BUILDTank / buildCAST

Lisa Morey is a professional engineer and architectural designer who starting building with adobe bricks while living and working in New Zealand in the early 2000’s. While there she worked with a design/build firm that constructed nearly 50 earth block homes that was the catalyst for her company Colorado Earth.  Lisa is now a champion for earth block construction, not only how to make the earthen block and build the house, but also to understand how the science of thermal mass works. Lisa continually demonstrates the efficiency, resiliency, and carbon neutrality that can be gainusing earthen blocks and was recently recognized as a woman making contributions to reduce carbon emissions within the building sector.

How did Sam Myers become the building scientist at Retrotec? Find out in this episode of the BUILDTank / buildCAST. Like most of us, the industry found Sam and a passion for building science blossomed. Unlike most of us Sam has created and grown his position in the industry on the back of his passion for finding unique ways of educating everyone that he comes in contact with. During the COVID most of the industry’s conferences and tradeshows moved to online platforms. To keep providing the industry with quality educational material, Sam built a virtual training lab athis home where he has taught and trained contractors and consultants all over the world. I enjoyed my conversation with Sam geeking out on building science and diagnostic testing and I think you will as well.

Thanks for listening to the buildCAST. In this episode we hear from Steve Baden, the founding Executive director of the Residential Energy Services Network or RESNET. RESNET is the governing body of the HERS home energy rating industry which was established in 1995 by the National Association of State Energy Officials, Energy Rated Homes of America, and the National Mortgage Industry Association to develop a national market for home energy rating systems and energy-efficient mortgages.  I was in the first energy Rater training and became the 32nd certified rater in Colorado in 1995.  Soon after I met Steve at the first RESNET conference held at the Florida Solar Energy Center when I was on the board of directors of Energy Rated Homes of Colorado.

Even before Jimmy Carter’s infamous, wear a sweater speech from the oval office Steve’s path to energy efficiency came though politics. He found himself in Alaska at the state energy office leading an initiative called “Warming Homes for Alaskans” which received the 1993 national award for the most outstanding state housing program, and which set the stage for a national home energy rating program that RESNET grew out of.

Steve has worked in the residential energy efficiency field for 30 years, including eighteen years with home energy ratings and energy mortgages on both the state and national levels, and ten years administering the Alaska State Energy Office. Steve is the founding executive director of RESNET and has just announced that he will be retiring on December 31st, 2025.  I have known Steve from the beginning of the founding of RESNET and my time as a board member of Energy Rated Homes of Colorado and was so happy to have the opportunity to recap his career on the buildCAST before his last day. 

Thanks for all you have done for the Industry Steve.

Thank you to Nicole Tysvaer Founder and CEO of Symbi Homes for being on the BUILDCast. Symbi Homes is a sustainable construction firm reinventing home building with an emphasis on wellness, energy-efficiency and technology. Symbi short for Symbiosis immediately got my thinking about building science, systems thinking, and the synergistic interactions that take place in construction of high performance homes. Symbi Homes has decided to follow the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program specifications to guide their path to high performance building. Uniquely they have also chosen to apply these high-performance specifications to a Queen Ann Victorian complex form as well as in their current remodel and addition current project. To me this beautifully demonstrates that homes of all shapes and sizes can pursue high performance building when project goals are clearly defined from the start.

We dove quickly into the Water Efficiency Rating Sore or WERS system with Mike Collignon Executive Director & Co Founder of the Green Builder Coalition.  So quickly in fact that we did not have time to talk much about the other cool things the coalition is doing, so definitely check out their website in the show notes to find out how they are a uniting voice for sustainable home building especially for the custom builder community

In short, WERS is a performance-based water efficiency program for both new and existing residential properties. This approach to water efficiency preserves design freedom and product choice flexibility. Third-party analysis and data collection is utilized to generate both a score and predict water usage for single-family and multifamily properties. Especially here in the west and specifically in the southwest, more and more water utilities and jurisdictions are looking for ways to better manage water in the build environment so that builders can continue to meet our housing demand.

