Use the form on the right to contact us.
You can edit the text in this area, and change where the contact form on the right submits to, by entering edit mode using the modes on the bottom right.
3398 Washington Road
Atlanta, GA 30344
USA
773.398.5288
corbett@buildingperformanceworkshop.com
Advanced residential construction and home improvement consulting and owner's advocacy in Atlanta, using the latest building performance diagnostic and modeling techniques and tools. Airtightness, insulation, HVAC, ventilation, moisture, and air quality and EMF consulting for homeowners and building professionals alike.
Home performance articles and stories from the field with internationally respected building forensics guru Corbett Lunsford at the Building Performance Workshop. Hear new episodes of the Building Performance Podcast, see new videos from the Home Performance YouTube channel, and learn all about how diagnostic testing (more than an 'Energy Audit') can make home improvement and new home construction a proven process!
Listening, smiling, and validating are all skills that any home performance professional must have in order to serve homeowners, architects, developers, and other contractors! Don't get so full of scientific diagnostic proof that you forget we all have to relate to each other in order to make any home improvements or performance-based building project work.
Testing for "spillage" of combustion gases means making sure the bad stuff that's supposed to go UP the chimney doesn't come back DOWN. It's a critical part of home performance analysis, according to BPI, RESNET, and everyone else. If you don't know what it looks like, you might feel a little lost- let your old pal Corbett the diagnostics guy show you the single most awesome example of what you shouldn't see in your clients' homes!
Dear Corbett:
I thought I would send this your way. I live in the Central Valley of California. Yesterday it reached 106 degrees. I did an experiment with my house. My 1,883 sq./ft. house had a deep energy upgrade over three years ago. The heating and cooling unit is a 2 stage/2 ton heat pump with no back-up heat. The second stage of cooling is disconnected so I am cooling with 1.4 tons. That is one ton for every 1,345 sq./ft.
Yesterday morning I left the house at 7:40 am. It was 75 degrees in the house and 75 degrees outside. I closed all of the blinds, turned the HRV off and turned the Heat Pump off. In other words, I let the house float. It got up to 106 degrees in Stockton yesterday. Luci my bride got home at 5:40 in the afternoon and the house was 78 degrees. She turned the thermostat back on and it brought the temp back to 75 in 30 minutes.
This stuff really works.
Keep up the GREAT work;
Dick Rome
Dear Dick-
You are awesome. I'm not sure I know many other home performance experts who have fixed their own homes- most of our families have to suffer at home while we help other people get comfortable. Thanks so much for sharing the good word!
~Corbett
Today Corbett talks with Chad Curry, managing director of the Center for REALTOR Technology, about how performance metrics are changing the real estate industry. From the Internet of Things to measuring air quality in neighborhoods, Chad's group is on the cutting edge of helping the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) incorporate home performance into the selling and buying of homes everywhere! Sponsored by Fall Fast Track- my 6-week mastermind course in home performance ninja techniques.
To download this episode or hear more, subscribe in iTunes or visit BuildingPerformancePodcast.com
Learn to quickly and easily check the accuracy of a flow hood (in this case, a TSI AccuBalance) using a duct tightness testing fan (in this case, a Retrotec DucTester 200). If your diagnostic equipment isn't giving you accurate readings, no amount of experience will save you!
Visit an attic (vicariously) with building performance expert Corbett Lunsford to find a tiny problem that may force us to replace the floor and ceiling of this building- and it might happen to you someday too! Stop guessing- Proof Is Possible. Get up in that attic and have a look!
The answer to this bass-ackwards question is: NEGATIVE DOLLARS AND ZERO CENTS. It costs LESS to build a high performance home, whether that means ENERGY STAR Home, a Passive House, a Zero-Energy Ready home, or any of a number of other green home certifications. Here's why:
In his first Fall Fast Track week of 2015, home performance guru Corbett Lunsford answers the question "how much more will it cost to build my next home high performance?" The answer to the question is as straightforward as the question is ridiculous!
Building forensics work shown in detail! Watch as I give a tour of a few of the diagnostics projects we worked on in the past month, especially a battle between two flow hoods that are both past due for calibration, duct tightness testing failures and what to do, and when performance testing professionals should get paid for their work.
Grace and Corbett are building a performance-proven tiny house on wheels called the Tiny Lab! It's going to be built from November to February, and it starts a 16-city US Tour in March of 2016. The Crowd Sourcing Campaign is happening NOW on RocketHub- CLICK HERE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE TOUR! Here's the full series of four webinars from August 2015 detailing the engineering of a super cool tiny house on wheels!
In #1: SHAPE AND LAYOUT, Corbett and Grace show the 3D sketchup model of the Tiny Lab, and bring engineer John Bergman in for some heavy lifting to do with pinpointing the center of gravity on this 24 ft trailer tiny house.
In #2: AIRSEALING, INSULATION, & WEATHER BARRIERS, tour the process of energy modeling the tiny house to determine the optimal R-values and level of airtightness, and hear about vapor barriers, moisture control, and drainage.
In #3: HEATING, COOLING, AND VENTILATION, you get a taste for how wrong a lot of the discussion goes about homes in general, and tiny homes especially. The HVAC design, including Manual J heat load calculations and hourly solar gain curves are analyzed and used for things as straightforward as deciding which direction to park the tiny house.
In #4: BELLS & WHISTLES, see behind the design of the solar PV kit, formaldehyde-free plywood built-ins, composting toilet, off-grid plumbing challenges, and luxury items that just add that quality of life that tiny house occupants are seeking.
We really hope you'll tune in for the videos of construction- you can subscribe to our YouTube channel right now with one click!
Today Corbett talks at the Habitat X thinktank with BPI CEO Larry Zarker about his passions: helping contractors, building homes that stop sending you to the emergency room, and how to infiltrate the health insurance industry to help make all that happen. Sponsored by the 6-week Fall Fast Track distance mastermind course for home performance black belts.
To download this episode or hear others, visit BuildingPerformancePodcast.com
Tiny home performance is made even more perfect in our third presentation in this tiny house engineering series! Watch as I walk you through the design and engineering of the heating, cooling, dehumidification, bath and kitchen exhaust, fresh air ventilation, and water heating systems in the Tiny Lab.
If you stay tuned to the end, you get to hear me realize I'm a total idiot! Fun stuff!
Let's do building diagnostics! Watch me demonstrate the commissioning of a kitchen exhaust fan in a big new apartment building. Just because the label says it sucks air doesn't make it so. Proof Is Possible- ask for it. Using a Testo 417 large vane anemometer.