BUILDTank / buildCAST

An assortment of short conversations I had with the sponsor exhibitors at the 2021  EBBA High Performance Summit - Part II

BOAN-Nutone

Etopia USA

Extreme Panel Technologies 

Mitsubishi Electric Tane US HVAC

R-Control Panel

Santa-Fe Dehumidifiers 

Stego Industries 

SunNova

Huber ZIP System

I had a great conversation with Corbett who is juggling all things that his company Building Performance Workshop is doing. Performance Testing and home diagnostics, a home diagnostics book, training, podcast, TV show and YouTube Channel. All in an effort to help homeowners live their best life in the homes they have chosen.

Corbett introduces himself on his website this way. “Hi. I am Corbett Lunsford, and sometimes I’m an idiot. I wasn’t always a home performance expert – I used to play piano for ballerinas. For a living. So, in 2008, I started this career with Grace (my wife) and we learned a few things very quickly: construction is unbelievably messy, most pros are over-rushed and under-paid, and homeowners end up suffering in small ways, for their entire lives in the house. None of this has to be so we can opt out of the whole thing with performance testing.” Performance testing, gathering data in the home is the mission that Corbett has chosen as the backbone for his different platforms to educate industry and the public on what we should expect of our housing.

Building Performance Workshop

Home Diagnostics TV Series

You Tube Channel 

Building Performance Podcast

Home Performance diagnostics book

Tiny House/Tiny Lab

The story about how Gary Klein got into hot water is a long one which we delve into in this episode of the BUILDCast. It takes us from the east cost of the United State to Lesotho in Africa, back to the United States and on to California. Throughout his journey Gary took his own path and followed what interested him the most while looking for big problems to solve. Gary is passionate about helping people and looking at social issue through a lens of environmental ethics which has led him first to renewables, then energy efficiency, and now to hot water. Why Hot water? Well take a listen and find out.

Gary Klein and Associates

Lesotho, a high-altitude, landlocked kingdom encircled by South Africa, is crisscrossed by a network of rivers and mountain ranges including the 3,482m-high peak of Thabana Ntlenyana.

California Energy Commission – Water Heating

C.R. Herro, Vice president of Innovation at Meritage Homes, leads Meritage’s Business Innovation Program which combines design, efficiency, sustainability, and new technologies to establish a new standard in home building that provide better comfort, healthier air, and cost less to own and operate.

C.R. earned a Bachelor of Science at Arizona State University in Physical and Life Science, master’s in environmental science from Governors State, and Doctorate in Environmental Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, and a master’s in philosophy from Arizona State University. CR has spent 20 years within Fortunate 500 companies driving innovation and the supporting change management.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cr-herro-39725514/

https://www.meritagehomes.com/

MC2 Mathis Consulting Company

National Fenestration Rating Council 

Architectural Testing Inc.  

NAHB Research Center now Home Innovation Research labs 

ASHREA 

ASTM 

About 23 years ago I almost created a sister company to my energy rating company BUILTWright that I was going to call WasteWright. Construction waste recycling was all the rage and there were all kinds of ideas regarding how to offer production builders solutions that fit within there building process. I almost bought a Packard Grinder which was portable and would allow me to grind construction waste on site. The theory was that the waste could then be used as mulch and soil amendment.

As you may well know, I did not buy a grinder or start a construction waste recycling business. Now I am helping the City of Denver with their new code adoption which includes a Green Building Code, and I began to wonder what has happened with regards to construction waste recycling in the past 23 years. Not sure if it is surprising or not, but little has happened. However, there are a number of people in industry and in Cities that are continuing to try and solve this environmental problem. This includes my guests Laurie Johnson of 5280 Waste Solutions and Emily Freeman of the City of Boulder Colorado. Take a listen and get a glimpse of where we are currently at.