Vincent Deorio CEO, Mike Davidson Sales and Marketing, and Ben Walker Sr Architectural Manager at RedT homes, share what it’s taking to grow their company into a regional production builder that is offering LEED platinum homes. Their unique business model incorporates land acquisition, entitlement and design, architecture, and construction along with real estate-focused marketing and sales. Their focus on integrated design and thoughtful execution is helping them reimagine what sustainable development, construction, and sales means in Colorado.

Starting in tech, moving into solar, Stephen Kane found his home at SPAN where he is helping builders integrate smart electric load management to lower the cost of electrifying homes while giving homeowner’s a better user experience.  Our conversation touched on both new construction and existing homes as the move toward electrification is touching both worlds.  I have to say that I found our existing home conversation particularly interesting since I am on a glid path to electrification of my own home. That being said, I see this technology helping manage not only operational cost, but also the cost of construction. We are now not beholden to installing huge capacity panels when our real life loads never, or rarely, match the code calculated electrical loads.

Jacob Deva Racusin, based in Vermont, is the Co-Founder and Director of Building Science and Sustainability with New Frameworks. He is also the lead researcher and BEAM Tool Co-Developer with Builders for Climate Action.  As a builder, consultant, researcher, designer, and educator, Jacob has merged his passions for ecological stewardship, relationship to place, and social justice with building science, climate action, and sustainable design and building.

Rob Howard began his construction career with Habitat for Humanity where he built ENERGY STAR homes through Advanced Energy’s System Vision program. When he became director of construction at Habitat he built the first Net-Zero Energy Home in North Carolina in partnership with the Appalachian Energy Center in 2005. He now only builds DOE Zero Energy Ready Homes and was a 2024 Housing Innovations award recipient.

Uniquely and parallel to Rob’s building career is his career as an academic.  Rob holds a bachelor’s degree and a renewable energy technologies diploma from North Carolina State University and a master’s degree in sustainable technology and building science from Appalachian State University where he now serves as a full-time faculty member.

Rob’s practical and academic background made our conversation particularly fun as he was able to interweave his passion for building science into mainstream applications which, to me, helps better explain why everyone in the construction industry should embrace applied building science in the proustite of our modern everyday home.

Happy New Year!

I begin 2025 with a conversation I had with Randy Williams. Randy is well known for his Northern Pro Build blog that concentrates on applied building science, energy efficiency, and cold climate construction. He followed his brother into the building industry and quickly made a name for himself once he caught the building science bug. He was introduced to building science when he became an energy auditor during the economic downturn of 2009. He now describes himself as a building science nerd and supports himself by applying it as a contractor, energy auditor, and regular contributor to Fine Homebuilding, Journal of Light Construction, and Green Building Advisor.

For me, it was really fun to have this conversation with Randy, building science nerd to nerd. Our time together flew by because we were just talking about our shared passion.

Thanks much for your continued support and likes.

Robby got selected to be on the 2027 IECC consensus committee to develop the new energy code and his mind started turning, about if he really wanted to go through this for the fifth time. To quite his mind he starting talking. So here is his riff on the 2027 IECC.

Josh Butzbaugh, Senior Project Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, has been focusing his research on Heat Pump Water Heaters (HPWH). His research has helped to demonstrate the impact HPWH’s can have on efficiency, carbon reduction, and peak demand response. The problem with implementing the technology is that replacement happens at a point of failure and consumers want a new water heater installed immediately, generally within 48 hours. Now that the inflation reduction act funding is offering a 10-year incentive to consumers and industry to install HPWHs the DOE has put forward a tool designed specifically to help plumbing contractors quickly assess the opportunity for successful installations.

Josh shares his research and knowledge and guides us through the new heat pump water heater installation tool on the Building America Solution Center. Thanks, Josh, for speaking with me and helping us understand more about HPW Heating as well as some of the obstacles to deploying newer technologies.

