BUILDTank / buildCAST

Thanks for listening to the buildCAST. In this episode we hear from Steve Baden, the founding Executive director of the Residential Energy Services Network or RESNET. RESNET is the governing body of the HERS home energy rating industry which was established in 1995 by the National Association of State Energy Officials, Energy Rated Homes of America, and the National Mortgage Industry Association to develop a national market for home energy rating systems and energy-efficient mortgages.  I was in the first energy Rater training and became the 32nd certified rater in Colorado in 1995.  Soon after I met Steve at the first RESNET conference held at the Florida Solar Energy Center when I was on the board of directors of Energy Rated Homes of Colorado.

Even before Jimmy Carter’s infamous, wear a sweater speech from the oval office Steve’s path to energy efficiency came though politics. He found himself in Alaska at the state energy office leading an initiative called “Warming Homes for Alaskans” which received the 1993 national award for the most outstanding state housing program, and which set the stage for a national home energy rating program that RESNET grew out of.

Steve has worked in the residential energy efficiency field for 30 years, including eighteen years with home energy ratings and energy mortgages on both the state and national levels, and ten years administering the Alaska State Energy Office. Steve is the founding executive director of RESNET and has just announced that he will be retiring on December 31st, 2025.  I have known Steve from the beginning of the founding of RESNET and my time as a board member of Energy Rated Homes of Colorado and was so happy to have the opportunity to recap his career on the buildCAST before his last day. 

Thanks for all you have done for the Industry Steve.

Steve Baden on LinkedIn

RESNET - Residential Energy Services Network

Thank you to Nicole Tysvaer Founder and CEO of Symbi Homes for being on the BUILDCast. Symbi Homes is a sustainable construction firm reinventing home building with an emphasis on wellness, energy-efficiency and technology. Symbi short for Symbiosis immediately got my thinking about building science, systems thinking, and the synergistic interactions that take place in construction of high performance homes. Symbi Homes has decided to follow the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program specifications to guide their path to high performance building. Uniquely they have also chosen to apply these high-performance specifications to a Queen Ann Victorian complex form as well as in their current remodel and addition current project. To me this beautifully demonstrates that homes of all shapes and sizes can pursue high performance building when project goals are clearly defined from the start.

Nicole Tysvaer on LinkedIn

Symbi Homes

DOE Zero Energy Ready Home Program

Symbi Homes - Upcoming Educational Sessions

May 2025 - date and time tbd - Retro Rambler Pre-Drywall Walk Through (Kensington, MD)      

• Take a look inside the walls of this mid-century deep energy retrofit and addition project working towards Zero Energy Ready certification. 

August 2025 - date and time tbd - High-Performance Builder Expo  (Kensington, MD)      

• Tour the completed Retro Rambler high-performance home and learn about the sustainable products and processes used to create a net zero ready retrofit.

For more information and updates on these events, sign-up for news on the Symbi Homes website.

We dove quickly into the Water Efficiency Rating Sore or WERS system with Mike Collignon Executive Director & Co Founder of the Green Builder Coalition.  So quickly in fact that we did not have time to talk much about the other cool things the coalition is doing, so definitely check out their website in the show notes to find out how they are a uniting voice for sustainable home building especially for the custom builder community

In short, WERS is a performance-based water efficiency program for both new and existing residential properties. This approach to water efficiency preserves design freedom and product choice flexibility. Third-party analysis and data collection is utilized to generate both a score and predict water usage for single-family and multifamily properties. Especially here in the west and specifically in the southwest, more and more water utilities and jurisdictions are looking for ways to better manage water in the build environment so that builders can continue to meet our housing demand.

