Take the mystery out of tight homes and moisture management by gaining confidence in your energy-efficient design and construction practices while optimizing your investment and reducing liability through superior building performance.

This course explores how properly designing and constructing a building’s envelope, or thermal and moisture barrier, is essential for a comfortable, healthy, durable, and energy-efficient home. The course provides an exploration of the fundamental laws that govern the dynamic flows within a building in order to understand the interconnectedness of house systems. These fundamentals are necessary tools to use when making design, construction and operation decisions that affect the sustainability of projects. Students will analyze best practices for managing thermal, air, and moisture flows to create a house that is healthy, safe, energy efficient, and durable.

Course Features

• Day 1: Guest speaker presentation
• Day 2: Two site visits to certified green homes

Learning Objectives

• Explain the natural laws that drive the thermal, air, and moisture flows within a house
• Develop strategies for analyzing how dynamic flows affect the performance of a house
• Calculate the overall R-values of various house assemblies and analyze potential efficiency improvements
• Calculate wall assembly U-factors and evaluate the optimum orientation of a house
• Understand how improving building performance affects indoor air quality
• Describe potential water management strategies
• Select appropriate design features and assemblies according to project objectives
• Integrate building envelope details into plans and specifications

Want to learn more? This Building Science Fundamentals course actually forms Module 2 of our interactive 6-month Sustainable Homes Professional (SHP) accreditation course.

Instructor

Our expert instructor, Stephen Aiguier (President & Founder of Green Hammer, Certified Passive House Consultant), has innovated and implemented cutting edge high performance building practices to advance the national standards of green building. Stephen has been invited to speak in front of thousands of people at every major green building conference in the United States, and he regularly blogs for the Daily Journal of Commerce and Sustainable Business Oregon. In 2011, he was named one of Portland Business Journal’s “40 Under 40”, and as one of Sustainable Business Oregon’s Top 10 Sustainable Built Environment Leaders to Watch in 2012.

Questions? Contact Heather Kendall at hkendall@earthadvantage.org or 503.968.7160 x20