Green Building Curmudgeon

NAHB’s National Green Building Conference in Raleigh, N.C., kicked off with a full-day tour of green homes ranging from very affordable small houses to luxury spec and custom projects. Having avoided home tours for many years, I finally took the plunge and signed up for this one. Lots of interesting things to see, particularly in the more modest projects, but boy, was it an ordeal.

Expanding on my last post about ACI, here are assorted observations and amusing anecdotes about events, products, and educational sessions that I attended. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend as many classes as I would have liked.

I recently returned from my third ACI conference in Austin. Formerly known as Affordable Comfort, this get-together is another geekfest on par with Resnet, but with a broader appeal. Until recently, ACI was a relatively small affair, appealing to the narrow and evolving home performance industry. Attendance this year was up dramatically to almost 2,000 people.

I was hired a few years ago to consult on a new luxury residence to make the house as green as possible. At about 7,500 square feet, many people would argue that it could never be a green home, but as I was brought in after the design was complete, my job was to do the best I could with what I was given to work with. While the builder, Mike LaBelle, had no prior experience in high-performance homes, luckily for everyone, he was very interested and enthusiastic about learning how to build better.

I attended Greenprints last month, a great little regional green building conference put on by Southface Energy Institute every year in Atlanta. It served its purpose well, bringing together for education and networking a wide range of industry professionals interested in sustainable building. There were three separate tracks: residential, commercial, and sustainable communities' economy and policy, along with some additional workshops and post-conference training classes.

I took the opportunity to go on an all-expenses-paid trip to tour the Marvin Windows factory recently. After spending the weekend with my buddy Michael Anschel in Minneapolis (don’t miss our upcoming presentation at ACI in Austin—North vs.

Following up on my recent post about LEED and other green programs, it occurs to me that the people responsible for creating and managing most green home certification programs have completely missed the big picture. I hope and believe that one day, through a combination of more stringent codes, legislation, and marketplace demands, we will reach a point where green building becomes the minimum acceptable standard.

Upon returning home from five long days at the RESNET Building Performance Conference in Raleigh, N.C., I reviewed my notes to see what I had picked up while there. Now for those of you who don’t know this crowd, this is one roomful of serious geeks. Compared to the building industry and the average consumer, I am pretty geeky when it comes to building science, but most of this crowd (as well as many of my friends here at GBA) truly humble me with the extent of their knowledge.

Among other endeavors, I have been certifying LEED homes as a provider representative for about two years now. In order to continue doing this work after next year, USGBC and GBCI have decided that I must become certified as a green rater. After looking at my various options for obtaining this designation, I elected to take a two-day training class in advance of the required test. Not uncharacteristically, I bristled at the thought that I would have to spend my time and money learning something I was already doing.

This is just a brief rant about a photo I ran across today. While I was working my way through the USGBC's required online training modules in preparation for a two-day green-rater training class at RESNET this month, this picture appeared in the section describing blower door testing. The training is obviously designed to provide information to a wide range of professionals, from the least to the most experienced. Being the impatient type, I zipped along as quickly as possible through the areas that I knew well and spent more time on those that I was less familiar with.