Mike Collignon on LinkedIn Green Builder Coalition

Water Efficiency Rating Score (WERS)

2025 Next Generation Water Summit

Other Water based buildCAST Episodes

#16-2021 Garry Klein's in Hot Water

#22-2021 Jonah Schein WaterSense National Program Manager

#1-2023 Teal Lehto Instagram's “Western Water Girl”

#2-2023-rick-schultz-water efficiency supervisor townof Castle Rock Colorado

Vincent Deorio CEO, Mike Davidson Sales and Marketing, and Ben Walker Sr Architectural Manager at RedT homes, share what it’s taking to grow their company into a regional production builder that is offering LEED platinum homes. Their unique business model incorporates land acquisition, entitlement and design, architecture, and construction along with real estate-focused marketing and sales. Their focus on integrated design and thoughtful execution is helping them reimagine what sustainable development, construction, and sales means in Colorado.

RedT Homes

LEED for Homes

buildCAST #9-2022 Sand Adomatis and the Residential Green and Energy Efficient Addendum

Starting in tech, moving into solar, Stephen Kane found his home at SPAN where he is helping builders integrate smart electric load management to lower the cost of electrifying homes while giving homeowner’s a better user experience.  Our conversation touched on both new construction and existing homes as the move toward electrification is touching both worlds.  I have to say that I found our existing home conversation particularly interesting since I am on a glid path to electrification of my own home. That being said, I see this technology helping manage not only operational cost, but also the cost of construction. We are now not beholden to installing huge capacity panels when our real life loads never, or rarely, match the code calculated electrical loads.

Stephen Kane on LinkedIn

SPAN

SPAN Tech Portal

SPAN on YouTube

Jacob Deva Racusin, based in Vermont, is the Co-Founder and Director of Building Science and Sustainability with New Frameworks. He is also the lead researcher and BEAM Tool Co-Developer with Builders for Climate Action.  As a builder, consultant, researcher, designer, and educator, Jacob has merged his passions for ecological stewardship, relationship to place, and social justice with building science, climate action, and sustainable design and building.

 Jacob Deva Racusin on LinkedIn

New Frameworks

Builders for Climate Action

BEAM Carbon Estimator

Yestermorrow Design Build School

Rob Howard began his construction career with Habitat for Humanity where he built ENERGY STAR homes through Advanced Energy’s System Vision program. When he became director of construction at Habitat he built the first Net-Zero Energy Home in North Carolina in partnership with the Appalachian Energy Center in 2005. He now only builds DOE Zero Energy Ready Homes and was a 2024 Housing Innovations award recipient.

Uniquely and parallel to Rob’s building career is his career as an academic.  Rob holds a bachelor’s degree and a renewable energy technologies diploma from North Carolina State University and a master’s degree in sustainable technology and building science from Appalachian State University where he now serves as a full-time faculty member.

Rob’s practical and academic background made our conversation particularly fun as he was able to interweave his passion for building science into mainstream applications which, to me, helps better explain why everyone in the construction industry should embrace applied building science in the proustite of our modern everyday home.

Rob Howard on LinkedIn

Howard Building Science

DOE Zero Energy Ready Home

Advanced Energy

South Face

Pocket Neighborhoods

Happy New Year!

I begin 2025 with a conversation I had with Randy Williams. Randy is well known for his Northern Pro Build blog that concentrates on applied building science, energy efficiency, and cold climate construction. He followed his brother into the building industry and quickly made a name for himself once he caught the building science bug. He was introduced to building science when he became an energy auditor during the economic downturn of 2009. He now describes himself as a building science nerd and supports himself by applying it as a contractor, energy auditor, and regular contributor to Fine Homebuilding, Journal of Light Construction, and Green Building Advisor.

For me, it was really fun to have this conversation with Randy, building science nerd to nerd. Our time together flew by because we were just talking about our shared passion.

Thanks much for your continued support and likes.

Randy Williams on LinkedIn

Norther Built Pro - A Cold Climate Construction and Energy Blog

Randy Williams on Fine Homebuilding

Robby got selected to be on the 2027 IECC consensus committee to develop the new energy code and his mind started turning, about if he really wanted to go through this for the fifth time. To quite his mind he starting talking. So here is his riff on the 2027 IECC.

BUILDtank inc