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The Best Value Guide to Exterior Home Retrofits

Shawna HendersonSeptember 09, 2024

So let’s talk about exterior insulation retrofits and how they are a relatively easy project to add into a job where it's time to replace the cladding, but we can't track how many jobs have insulation added, or how much/how well it's installed. Right off the bat, it’s most cost effective to add insulation to the outside of the house and to replace windows at the same time as recladding. This is the point at which we can make the biggest difference in the long-term durability, comfort and energy performance for the homeowner. As incentive programs are often based on single measures, these two integral upgrades are often disconnected.

Reblog: What's Reasonable vs. What's Heroic

Shawna HendersonJanuary 19, 2015

Ann Edminster, M.Arch, LEED AP (a long time colleague) is a recognized international expert on green-home design and a principal developer of the LEED for Homes rating system. Here’s a story about Ann’s house in Pacifica, California, in interview format with Jim Gunshinian from Home Energy Magazine. This Q&A originally...

Valuing the role of the appraiser in home performance

Shawna HendersonJanuary 12, 20158 comments

Here's something near and dear to the heart of anyone involved in the home performance industry: how to make energy efficiency sexy, appealing, and properly valued. When you're up to your eyebrows in insulation and you know that you are adding significant value to a house, it's sometimes hard to...

A deeper discussion of deeper energy efficiency measures

Shawna HendersonSeptember 25, 20142 comments

    Here's a good read from Nate Adams from Energy Smart Ohio, on problems associated with energy efficiency programs, single-action bias and low-hanging fruit. It comes with the above GREAT graph showing the fallacy of diminishing returns on energy efficiency measures. The red line indicates what we think happens...

Program Driven Staged Retrofits

Shawna HendersonApril 09, 2014

Mike Rogers, OmStout Consulting, started a conversation a few weeks ago about staging deep energy retrofits -- a very interesting conversation has been so far. I'm all about staged retrofits, myself. The opportunity to move many existing houses closer to low energy/net zero in a few affordable phases is much...

Scaling the picture

Shawna HendersonApril 03, 2014

There is so much to focus on when working in energy efficient, low energy, high performance, green, sustainable houses: materials, assemblies, performance, HVAC, energy sources. Broad categories like these can be broken out into a dozen subcategories each, then another dozen sub-subcategories again. And there's two sets of the top-level...

Why we need good training in building science

Shawna HendersonMarch 18, 2014

There are lots of horror stories out there about mold, rot, stink, decay, health problems and even death associated with energy efficiency measures and airtight houses. Most of them come from the early days of 'live' experiments where good things were done, with all the right intentions but only half of the concept was in place...house-as-a-system was not the by-word of the late 70s/early 80s homebuilding/renovating world. And in many instances where new horror stories appear, it's pretty obvious to those who are conversant in building science that 'house-as-a-system' is ***still*** not the by-word of the homebuilding/renovating world.X

Just in Time Training...what does that mean?

Shawna HendersonMarch 13, 20142 comments

Just in Time Training = giving people the training they need when and where they need it. The people who are actually carrying out the building and renovating, labourers, framers, insulators, those folks don't often (never) get invited to sit through days of in-class training to improve their understanding of building science and how to apply that understanding to what they are being asked to do on site. Why? Because they are so very valuable on site. If they are in class, the site shuts down. Or someone needs to step into their role for the days they are in class.  X

Value Chain and Core Competencies

Shawna HendersonMarch 05, 20141 comment

Training in building science and energy efficiency is essential to moving the house building industry forward into Net Zero Energy, successfully. Many people in our industry do not see the entire value chain. It’s a complicated one – easy to see in this diagram how the home building industry is a hot, fragmented mess of experts and expertise, completely at odds with itself sometimes.

Fragments and knowledge gaps

Shawna HendersonFebruary 21, 2014

BHE is based on translating the knowledge we have about building science and energy efficiency in housing into a format that is accessible to those already working in the home building industry. Labourers, tradespeople, renovators and contractors, as well as those who are less hands-on but still involved in the industry: office managers, internal sales teams etc. As a set of crafts and trades that really grew into a commodity-based industry only after World War II, housing is still finding its feet as a cohesive industry. The many trades and interests that come together to build a house all have their own silos of expertise. As energy prices and environmental concerns have created the need for energy efficiency measures and green building issues, the fragmentation of the industry has continued. Now not only do we have builders, tradespeople, contractors and inspectors, appraisers and mortgage lenders, but a whole layer of techno-weenie evaluators, assessors, trainers, designers, and consultants (yes, I am wearing my appropriate hats). X