Robert Lewis is the Radon Program Manager at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. He wrote a paper and presented on the History of Radon from 1470 to 1984 which I found to be an interesting way to approach the subject of Radon in our homes. Early in my career I combined home inspection with energy ratings and offered a radon measurement service. At the time I had to get an EPA radon certification and ever since I have been puzzled by how little builders think about radon and the installation of a simple passive radon mitigation system. As Robert says and alludes to in our conversation, “radon mitigation systems in new construction are a cost-effective insurance policy to protect against lung cancer since you have no idea of the potential of the problem until the house has been occupied.

My conversation with Robert not only discusses history, but also what radon is, how it migrates into our homes, as well as mitigation systems. I don’t think we can talk about high performance homes, without also including Radon in the conversation.

Before dedicating his career to integrating solar energy into the new construction market Dennis Helblig worked for a variety of builders including Colorado’s favorite regional production high performance builder Thrive Homebuilders. Seeing the efficiency of the housing stock continue to improve, Dennis moved on from building and worked for industry leading solar companies like SolarCity, Sun Street, Sunnova, and now Colorado Based Pro Bid Energy to integrate solar into new home construction.

Either through leasing agreements or incorporating the cost within the mortgage, adding solar as a standard feature in new homes, rather than an option has proven to be the most cost-effective way to integrate the technology into homes. Dennis discusses all things Solar and new home construction in this conversation which is a pivotal aspect of our energy transition.

Scott Doyle is the managing director of quality assurance for the Residential Energy Services Network, or RESNET. RESNET governs the home energy rating system or the HERS® Energy Rating Index. Scott became a HERS® Rater in 2003 and since being certified has inspected and tested the energy performance of thousands of homes across a variety of construction types and climate zones.

In 2007 he became a RESNET certified Quality Assurance Designee and Trainer and oversaw quality assurance activities for EnergyLogic and five other RESNET HERS® Rating Providers. This involved quality assurance oversight of nearly 10,000 homes annually. 

Scott’s next move was becoming the quality assurance manager at RESNET itself and he has been one of the guiding influences in protecting the RESNET brand and the home energy rating industry in general. As you will hear, I was one of Scott’s trainers and employers which made this conversation even more enjoyable as it has been supper fun to watch Scott’s carrier evolve over the years.

Early on in my carrier when working for a regional production builder, the president and owner suggested that indoor air quality was that path forward to communicate the benefits of applied building science, resilient, and energy efficient construction. I think he was right, but it still has taken living through covid to get the consumer to understand its importance to health in our homes.  Version 2 of the Indoor airPLUS program, which has just been released, will help us better understand the complexities of indoor air quality while pointing to relatively simple things we can do to ensure we build for better air quality.  It’s more than ventilation and filtration, it’s the fundamentals of applied building science and systems thinking, packaged in such a way that builders can truly market the benefits.

Nick Hurst is a renaissance man who, as you will hear, has been able to incorporate his love of music with his work in applied building science. He comes from the construction industry but has changed his focus from being a contractor and educator to being the EPA’s program manager for the Indoor airPLUS program. After learning more about Nick’s path to the EPA we hunker down and work our way through this newly released program.  I must note up front that although we accurately reflect the direction of version 2 of the IAP the discussion reflects the opinions of Nick and myself and not necessarily those of the EPA.

Stephen Davis is the product manager and director of building science for Quadrant Performance Materials. Quadrant is a spray foam insulation manufacturer that produces the EnvironSeal line of spray foam. Stephen has been working in the industry for the past 25 years and has always offered himself as a resource for all questions regarding spray foam, from building science to manufacturing and installation. I decided to take him up on his offer and it was wonderful to catch up, learn more about him, and to ask more questions about spray foam insulations in general. 

I was able to speak with Dave Roberts just before he retired from the National Renewable Energy Lab after a full carrier leading a group of talented engineers and scientists who have been leveraging computer modeling and simulation to address pressing residential building efficiency, electrification, and carbon related issues in our country.

