EEBA Academy

Building and energy codes are pushing builders beyond traditional minimum code wood-framed construction into a more building science-oriented ‘high-performance’ home that requires testing for verification to meet specific standards.

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

Once homebuyers purchase new homes often based on infatuation with community and design, bad home performance experiences can negate all the hard work earning customer satisfaction. It is critical to get high-performance right. This course begins that process with lessons-learned from decades of experience as a residential architect and work with thousands of home builders while serving as national director for ENERGY STAR Certified Home and Zero Energy Ready Home. The resulting framework for high performance homes includes five key strategies and over 40 best practices for applying them with substantial cost savings. Most importantly, this framework has been intensively researched, vetted, and refined over five years with hundreds of housing industry executives. The goal is not to dogmatically impose one solution for all, but to engage housing professionals to high-performance as a journey and how to get on their own path. 

To understand the interaction between the building envelope and mechanical systems, it is important to consider the building envelope as a complete system itself.