Peter Yost

Design Review

Conducting a Building Science/Building Performance Design Review

I get asked this quite a bit: when should I involve a building performance consultant in the architectural design process? The answer is: the moment design involves building performance— Efficiency Energy Water Materials Indoor environmental quality Air quality Thermal Comfort Acoustics Durability Enclosure Mechanicals Finishes. Optimizing each and all of the above aspects of building …

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Using Building Science to Conduct a Building Assessment

COVID-19 & Curriculum Development For several years, our local Sustainable Energy Outreach Network (SEON) has been developing a High Performance Building Associate certificate program (http://www.seon.info/hpb-overview/ ). In early March 2020, we were in the middle of the 2-day class in northern Vermont when everything changed. Pretty bad timing, given that the second day of the …

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Building Science Puzzles: The Jigsaw Approach

Tracking down performance problems is all about getting the building science right–and following the rules of jigsaw puzzles AUTHOR’S NOTE: This blog was originally published on GreenBuildingAdvisor in October 2016 and recently posted here because I am doing a new companion blog to this one, posting it soon… Just about every week, I get a …

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Dealing with Construction Moisture

How much moisture does a new building release and do I need to worry about it? Depending on where, when, how fast, and how well you build, construction moisture—sometimes called “built-in” moisture—may require significant one-time management. I learned from my grandmother that my great-grandfather was a Pennsylvania home builder. She told us that he never …

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Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral (Part II)

An environmental microscopist’s perspective In part I of this blog, we looked at some puzzling examples of unidentified substances from buildings I have investigated over the years and discussed how sometimes it is challenging to determine whether what looks like something that is growing on various surfaces of buildings is actually alive, dead, or neither. …

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