I first met Dave when he worked in software development with REMRate which at the time was the most widely used energy modeling software developed to create the RESNET HERS Energy Rating Index. He has been heavily involved with RESENT over the years as a member of the ANSI standards development committee and chair of the software calculations subcommittee.  We have become friends, and I wanted to be sure to speak with him on the buildCAST before his retirement to be able to better understand his carrier and catalog is contribution to our industry. 

Unfortunately, my side of the conversation did not record well and sounds a bit rough, but luckily for you Dave did most of the talking and he is well worth listening to. What he has to say puts a lot of our applied building science and other work with residential buildings into better context and he leaves a research question on the table for us to aspire to answer, hopefully in the near future.

Thanks, Dave, for all you have done, and I truly hope you have a wonderful and fruitful next stage of life.  All the best.

Eric Werling spent 30 years in public service. First in the Navy, then as a consultant supporting EPA’s infant EnergyStar program, before helping to create and manage the EPA Indoor airPLUS program, and finally as the DOE Building America program manager. Those 30 years were well spent helping innovation in the residential construction arena grow, flourish and come to market. Eric lived and contributed to the history and introduction of applied building science and energy efficient construction into mainstream construction. 

We get an overview of that history through his carrier and then learn about the important work Eric is aiming to accomplish with his newly minted consulting firm.  Home Innovation Strategies, which provides expert consulting services to innovators in or adjacent to the residential building markets to help successfully leverage government & national lab resources, facilitate productive connections, and make smart business decisions regarding home performance technologies and applications.

 I have known Eric throughout my carrier as it also shadowed the growth and direction of Building America, EnergyStar, Indoor airPLUS, and the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home programs so it was a real pleasure to learn more of the inside story and history of these programs that have been so impactful in the building industry.

Peter Yost is the principle of Building Wright, an applied building science consulting firm based in New Hampshire. Peter is the person you turn to if you want to truly understand how buildings work and is one of those people you keep track of all your carrier. To be honest I was a bit nervous about this conversation, but quickly learned that Peter is not only an expert in the field of applied building science, but humble and human as well. Although coming from a building background, Peter appears to have stumbled into a concentration in applied building science in much the same way that I have, which may be part of the reason I respect him so much and view him as a mentor from afar. Pasion for the field, continued curiosity, and the ability to say “I don’t know but I can and will find out” are two of the traits I most admire in Peter’s professionalism and hope that I can emulate in my professional interactions. Thanks for a wonderful conversation, Peter, one that I know you, the listener of the buildCAST, will enjoy listening as well.

Eric Kaiser is the Industry Engagement Manager for TruTech Tools, which means that he is the conduit between the HVAC and home performance testing and commissioning industry keeping the pulse of their needs. As a former HVAC contractor Eric has learned the importance of commissioning and testing and its role in informing technicians about the performance of the products they are installing. Once again it goes back to is it there and does it work as it was installed. Eric has also become an educator and is committed to helping his clients understand building science, HVAC sizing, and performance-based data analysis. It was fun to learn the circuitous route Eric took to get to where he is today and to see the great work, he is doing to ensure that beyond the state-of-the-art tools TruTech is bringing to the industry, his clients know how, when, and where to use them to bring data to performance.

Ben Bogie is a Principal at Building Performance Cooperative, an employe owned building company specializing in building high performance homes based out of Ridgefield Connecticut.  As you will hear, he is a third-generation high performance builder who has incorporated what his father and grandfather were doing into our modern construction practices. Ben remains curious about green high-performance buildings, while delving deep into the building science that surrounds it. In addition, he is passionate, yet not a high-performance zealot, who believes there is only one way to build. Rational thought, healthy skepticism, and sound confidence in his professionalism allows Ben to be one of the leaders that is bringing applied building science to mainstream construction.

