Commercial buildings in California can now get a huge jumpstart on achieving LEED certification. New construction projects meeting certain requirements will enjoy streamlined documentation to achieve all LEED v4 Building Design and Construction (BD+C) prerequisites along with six optional credits, for a total of six automatic points. The move acknowledges significant overlaps between the voluntary LEED rating systems and the progressive energy and building codes in the state.

The rebranded TRUE (“Total Resource Use and Efficiency”) Zero Waste rating system (administered previously by the U.S. Zero Waste Business Council) was recently launched by Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) as a way to promote a holistic approach to waste reduction.

The TRUE Zero Waste rating system is meant to encourage and facilitate the green business practice of waste reduction. A company that uses its resources more efficiently and generates less waste is not only reducing its environmental impacts, but also saving money.

Another year, another ground of gratitude for the pioneers who have made LEED what it is around the world.

Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI), along with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) just announced the 2017 class of LEED Fellows.

They are:

I first “learned” about VersaDry when a colleague of mine here at BuildingGreen — our materials and product expert, Brent Ehrlich — sent me the photo reproduced at right. I was in the same boat you are right now: “OK, thanks for the photo, Brent, but what the hell is this VersaDry bent-metal thingamajig?” He replied, “Oh, yeah, here is another photo that will help.” This time he sent me the photo reproduced as Image #2, below. Brent was clearly messing with me, along the lines of when my wife says, “OK, Mr.

Back in the early days of airport noise mitigation programs, there was a pretty strong link between air leakage and sound. A document titled “Tips for Insulating Your Home Against Aircraft Noise” noted, “Sound travels from the exterior to the interior of the home in two ways: through solid structural elements and through the air…. Wherever air can infiltrate a home, sound can as well.”

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Whenever my wife starts a conversation with, “OK, Mr. Building Scientist,” I know I am in some kind of trouble. That proved to be the case one day when we were out hanging laundry on the south side of our house.

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There are a lot of different ways to get continuous air and water control layers on the exterior of a building enclosure. You can use housewrap, taped-and-sealed rigid foam insulation, liquid-applied membrane, or either the Huber Zip or Georgia-Pacific ForceField system. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses.

How do you measure someone’s sustainable design literacy? As we discuss in Sustainable Design Literacy: A Foundation for Transformed Practice, no single exam or other measure tells the whole story.

I regularly speak with architects who would really love to do a Living Building Challenge project, or net-zero, or another progressive project. All they are waiting for is a client to ask for it. So here we remain, stuck in a self-fulfilling pattern that looks a bit like this.

During interview: “Let’s not scare them away… we’ll make advanced sustainable strategies optional.”

During Schematic Design: “It’s too busy right now to talk sustainability.”

Negative-side waterproofing (NSW) is a tough topic that I have frankly been dancing around for quite some time. Manufacturer claims and homeowner anecdotes of successful interior waterproof solutions for basement walls and slabs did not completely add up. But I did not think that I understood the topic or the physics well enough to challenge the claims or explain my skepticism.

I have been advising architects and builders on high-performance design, materials, and construction — particularly for residential buildings — for many years. But to do this work on commercial buildings, a building science training and credentialing program seemed really important (yet elusive).

This past November I bit the bullet and spent three days in class, a half day in exams, and several thousand dollars, and fulfilled the requirements for these two certifications:

A new client called me, saying that his insulation contractor urged him to contact me about some moisture problems in the home before they actually embarked on a major energy upgrade. (That was gratifying.) Many years ago the home had been moved off of a failing rubble foundation to a new concrete masonry unit (CMU) foundation on a different site.

But there was a puzzling stain on the fireplace support column. Here are the puzzle pieces:

Puzzle Piece #1:

I don’t do blower door work every day, but I do enough of it to appreciate the attention to detail that The Energy Conservatory (TEC) built into its new blower door kit. I have used both TEC and Retrotec blower door kits and found them trustworthy and rugged.

“If you could put one simple message on a billboard, what would it say?” During the recent BuildingEnergy conference in Boston, BuildingGreen set up a camera at our booth and asked sustainable design and building professionals this question.

Our interviewees ranged from a professor of sustainable design, to a sustainability manager at an architecture firm, to a green home builder, to a creator of an online green building directory.

Author’s Note: I can’t even start this blog before thanking Lew Harriman of Mason-Grant Consulting. Lew very patiently and gently hammered me into a much better understanding of humidity in air and its measurement. While any errors or lack of clarity regarding humidity and its measurement are mine, much of the insight and many of the resources mentioned here are Lew’s.