Infrared Thermal Photo Art! Nerd-Out!

I now carry a tiny infrared thermal camera with me everywhere I go, and I've decided to make it my contribution to humanity. I got so tired of washing dishes and being nice- this will be much easier, as contributions go!

The sun is more than 248 degrees. Get out!

I literally am such a nerd about this that I point it at trees, the floor, anything that might be awesome. 

The floor. With a spill on it! 

Trees! 

Feet! 

Infrared is not an X-ray, you can't really see through anything, but you can see temperature changes behind objects, which is also technically a superpower. 

Infrared thermal portrait of a cathedral

People look pretty cool under infrared, as long as you don't look at their faces, which look terrifying. 

The crowd at an Indigo Girls concert

What I mainly use my infrared camera for, though, is buildings. You can't hide anything in construction anymore, thanks to tools like this. 

One brick wall: old brick on the left, new brick on the right. Very different heat signatures! 

Chicago's Thompson Center

Airport construction project

Infrared thermal cemetery

The camera I got is called the Flir ONE, and it mates with my iPhone 5 to make my pocket bulge with infrared awesomeness! For $250, I recommend it to anyone who likes having an easy superpower. 

Day in the Life of a Building Performance Inspector

Home Performance Diagnostics author Corbett Lunsford shows you in 30 seconds how hilarious it is for a former ballet pianist to inspect construction sites. Proof Is Possible- ask for it.

~Subscribe to our video channel to get all the latest video updates~

When Performance Testing Goes Weird: BUILDING FORENSICS MASTERMIND APRIL 2015

Are you sure your home performance diagnostics are giving you accurate information? Join building forensics guru Corbett Lunsford in slapping foreheads when things don’t turn out quite as we expect in a number of home improvement projects in Chicago.

PODCAST #65 TINY HOUSE HOTEL: Yes, This Is a Real Thing. Yes, It's Awesome.

Today Corbett travels all the way to Portland to talk with Kol Peterson, owner of Caravan Tiny House Hotel, and tiny house builder Ben Kovco. Tiny houses- who wants one, what are the challenges, is it a passing fad or here to stay? Sponsored by the Building Performance Workshop training portal!

To download this episode or hear more, subscribe in iTunes or visit BuildingPerformancePodcast.com

PODCAST #63 ALL OVER THIS LAND: Taking the Temperature of Homebuilders Around the World

Today Corbett takes you on a tour of performance based building from a sampling of builders around the world, and realizes that the millionaires are going to be very angry when they realize what they're paying for isn't nearly as good as the affordable housing to be had on the other side of the tracks. Hosted by Corbett Lunsford at the International Builders Show (IBS) in Las Vegas and the Michigan Habitat for Humanity HOMES Summit, January 2015.

Thanks to Robert & Deb Berger, Hiroshi Kuratsu, Rick Eversold, William Wright, Dustin Johnston, Scott Spencer, Bob Passkey Sr., Joey Cuzano, and Bruce Rumsberg for voicing their opinions about performance testing!

To download this episode or hear more, subscribe in iTunes or visit BuildingPerformancePodcast.com

Carbon Monoxide Investigator on a Construction Site

Corbett Lunsford’s building inspection of a huge development is interrupted when he feels compelled to show you:
#1. How ridiculously huge this space heater is
#2. Proof that the worksite is safe according to air quality standards
Stop guessing. Proof Is Possible. Ask for it.

You might think it’s obvious when someone is being poisoned by carbon monoxide (CO). You might think your furnace simply must be replaced with a newer model if you have CO showing up in your home. You might think the $20 CO detector you bought will protect your whole family from the possibility of either of the above. WRONG on all counts!

“The amount of misinformation about carbon monoxide isn’t surprising, since the gas is everywhere around us- coming out of our vehicle exhaust, our furnaces and water heaters and ovens and stovetops,” says Corbett Lunsford, Exec. Dir. of the IL Association of Energy Raters & Home Performance Professionals (IAER). “Everyone takes pride in knowing something about everything- too bad most conventional wisdom about carbon monoxide is B.S.”

