

Perks Deconstruction provides a comprehensive and strategic deconstruction and demolition service that allows homeowners and contractors to salvage,

2021 COMPANY HIGHLIGHTS

Perks deconstruction on Instagram

Anna Perks on LinkedIn

The National Center for Craftsmanship

BuildStrong Academy of Colorado

Buds Warehouse

buildCAST #13-2021 Laurie Johnson & Emily Freeman - Construction and Demolition

Glenn Mathewson, creator of buildingcodecollege.com, likes to talk and I have to say I was a little nervous about our buildCAST conversation.

Glenn started his construction career as a carpenter’s apprentice, then began to framing homes and later started his own remodeling and deck building company. In 2005, he became a building, plumbing, and mechanical inspector for the City of Westminster, Colorado. Over the next 13 years he was a field inspector and plan reviewer and ultimately earned the master code professional certification.  In 2018, Glenn took the leap to pursue code education full time through BuildingCodeCollege.com. Along the way Glenn has honed his teaching style and views on codes and their place in the governance of the construction of buildings.

So why was I nervous? Glenn has some deeply felt beliefs and I was uncertain how much they aligned with my own.  I discovered that I think we are pretty much on the same page.

Building Code College

Glenn Mathewson on LinkedIn

Building Code College on Instagram

Glenn Mathewson on YouTube

buildCAST #7-2022 with Bill Rose – retired Senior Research Architect from the Indoor Climate Research and Training Applied Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

B Public Prefab is an offsite construction solution for the homes buildings thermal envelope that integrates bulk moister, air, vapor, and thermal control into its wall and floor panels. Their unique component-based, Lego like panels, have been developed for maximum design flexibility and with Passive House high performance in mind.

From how homes are built to how they are lived in, Edie Dillman is consciously committed to disruption, system change, and rapid adoption of solutions that impact buildings and the built environment. As CEO and Co-founder of B Public, Edie walks us through her journey from education and business development to finding passion in the construction industry and helping people build resilient, comfortable, environmentally sound, and efficient homes.

B Public Prefab

Edie Dillman on LinkedIn

Performance Prefab Installer Training

b.publicprefab on Instagram

Ed Fronapfel is a forensic engineer who I first met when he taught a thermography class I attended.  Later he became the student when he participated in an Energy Rater class I taught. Ed has built and sold several successful engineering companies on the back of his ability to distill information and present it in understandable ways. Over the years we have been discussing the disconnect between energy and fire codes in relation to shaft liner area separation wall design and function. I was starting to get involved with work being done to understand how to air seal the assembly to successfully pass blower door testing requirements of the IECC. Ed, in the meantime, had been working to be qualified as an expert witness in construction defect litigation. He now has been involved in over 80 trials in District and Federal Courts and provided over 800 depositions and hundreds of arbitrations.

Our paths crossed again at the Colorado Chapter of the ICC Education Institute, where we were both teaching, right before the Covid shutdown. I learned that Ed had an opportunity to fund some ASTM E119 burn testing on Shaft Liner wall assemblies and became the facilitator to organize and get the testing completed. As you can imagine we both have been frustrated not being able to speak to the results of the testing that was performed, and now that we can, I am very grateful to Ed for the opportunity I was given to be involved in this work, and the story you are about to listen to.

Speak Expert Witness Directory

University of Denver Adjunct Faculty Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management

It doesn’t matter the size of the house that’s built, Builders are passionate about what they do. Zack Giffin demonstrates that in this conversation about tiny homes. In 2018 I happened to be at the code hearing where Appendix Q for tiny homes was adopted for the International Residential Code. This year I was asked by the state of Colorado to represent the energy code on a working group trying to figure out how to regulate the construction of tiny homes. It turns out that if they are built on foundations things seem to be fine, but when they are built on wheels there are issues that regulators and advocates must work out. Deciding if they are mobile homes or modular homes is the biggest issue, but in my world, the question is if they must abide by the International Energy Conservation Code. Some analysis has shown that they can easily meet the 2018 IECC using the Area Weighted U-value compliance alternative and the REScheck software, but now with the 2021 IECC tradeoffs are not as easy, and the insulation requirements would make the structure too tall to be on wheels. In Zack’s world regulating energy use in a tiny home does not make sense due to its size. I found it interesting that the fundamental question came down to first cost the same argument that the NAHB uses when pushing back against energy code. Regardless, ultimately the best thing about my conversation with Zack was that we did not agree on everything, but we were willing to hear each other’s views.

I hope you enjoy your listen.

Zack My Apologies for miss pronouncing your last name as well!

Zack Giffin’s website

Tiny Home Nation on Netflix

Zack on Instagram

Jake Bruton owner of Arrow Building continues to push the home building industry forward. As a carpenter running a business and helping to mature an industry, Jake’s skill and enthusiasm has brought him national attention and a platform to continue his effort to educate our industry through online content, publications, and speaking events.  He is one of the leaders of what I call the Instagram builders and can be found @jake.bruton on Instagram, but also is a regular contributor on the build show network and a host on the Unbuildit podcast. Jake was easy to speak with and I really enjoyed our conversation and I hope you will as well.

Jake on LinkedIn

Instagram @jake.bruton

Arrow Building

Unbuild It Podcast

BUILD Show Network

Fine HomeBuilding

Gene Myers is the Founder of Thrive Home builders. I went into our conversation focused on learning more about ESG or Environmental, Social, and Governance and how this new way of looking at business is affecting the construction industry, especially for those who are not national Wall Street Builders. As soon as we began, I was reminded first, what humble, open, and simply nice Gene is, and second how much he and his company has influenced the industry and my carrier. Thrive Home Builders has led the industry nationally as one of the most progressive regional production high performance home builders. They have used national building programs like EnergyStar, DOE Zero Energy Ready Homes, and LEED for Homes to build upon their internal sound building science knowledge to truly create a brand in the home building world that consumers recognize, seek out, and acknowledge. When a new home becomes an existing home, few remember who the builder was. In Thrive Home Builders’ case that is not true, which is a testament to the leadership and vision of Gene Myers. ESG is just one of the new trends in the home building industry that Gene is staying abreast of, and it was interesting to hear his take on its impact on non-national builders.

Gene Myers on LinkedIn 

Thrive Home Builders 

Gary Nelson, cofounder of the Energy Conservatory, is an engineer who turned his attention to residential efficiency in the 1980’s. He is often referred to as the father of the blower door, but did not invent the technology. He did, however, strive to make a blower door that was light, easy to use, accurate, and cheap. Gary’s success fueled his vision to get a blower door into every contractor’s hand as he felt that it brought building science to life for contractors and weatherization agencies specializing in efficiency, durability, and comfort in homes.

Gary’s success can be measured by the success of the Energy Conservatory, the company he says he accidentally created as more and more people asked him to build blower doors for them. However, success can be measured by so much more than the growth of a company.  Gary was also instrumental in the creation of the duct blaster, and flow plate measuring tools, has contributed to the success of countless housing studies and programs, and has contributed to an industry and its understanding of the building science of air flow.

The Energy Conservatory founding story

Q&A With Gary Nelson on Green Building Advisor