EEBA Academy

This is where the building science rubber meets the architect’s road. Steve uses his many high-performance projects to show how high performance is translated into actual assemblies, with real materials, and with tried-and-true project management done cooperatively with the architect and builder. 

Virtually every major industry has experienced, or is in the process of experiencing, disruption. Think retail, personal transportation, automobiles, computing, music, photography, media, and the list goes on and on. Housing in the U.S. has been able to sit on the sidelines with its first cost dominated business model and uniquely disaggregated industry…but not for much longer. That’s because there are five crises driving four innovations that will disrupt an industry totally resistant to change. A certainty by simply connecting the dots. Understanding these changes and preparing for them will be critical for all high-performance housing professionals. Will you be ready?

High performance zero energy homes provide many benefits including cost savings, energy resiliency, durability, comfort, and sustainable operation. While these types of homes have been built for a long time, the knowledge of how to build them has historically been kept by few. Now with increasingly stringent building codes across the U.S., driven by long-term energy policy and growing demands on the energy grid, all builders and implementers need to know how to build high performance. 

The building science principles forming the foundation for high performance are how heat moves, how moisture moves, and how the two always work together.