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What we learned from updating a 16-year-old deep-energy retrofit. Reprinted with permission from Fine Homebuilding, February/March 2012, pages 55-59.

Building Science Corporation (BSC) collaborated with ICI Homes in Daytona Beach, FL on a 2008 prototype house called the Showcase House. This house demonstrates the energy efficiency and durability… Read More

Fairburn – the first energy-efficient, healthy, affordable, community in metro Atlanta. All of the adjectives in this description are important to builder Jay Epstein of Health-E Enterprises. "I used… Read More

Sometimes we make easy things hard. And sometimes we make hard things easy. With continuous insulation and punched openings both things are true.The physics is easy. A wall has to control water, air… Read More

So what does “net zero” mean anyway? And what is the difference from a “zero energy house”? A zero energy house is “off grid” and makes all the energy it needs on site using renewables. This is not… Read More

After one hundred and fifty years the Illinois cottage1 is undergoing some pretty interesting changes and the ghosts of George Washington Snow and Augustine Taylor2 are cautiously eyeing the result.… Read More

If we don’t call things by their right names we don’t really understand how things work.1 If we don’t understand how things work how can we prevent problems from happening? Or how can we fix problems… Read More

You have got to love salesmen. They figure things out way before physicists, usually before engineers and certainly before greenie weenies. Harry Tschumi and Les Blades,1 a pair of salesmen from… Read More

The American Foursquare, a Sears, Roebuck & Co. kit home, was a staple of small American towns between 1908 and 1940. More than 100,000 of them were built in America. Homes built prior to 1980… Read More