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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!
Filtering by Category: Around the World
Hear from Matt Adelman of Princeton Air Conditioning about the pro workshop portion of the Proof Is Possible Tour. Come study advanced techniques and tools for home performance diagnostics with Corbett Lunsford, the guy who wrote the book on it! http://ProofisPossible.com
Hear from normal people about what the Home Performance Crash Course did to change their relationship with homeownership, and join us on the Proof Is Possible Tour at: http://ProofisPossible.com
Join Corbett and family inside the #TinyLab on its way down the road after it's clocked 4,000 miles! Fun sounds and shaking for all!
I have realized, on our race around the country for the Proof Is Possible Tour, that I was a snob about place. Being an urban person is poisonous for humility, and I have now been cured.
Driving through Western Colorado, middle Utah, and other places that are nowhere near anything has been eye-opening, but it all started in Nebraska. Minden, Nebraska, where we pulled off the highway to take a break in a hokey-sounding museum called Harold Warp's Pioneer Village. "The story of America and how it grew" was promised, and our minds were appropriately blown. No joke.
They have everything there. Our #TinyLab was parked outside, but we found the first-built tiny house on wheels inside. It's a motorhome that's really made out of wood, and is bolted down to the engine and axles. And cars! So! Many! Cars!
Cars we'd never heard of or seen before. This is not the haphazard collection of a hoarder. This is a very well organized tour through the decades, since late 1800s.
There are FOUR warehouses full of old cars. Two stories each. Three rows of cars with two aisles per floor. You have to walk faster than you'd like to just to get through it all in less than a day.
I never considered what farm equipment from the 1800's would look like, but now it's the only thing I have nightmares about.
AND Mr. Warp had a thing for heating and cooling! What more could I ask for?!? He had collected heaters, coolers, and stoves from every year, and pointed out the innovations of each!
And although it makes me cringe, our most popular video of all time on the Home Performance YouTube channel is 'How to Apply Plastic to your Windows'. It's not the most interesting video we've made (by a mile), but now I believe window plastic is built into our genes, since I found this exact same product from 1950 that we use today!
If you EVER find yourself driving through Nebraska, and have the opportunity, PLEASE do yourself a favor and spend a few hours (or days) at Harold Warp's Pioneer Village. We have decided that when the revolution/zombie apocalypse happens, we're making a beeline for this place to make sure it gets taken care of.
Building forensics guru Corbett Lunsford gets his fix for prototypes of the testing tools we all know and love in the collection of American Treasure Neil Moyer: the first duct tightness tester (or Duct Blaster) built by Gary Nelson, a handmade flow pan (or Exhaust Fan Flow Hood), and a DIY House of Pressure!
Building forensics guru Corbett Lunsford demonstrates how to test for pressure imbalances that might draw radon into your home, and how to REALLY find out how much radon there is in the air you're breathing. More info on the test tools used at: http://TruTechTools.com and http://Retrotec.com
Corbett is PUMPED to be keynoting the 2016 Thermal Imaging Conference in San Diego this September- join us and the Tiny Lab as we make it one of the most important events on the Proof Is Possible Tour!
For more info and to register for the conference visit:
http://www.thermalimagingconference.com/
Our crowdsource funding campaign is wrapped up! The final tally is:
Stay tuned for videos of the build and the Tour on our YouTube channel, our Facebook page, and at ProofIsPossible.com! Here's the map of where we'll be in 2016- hope to see you out there!
Because nothing like the Proof Is Possible Tour has ever been done before, we get a LOT of questions about it. Which we LOVE answering, so keep them coming! But we thought we'd take the bull by the horns and answer some of the HARD questions about what it is, why we're doing it, how City Sponsors work, and why YOU should participate!
FIRST CITIES ON THE TOUR MAP:
San Diego, CA (City Sponsor: United Infrared/Thermal Imaging Conference)
Atlantic City, NJ (City Sponsor: GreenLife Energy Solutions)
Chicago, IL (City Sponsor: Advanced Energy Services)
Dallas/Plano, TX (City Sponsor: Advanced Energy Solutions)
~CLICK HERE TO ADD YOURS NOW!~
OK, here's an 8-minute crash course in putting your city on the map:
A full week of workshops for homeowners, building pros, and real estate pros show the path to worry-free construction
The launch of the Proof Is Possible U.S. Tour is unusual for several reasons, the biggest being that ‘energy efficiency’ is not central to any of the workshops. Instead, what the homeowners, Realtors, mortgage lenders, appraisers, and building pros absorb is the need for quality control, pure and simple. Proof Is Possible for everyone involved: proof that you do better work than the competition, that you got what you paid for, and that a home is worth more.