First, let’s look at the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning: “flu-like” is how they’re usually described. Ask yourself: have you ever had “flu-like” symptoms? Have you ever been to the doctor because of them? We can safely bet that the answer to both questions is YES. Now ask yourself: has a doctor even once suggested testing you for carbon monoxide poisoning? The answer to that is a solid NO, 99.9% of the time. Doctors are conditioned day in and day out to seek the simplest solution for what ails you, and prescribe medication to fix it. Indeed, that is all we demand of our doctors- if they suggest further testing, we understandably press for the easier option in pill form and try to get the hell out of there. Nowadays, however, testing for CO poisoning is as easy as placing your finger in a medical LED device- no syringes or blood samples necessary.

Second, let’s look at how carbon monoxide is created: a something that burns fuel isn’t working correctly. It’s called “flame impingement” and it happens when the fuel isn’t burned completely because something’s in the way- dust, or metal, or a pot of water. Yes, that’s right- every time you make tea on a gas stove, you’re also making carbon monoxide. Should you avoid ever making tea again? Of course not! CO is a natural byproduct of driving, getting warm, making tea, and on and on- the trick is to make sure it doesn’t get into the air you’re breathing. That’s what the kitchen exhaust fan, the chimney, and the rear exhaust pipe is for. If your kitchen fan is a recirculating type (meaning you can feel the fan blow the air out above the stove), then it’s totally useless for its intended purpose, and sadly you’re not alone. Millions of kitchens don’t have exhaust fans connected to outdoors, because people who build kitchens generally don’t understand carbon monoxide either!

Lastly, let’s look at the carbon monoxide detector that’s hopefully installed somewhere in your home. You trust it- it says “UL-listed” whatever that means, it’s what everyone else seems to be using. Well, as with so many things, it’s important to read the instructions- in this case, you’ll see a warning that basically states: “this detector is designed to protect healthy adults from acute poisoning. It will alarm if the CO level is over 70 parts per million (ppm) for over an hour, and if you have anyone in your home who’s NOT a healthy adult, you should buy a better detector.”

That’s right: children, pregnant women, elderly and ill people all experience the toxic effects of carbon monoxide at levels as low as 9 ppm. Additionally, recently a fourth study was published pointing to a link between traffic pollution and autism (Epidemiology, October 2014). But don’t panic, there’s a solution!

The instructions in your CO detector also state that you should have your furnace and water heater (as long as they’re not electric) tested and maintained annually- get a BPI or RESNET-certified professional to run standard diagnostics on the CO level created by your appliances, and make sure they’re all being successfully evacuated outdoors. Also, have a blower door and zonal pressure test run to ensure that your attached garage doesn’t have a significant air connection to the house- a tragic flaw in most homes that becomes obvious when the car is accidentally left running inside. For a list of professionals in the Midwest, visit: http://ilenergyraters.org

And protection of children, pregnant women, elderly or ill individuals is simple with a Low-Level CO Detector (such as the Defender and a growing number of other brands) that’s NOT UL-listed. These alarms will sound immediately in response to small amounts of carbon monoxide. If your alarm sounds, make sure to first have a whole-home professional run tests on the dynamics of your home. Don’t immediately replace your furnace- it might be caused instead by any number of other factors, which home performance diagnostics can pinpoint and help you fix for good. You might not “get the flu” for years!

Five Years of Home Performance Testing Data from Our Clients

We see a lot of houses. We have a lot of data on houses. For a while now, I have been wondering whether or not I’d be able to find some meaningful relationships with this data. I am not even sure what I would use it for, but I have taken some time to compile the data and pull some numbers that I thought were interesting. More than anything, the data just shows typical values for ‘regular houses’ in the Chicagoland area.