Joe Medosch is the Director of training and all things knowledge-based for Measure Quick, an HVAC commissioning tool that helps guide HVAC technicians to ensure the system they install, and work, on perform. In conjunction with a properly sized and designed system, Measure Quick uses measurements of air flow, refrigerant charge, temperatures, and static pressure to leverage data and therefore performance of installed systems. Growing from visionaries in the field like John Proctor’s CheckMe system, Jim Bergman, who created Measure Quick, developed a modern-day app to streamline the process of commissioning HVAC equipment installations.

The disappointing fact is that the majority of installed residential HVAC systems do not get commissioned, which brings me back to Joe Medosch, who is a fanatic about measurement, data, tools, and the perfect person to hold the knowledgebase for Measure Quick and to use that knowledgebase to train technicians and others who care about performance and about the simple power of doing things right.

Sara Guterman is the CEO Green Builder Media, an avid outdoors person, and a leader of change and innovation in our construction industry.  Many have moved on from the term, “green building”. Sara has embraced it, is conscious of the potential for green washing, and has built a network of builders, consumers, suppliers and trades people that are reframing green building to include the totality of the construction industry.  I am so focused on house performance, “is it there and does it work”, So it was refreshing to be taken to a 10,000-foot level to learn more about ESG, carbon, and data driven Analytics that is helping to move our industry forward.

Asa Foss is the program manager for the ENERGY STAR Nextgen Certified Homes program, which is the first federal new construction certification program focused on operational decarbonization.

The program requires that the base home be labeled under EnergyStar for new homes, and then install a climate specific heat pump for heating and cooling, a hot water heating heat pump, an electric or induction cook top, and finally electric vehicle ready infrastructure.

Asa explains these programs and requirements and their new link to the Builder 45 L tax credit. He was a wealth of information and clearly demonstrates how working within a building program can benefit builders and homeowners and help move the construction industry as a whole forward to more sustainable and resilient homes.

Alison Bailes has a PhD in Physics and tried academic life but found his true passion in building science while building his own house.  He has moved on and is now fully renovating his current house kind of in the same way that he moved on from home energy ratings, where I first met him, to concentrating on HVAC design. From the broad to the specific one might say. Applying building science through HVAC design led to this discussion on the buildCAST because I had the pleasure of hearing Allison speak at the Colorado Chapter of the ICC’s code education institute on all things heat pumps. We concentrated our discussion on heat pumps, and I know you will enjoy hearing it, but don’t forget that Allison also just published the newest addition to our collective building science library. A House Needs to Breathe...Or Does It?  An Introduction to Building Science.

Emily Mottram often describes herself as a “little Nerdy” and as an architect that expresses itself in a focus on people and planet, through high performance design of residential buildings. Emily helped to define high performance construction, as one of the authors of the “Pretty Good House” book which states that the goal is a well thought-out, carefully crafted home, designed to maximize performance and comfort within a budget. Performance incorporates metrics like R-values and ACH50 numbers but is more about setting and achieving a goal for the performance of the house which in turn, is more about how it feels: comfort, safety, livability, beauty, healthy, efficient, and the team, science of building, and economics that are brought together to achieve the goal.

Dr. Ian Giammanco is the Managing Director for Standards & Data Analytics and a Lead Research Meteorologist at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety Center. He has been instrumental in the creation of IBHS’s Thunderstorm Ready Home program which was created in the wake of severe weather events. In 2023 alone 20 states were impacted by 19 severe convective storm events, each causing over $1 billion in damage.

Building from the Fortified Homes, Fortified, Roof, and Wildfire Prepared homes programs the voluntary Thunderstorm Ready Home program is another example of the results of applied research and inspection that IBHS is doing to impacting the built environment in positive ways.

Devon Tilly is a visionary who sought me out to partner on a deep dive series on his Art of Construction podcast. He speaks often about platforms and master facilitators, and it took me quite some time to better understand that he is a big thinker whose objective is to bring the construction community together. Platforms can be companies, networking groups, like BS and Beer Metro Denver that I started, or other such organizations that are the catalyst that bring people together to effect change and move an industry forward. Master facilitators are those individuals that help lead the way to creating dynamic synergistic outcomes when people are brought together around a common interest.

