Q&A: A Forum for Green Building Experts and Beginners

I am looking at a zero clearance fireplace which is designed to draw outside air for combustion and for air to be heated from the outside. It is suggested that this air be drawn from a vented attic. Is this a good idea. It seems like it would be possible for this system to pull air into the attic from the house through leaks (supposed to be no leaks, but ..... you know). Of course there could be adequate vents to supply the 300+ CFM for the blowers, but there might not be enough, or this system might pull air in through the ridge vent which might not be a good thing.

Two degrees of separation from two of the many who lost homes in the recent tornados near Oklahoma City; wanted to tap the collective intelligence to work through how to 'build back better' (or retrofit surviving homes for resilience); both in terms of 'what', and 'how'; espcially, what is locally appropriate / cost effective, specific technical resources, etc., given the unique (and extreme) conditions in OK (tornado, fire, hail, and recently earthquakes...!)

To start the conversation (I will also work on answering my own questions here as I find more information):

Likelyhood of anothe

We are about to perform a blower door test on our small 650 sq. ft. new construction house. I have four quick questions:

1. We used T&G OSB and Siga tape for our air barrier, and i think we did an extremely thorough job detailing it. the house is not quite complete, however. for example, the clothes dryer is not installed, some of the joints in the hrv ducting in the crawlspace have not been sealed, the drywalled window returns have not been latexed to the window frames, etc... will these items have a significant effect on the test results?

Mr. Holladay once wrote of rafters, "Yes, you can combine rigid foam and spray foam if you want to save some money. I would be inclined to install the layers of rigid foam first [I, Gordon, assume this means the rigid foam would go against the roof decking] -- cut undersized, and with canned foam sealing the perimeter of each rectangle -- and cap everything with spray foam [I'm seeing this as under the rigid foam and further away from the roof] from a contractor's truck."