DISCLAIMER: This isn’t a scientific research study in any way, shape, or form - there are many things that you may point out that would make this little ‘research project’ invalid. I randomly selected 98 properties that we have done some sort of analysis for over the years. These properties were a mixture of single-family homes, condos, and townhomes. All of them were in the general Chicagoland area and were not built/designed to be high performance.

Here is a quick glimpse at some of the home size statistics from our sample:

Metric: Largest/Smallest/Average

Size (Square Feet): 9,058/1,155/3,963

Volume (Cubic Feet): 86,866/11,459/34,305

Enclosure Area (Square Feet): 21,723/2,079/7,565

Shell Area/Volume: 0.35/0.15/0.23

The SA/VOL is a ratio of the surface area of a building to its volume. Generally, ‘efficient’ shapes have large volumes with low surface areas, therefore making this ratio as small as possible. In European countries, this metric is often a key design consideration. Most homes in Chicago will have a SA/VOL ratio of 0.2-0.23 because of long, slender lots (typically 20’ wide and 55’ long).

Now lets talk about some consumption statistics and how they relate to home size:

Metric: Largest/Smallest/Average

Square Feet per Ton of Air Conditioning Installed: 1886/390/878
SF/Ton AC: The number of square feet of the home divided by installed capacity of the cooling equipment. 1 Ton is approximately equally to 12,000 Btu/hr.

% Air Conditioning Installed Compared to Amount Actually Needed in Home: 177%/-54%/21%
% AC Size Discrepancy: The % difference between the capacity of the installed cooling equipment and the calculated amount needed from an energy modeling software.

Square Feet per kBtu per hour of Heating Installed: 95/13/31
SF/kBtu Heating: The number of square feet of the home divided by installed OUTPUT capacity of the heating equipment.

% Heating Installed Compared to Amount Actually Needed in Home: 157%/-47%/34%
% Heating Size Discrepancy: The % difference between the OUTPUT capacity of the installed heating equipment and the calculated amount needed from an energy modeling software.

Annual kiloWatt hours per Square Foot: 9.39/0.68/4.01
Annual kWh/SF: The actual electrical consumption over a year long period divided by the area of the home.

 It should be noted that square footage, installed equipment capacities, and annual kWh are actual measured values, or determined through inspection. The % discrepancy between installed equipment and calculated loads is based off an energy model, so these values have inherent errors in them because of this. Regardless, the results are pretty typical with standard construction – heating and cooling equipment is usually oversized for the needs of a given home (positive % indicates oversized, and negative % indicates undersized).

Lastly, I’d like to point out the variability in annual electrical consumption in relation to home size.

Electrical consumption is largely based on occupant behavior, installed gadgetry, and family size. Typically, the phone calls we’d receive regarding large electrical bills were pretty simply explained by a few big consumers like pool/hot tub heaters, pumps, electric radiant heat, and entertainment systems.

In closing, the information provided here gives you an idea of standard homes in Chicago. I am not a fan of ‘rules of thumb,’ so the above metrics aren’t intended for any form of comparison against new homes. The overall idea is always to engineer a perfect home, install all components to specification, and test them once they are in place. Or as Corbett Lunsford would say it, ‘Control is the goal.”

VENICE ITALY: Amazing to Visit, Insane to Maintain

Corbett walks you around Venice, Italy on a recent trip, and teaches the implications of building science on this beautiful city that's being torn apart by seawater. Incredible case study of a lovable place where you wouldn't want to own a home:

Capillary action is the phenomenon of water soaking upwards, like in the roots of a tree. The same happens with buildings that are founded in the sea- the moisture damage to brick, wood, and plaster can be easily seen here:

And once the moisture damage has torn these homes apart, they have surgery to keep them held together for the next hundred years:

​HIGHLY RECOMMENDED as a vacation spot, and the buildings are beautiful to see- but be careful what you invest in while you're there!