There are four parts to this deep dive series, but only edited versions of episodes 3 and 4 are included here, largely Because episode 1 is an interview of me and episode 2 is about a larger commercial efficiency program.  Episodes 3 and 4 give us a better understanding of Devon and his goal of building a master facilitator community as well as discussing some interesting building science around windows and heat pumps.  

Links to Full unedited versions of each podcast can be found in the show notes

Loosely Devon’s Art of Construction deep dive series revolved around BS and Beer Metro Denver. But in reality, BS and Beer is only a platform that brings together lifelong learners who turn out to be the master facilitators affecting change in the construction industry.  I see now the journey that Devon took me on as cohost on these podcast and am thankful that I had the opportunity to take it with him.

I reached out to Dr. Robert "Tino" Sonora, clinical professor of finance and adjunct professor of economics at the University of Montana and one of my oldest friends, because I had just listened to a “Planet Critical” podcast that posed the question, in countries that print their own currency, can we make the electrification transition faster. The premise of this question uses Modern Monetary Theory, which I cannot claim to understand, but in my simplistic mind I learned that we may want to question the politic argument that our federal government must balance the budget and that our $34 trillion dollar debt is a problem.  

The simplistic analogy that equates the federal economic budget to a family’s budget and debt is bogus.  Having a balanced family budget and little debt is important but on a nation state scale, and especially in a country that prints its own currency, it is not crucial. Look at the fact that the United States has carried a debt since 1775 in order to pay for the American Revolution. So this lesson in economics may just create more questions than it answers but I am so thankful to Tino for expanding our understanding of one aspect of the transition from a fossil fuel based economy to a renewable based economy.

There is no doubt that Enrico Bonilauri is a passionate advocate for performance based Passive House construction. He has recently researched and publishing a white paper report comparing twelve building standards used in the United States which concludes that current building codes and building programs fail to deliver resilient and healthy buildings for their occupants.

His conclusions are the result of modeling 50 homes to determine the minimum compliance requirements in each of the twelve building standards using the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) software.

Enrico boils his thoughts down to why Passive House performance-based construction should be widely adopted by stating in his paper that, “… one of the greatest challenges the American construction industry faces is to start setting specific goals to how a building performs. That is, instead of setting prescriptive requirements for individual building components.”

We see all the time that builders just want to be told what to do prescriptively, if instead, we concentrated on what we must do to perform would we be in a better place?  I don’t know but we will figure it out together through my conversation with Enrico Bonilauri of Emu Passive.

I first met Kohta early in my carrier after I got laid off from a builder, started my own company, and then that same builder became my client.  When I worked for them, we built their first environmental research house, and then the Building America program began consulting on their second. BSC was the consultant assigned to the project and I was tasked to assist Kohta in all things diagnostic on this house before it opened to the public.

As you will hear, serendipity fell into Kohta’s lap, as he started a lifelong mentorship with Joe Lstiburek and Betsy Pettit, the founders of Building Science Corporation.  Over time Kohta has become one of the great Building Scientists that we look up to and now the mentee is mine and many others mentor.

I believe that Kohta is wicked smart, but he is also one of the most humble and gracious people I have met, and that is what I appreciate most about him. 

Kohta thank you for all you do for the construction industry.

Paul Raymer comes from a long line of inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. He’s added writing to the mix, and has published 4 novels, three of which follow his protagonist, Jon Megquire’s, trials with buildings and murder, and three handbooks, including the residential ventilation handbook, that give one the information needed to select and install appropriate ventilation systems for any home.

Paul’s not an engineer, but he has the mind of one. Taking a correspondence course in consumer electronics launched his entrepreneurial and inventing carrier. He’s started several companies and invented and developed a wide array of products in a number of different industries. Around the time of the oil embargo in the late 1970s, Paul was swept into the magic of building science when he moved into an old inn on Cape Cod that needed a lot of work and a lot of energy to keep warm.  He has become an expert in ventilation and is currently working with the consulting firm ICF and the EPA’s Indoor airPLUS program.

I think writing is Paul’s real passion, however, so I put a link in the show notes to all his books. He says that “Writing is the transfer of information and ideas.  It is like writing music or painting, photography, or any other art.  The right words can create sounds or smells or images or people.  It weaves together the magic of imagination in other human minds.

Martin Holladay is a self-made building scientist who followed a passion that led to a career in investigating how to build comfortable, efficient, and resilient buildings and then writing about it. First in JLC, then in Energy Design Update, and finally for Green Building Advisor. All publications Martin’s either started or helped to bring to prominence. He learned quickly that if he had a question about a building topic that many others did as well. What sets him apart, however, is that he can research, synthesize, and then write about what could be a dry topic, in a compelling way that makes you want more. I totally enjoyed the breath of my conversation with Martin, and I think you will as well.

Pat Heulman says he is a retired professor from the University of Minnesota, but in reality, in retirement, he has stayed on as an adjunct professor.  Lucky for the University students and others in the industry, like me and you, he is still sharing his vast knowledge. He teaches residential energy and building systems, as well as advanced building science courses. He is a cofounder of the Cold Climate Housing Program and has been an active building science researcher and has participated in many DOE Building America funded research projects.

I have met Pat several times over the years, followed his research, and was very excited to have the opportunity to speak with him on the buildCAST.  He has so much to share that we are already planning on a second conversation, so if you have a topic that you think I should cover with Pat please let me know and I will try to bring it up in our future conversation.

Ken Levenson is the Executive Director of the Passive House Network. He graduated from Pratt Institute in Architecture and practiced architecture for 20 years in New York City where he discovered Passive House and became a Certified Passive House Designer. He was a founding board member of New York Passive House, the National Passive House Alliance, and the Passive House Network, all nonprofits dedicated to promoting Passive House principles through education. After briefly stepping away from the Passive House Network Ken returned to PHN as its first Executive Director, focused on Passive House education and building capacity to move passive house buildings forward in the US. 

As you will hear, he was also a co-founder of 475 High Performance Building Supply, a mission driven building material supply house that provides passive house building knowledge and essential building materials and components to the community. 

I think passion and mission driven are the two phrases that best describe Ken’s career, so much so, that he consciously got arrested to put action behind his values. You’ll hear more about that as well, so since I know you are going to enjoy it, let’s get started.

Lisa White joined PHIUS after earning a degree in Environmental Sustainability with a minor in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Master’s in Energy Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

With PHIUS Lisa has worked as a PHIUS trainer, as the Certification Manager, and has been a longtime member of PHIUS’ technical committee that developed the PHIUS+ 2015 Climate-Specific Passive Building standard, followed by the 2018 and 2021 updates.  In addition to standards development and research, Lisa has worked directly with the Fraunhofer Institute of Building Physics to develop and implement new key features into the WUFI Passive energy modeling software that PHIUS uses for passive building certification.

I have been seeing Lisa speak at different conferences and was grateful when she accepted an invitation to have a recorded conversation. Especially when I found out that in 2019, she became the Associate Director and a technical lead for PHIUS, which really makes her the perfect person to speak with, about all things PHUIS related.

Ross Trethewey thinks Zero to 360 and is the founder of TE2 Engineering. TE2 is a full-service engineering design and consultation firm that specializes in high performance HVAC design, renewable energy design and MEP design. Thanks to Travis Brungart and Joe Cook at Catalyst Construction, I met Ross at the BS and Beer Building Science symposium held in September in Denver. Ross can explain mechanical engineering in terms that anyone can understand, and we had a wonderful conversation about HVAC design, low load homes, and his ongoing contributions as the third generation of Trethewey’s on PPS’s This Old House.