Thoughts About High Performance Building from Guys Who Do the Building
Since the beginning of house-building, ideas about process and what the final product should be have varied widely, leading those of us who are tasked with actually building houses to understand:
Not every idea is a good idea.
If you had started working on homes for people in the 1980s as we did, you would have learned definite ideas as to what makes a house “quality”— multiple roof lines, windows everywhere, soaring ceilings, 3,500 square feet of space, much of which went unused — these were some of the starting points. While style and aesthetics definitely play a role in whether a house can be considered high quality, in 2021 our idea of quality has evolved. Any home described as high quality must provide a comfortable, healthy, highly durable and low maintenance, low-energy use experience, designed, and built, to last at least the next 50 years.
If you’ve ever been on a job site, especially in the suburbs among dozens or even hundreds of new homes built in vast housing developments, you would have met many carpenters who never once thought about the house’s next five, much less 50 years of life. The mission was more about speed than craft. Even the highest quality craftspeople of the time could not build in a way that science wasn’t there to instruct them in.
Building science
Today, building science research gives designers and carpenters a much better understanding of how to make a house work well: we now understand how to make a house truly withstand the rain and wind of the Pacific Northwest; how to efficiently keep warm air inside and cold air outside, while continuously expelling interior pollutants; how to build a house that will not need corrective surgery in a few years just to keep it from rotting. And very importantly, the best carpenters today not only know how to build correctly, we actually take the time to do it correctly.
A 3500 square-foot inefficient, drafty, expensive-to-heat house—no matter how beautiful—should never again be considered “quality”.
It takes extra time, and therefore money to build a tight house, but if the goal is efficiency and long-term cost savings, the extra time put into educating employees (and homeowners) is worth every dime. It takes extra time and money to conscientiously teach carpenters the whys and hows of high-performance building. But since those carpenters are the people, who, regardless of the difficulties of heat or cold or rain or snow, actually have to correctly tape every single water resistant barrier (WRB) seam, to completely waterproof the installation of windows and doors, to take care of every (not most) detail, it is imperative they understand how — and then want — to build correctly.
Last March, Thad had framed one of our customer’s projects, with windows and the WRB installed. With the house wrap on and properly taped, the house was basically air-sealed, though not yet insulated. He worked inside on a cold, very windy day doing some pick-up framing working comfortably in only a sweatshirt. Without insulation it was cool inside but also calm, quiet and quite comfortable.
That afternoon he went to his 1930’s-era home for an A1 Teams meeting; it’s an old structure but the windows have been updated and the walls have blown-in insulation. While sitting in his living room on his computer, listening to the drafty house and feeling chilly, the difference between the two buildings he’d been in that day was very obvious.
The new home may have still been cool with no insulation or heat yet, but it was still more comfortable than the drafty old home. Today, there is no excuse not to build with integrity.
With an educated designer and willing building crew, every home built today needs to have long-term comfort and durability as its goal. As Canadian author L.M. Montgomery wrote, "Houses are like people—some you like and some you don’t like—and once in a while there is one you love.” At A1 DesignBuild we all strive, the entire team, to build a home you will love.