Construction Wastes: Types, Causes, and Recycling strategies https://theconstructor.org/concrete/construction-waste-recycling/1088/

5280 Construction Waste Recycling Solutions https://5280waste.com/recycling-leed/

Joe Medosch took a wide and varied route to become the Healthy Building Scientist. On his journey he became an artist, electrician, home inspector, and professor. He did marketing and sales and now is on a small team at Hayward score tasked with developing questions and providing best practice advice to homeowners to address indoor health issues that they are facing.

Hayward Score: Of the 23,000 breaths you take each day – about 90% of them are indoors. Breathing poor quality air has consequences. At Hayward Score both substantial scientific research and our personal journeys have led us to the knowledge that homes can (and should) be health supporting, not health degrading.

Joseph G. Allen is Director of the Healthy Buildings program and an Associate Professor at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Building Performance Institute's Healthy Home Evaluator (HHE) certification builds on the BPI Building Analyst (BA) and other BPI certifications. The HHE was developed in partnership with the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI). A Healthy Home Evaluator assesses home-based environmental health and safety hazards and provides a prioritized list of recommendations to address those hazards

National Air Duct Cleaners Association (NADCA)

EPA Indoor Air Plus Program Version 2

In his spare time, as he claims to be retired, Steve Andrews is an energy consultant, free-lance writer, and mentor to many of us in Colorado. He worked primarily in the residential sector and was very active with the Denver Homebuilders' association and the development of Colorado’s home energy rating system in the early 1990’s, called E-Star Colorado. This was when states were the RESNET provider. His work ranged broadly from research with the State of Colorado’s Energy Office, co-chairing CORE's World Oil Forum in 1998, to working with the Fort Collins Utilities, code officials, Habitat for Humanity, and writing for Fine Homebuilding and local HBA publications. He also co-authored a draft report to the Colorado Legislature, for the Colorado PUC, regarding the findings by the state's Electricity Advisory Panel about whether or not to restructure the state's electricity industry. He has moved off the front range into the mountains of southern Colorado, but his impact on residential energy efficiency lives on.

Currently writing for Resilience an Online newsletter that is Building a world of resilient communities.  

https://www.resilience.org/latest-articles/

Co-Founder of ASPO-USA The Association for the Study of Peak Oil & gas.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/aspo-usa/about/

http://www.aspousa.org/

David B. Goldstein has worked on energy efficiency and energy policy since the early 1970s. He currently codirects Natural Resource Defense Council’s Energy program. Goldstein has been instrumental in the development of energy efficiency standards for new buildings and appliances that are currently in effect at the regional and national levels in the United States, Russia, Kazakhstan, and China. He was a founding director of the Institute for Market Transformation, the Consortium for Energy Efficiency, and the New Buildings Institute. Goldstein received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the recipient of its Leo Szilard Award for Physics in the Public Interest. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002 and is the recipient of the California Alumni Association’s 2003 Award for Excellence in Achievement. The author of the books Saving Energy, Growing Jobs and Invisible Energy.

ASHRAE 90.2-2018 Energy efficient design of low-rise residential buildings: This standard provides minimum requirements for the energy-efficient design of residential buildings, including new dwelling units, new portions of dwelling units and their systems, and new systems and equipment in existing dwelling units.

Eric Holt is an Assistant Professor at University of Denver - Burns School of Real Estate & Construction Management. He teaches Construction Building Systems, Architectural Design Management & Planning, Construction Project Management, and Residential Development. Our conversation revealed his beginnings in the construction world, what education looks like in the COVID world, and the field work Eric is exposing his students, including the DOE Solar Decathlon.  Come take a listen.

University of Denver Franklin Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management https://daniels.du.edu/burns-school/

Solar Decathlon https://daniels.du.edu/burns-school/support/solar-decathlon

University of Denver Showcases First-of-Its-Kind Project for Solar Decathlon https://www.du.edu/news/university-denver-showcases-first-its-kind-project-solar-decathlon

RED Angle – Construction Spanish and more. Red Angle partners with construction leaders to attract, retain, and communicate effectively with the Hispanic workforce to improve retention, safety, and productivity. https://www.redangleinc.com/