New Documents

BSI-007: Prioritizing Green—It's the Energy Stupid* by Joseph Lstiburek — last modified 2008/11/25

An edited version of this Insight first appeared in the ASHRAE Journal. Many “green” buildings don’t save energy. Why? They have too much glass, they are over-ventilated, they are leaky to air, they are fraught with thermal bridges and they rely on gimmicks and fads rather than physics.

BSI-006: Can Highly Glazed Building Façades Be Green? by John Straube — last modified 2008/10/22

When I see a fully glazed, floor-to-ceiling commercial or institutional building, I see an energy-consuming nightmare of a building that requires lots of heating and cooling at the perimeter just to maintain comfort. The result, on a cold winter day, is that offices exposed to the sun require cooling, while those in the shade need heat.

BSI-009: New Light In Crawlspaces by Joseph Lstiburek — last modified 2008/10/16

An edited version of this Insight first appeared in the ASHRAE Journal. Think of the good old days—the Civil War, WWI, the Great Depression, WWII—crawlspaces were uninsulated. They were ventilated and they didn’t have ground covers—and they didn’t have problems. Why?