The tour had a sponsored kickoff event in Tampa way back in 2014, and that got participants hands-on with state of the art tools like testing fans and infrared cameras thanks to TruTech Tools and Retrotec. While the help from exclusive sponsor Dow Building Solutions on that original event was awesome, it made the process of replicating the tour in other cities very slow. Corbett and Grace ultimately decided to streamline the tour, do it all at once in sequence, and spend a whole week at each location, instead of just two days! Find out more about the 2016 tour at http://ProofIsPossible.com.
The Building Performance Workshop team makes ‘Proof’ both educational and entertaining, showing homeowners and homebuyers that they should expect nothing less. Whereas most marketing for home performance is of a ‘macro’ nature intended for huge swaths of people in different areas, the Proof Tour takes a markedly ‘micro’ approach and simply gets everyone who needs to be involved in a local market in one room together.
“I attended the first Proof is Possible in Tampa, and it was the most informative class I have ever been to. Corbett took a very involved subject and in 2 days made me understand things about Home Performance that I hadn’t known in 5 years of testing and 30 years of contracting. It is worth every penny and a lot more to spend this time with the man who wrote the book on the subject while he breaks it down and shows you how it works,” reported Mike Bowman of Dunedin Refrigeration. Adds Cate Hammer of Building Insight, “It’s exciting to have an exuberant and nationally-respected expert like Corbett help us connect the top local contractors with the homeowners and real estate pros who’re looking for what they can deliver- proven results.”
The tour aims to also deepen the real estate community’s understanding of the value of performance. Out of 850 total MLS databases in the U.S., a surprising 185 incorporate ‘green’ features- but few Realtors understand how to use them. The National Association of Realtors found in 2012 that 87% of surveyed homebuyers believe cooling and heating costs are “important” or “very important”. High performance home certifications such as ENERGY STAR and Passive House can add a 10% premium to a home’s selling price, according to several studies surveying millions of home sales throughout the nation. Punta Gorda-based home appraiser Sandra Adomatis adds, “There’s a huge misunderstanding about the cost- a new high performance home will only cost 2-7% more than a code-built home, but then it works for you, instead of you working for it.”
The Proof Is Possible Tour is coming to a city near you, with dinner workshops for anyone who owns or plans to own a home, a breakfast workshop for real estate professionals, mortgage brokers, and appraisers, all free of charge thanks to sponsorship. Additionally there’s a full day of training ($200) for building professionals, who’ll be equipped to turn around and prove they did the job right the first time, and find the mistakes competitors have made. And on Day Two a Duct and Envelope Tightness certification course is be held for a limited number of participants.
For a list of upcoming cities, information and registration visit: http://ProofIsPossible.com
Dear Corbett-
I am not a contractor, but a residential homeowner that has become increasingly interested in owning (and taking a part in creating) a high performance building. After going through several series of podcasts, I ran across yours, and immediately loved it because you went into greater detail about the things that I want to learn about; so I want to thank you for the podcast.
Onto my situation.... I am looking to buy an older (1940's) home that has no hvac, next to no insulation, and needs a good deal of work; but I believe it has the best potential for making a high performance home.... a blank canvas.
What I am having trouble with is finding the local rock stars that can really help me make my house as efficient and comfortable as possible with my given budget. Do you know of any really good people in the Dallas area that could get me on the right track? Thanks again for putting out all the info!
~Derek R.
Thanks for reaching out, Derek! I'm always happy to help, and I think the home you're considering is a GREAT OPPORTUNITY. A blank canvas is much easier to paint on, and when a house is fully 'finished' and has been renovated, it just means you'll have to dig harder and deeper to find and fix the issues that are lurking under the surface.
I'll hook you up privately with a few of my own black belts who are part of Fall Fast Track, but I also want you to know that when we take this show on the road next year for the Proof Is Possible Tour, we'll be creating a directory of pros who pledge to deliver guaranteed results across the U.S.! Stay tuned here for further developments on that front, and keep in touch about your high performance home renovation!
Looking Forward,
Corbett
Hello Corbett,
A need to run a Blower Door test at a 3 house complex here in Greece. The houses are in the row, this means that normally I should have three Blower door devices, in order to measure the house in the middle. But I have only one Blower Door!
Additionally, I will need to hand over a written document (report), in order to certify the construction to the Passive House Institute. Do you have any suggestions?
Best and thanks in advance,
Stefanos
Hey Stefanos-
Great question! You do not, in fact, need multiple blower doors, because you actually want to include the unit-to-unit air leakage. The measurement of all uncontrolled air leakage to outdoors and to other townhouses is a valuable one, and it should be the goal especially when building to Passive House (or PassivHaus) standards. Watch this video for a visual explanation: