In this new episode, our hosts Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry discuss the intricate relationship between energy efficiency and durability in home construction. They explore how increasing energy efficiency through insulation and air sealing can lead to potential moisture issues and reduced durability if not appropriately managed. The conversation emphasizes the importance of understanding house systems and the need for a holistic approach to building performance, especially in changing climate conditions and homeowner expectations.
Check this link for IEB Unite: https://events.iebcoaching.com/IEBUnite2025
Takeaways
Energy efficiency can compromise durability if not managed properly.
Increased insulation can lead to moisture retention issues.
Understanding heat and moisture movement is crucial in building science.
Houses are complex systems that require a holistic view.
Contractors need education on the impacts of energy efficiency improvements.
Air leakage can lead to condensation problems in energy-efficient homes.
High-efficiency furnaces require additional ventilation strategies.
Older homes, while inefficient, often had better durability due to air movement.
Moisture control is essential for maintaining building integrity.
Future home designs must consider both energy efficiency and durability.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome and Weather Check
06:46 Energy Efficiency vs. Durability
12:11 The Impact of Insulation on House Performance
25:10 Understanding House Systems and Moisture Control
30:01 Looking Ahead: Future Discussions on Home Efficiency
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:01.516)
Welcome back to the show. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast. I am here with my co-host Tessa Murray. As always, Tessa, how is sunny Florida?
Tessa Murry (00:13.026)
Hey Ruben, yes I am broadcasting from Florida today. I can’t complain. It is a sunny 78 degree day, a nice breeze and it’s March. Windows are open. Yeah, windows open. It’s pretty wonderful. So sorry, sorry to brag. Yeah, how about Minnesota? What’s going on up there?
Reuben Saltzman (00:25.186)
You got your windows open.
Reuben Saltzman (00:30.092)
That sounds pretty amazing. yeah.
Yeah, let’s talk about something else. No, just kidding. It’s it’s a beautiful sunny day and It’s in the mid 30s right now. We’re back to kind of winter. Although you know what today the day we’re recording I think today is officially the first day of spring doesn’t The fernal equinox and what does that mean? It means we have the exact same amount of daylight and night, right? Okay
Tessa Murry (00:47.582)
That’s… yep. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (00:55.398)
It’s the vernal equinox today! Yeah!
Equal day and night. think it yeah, I think it means like the planet is completely like vertical. It’s perpendicular to the Sun It’s not tilting forward or backwards. So we all have equal day and night. I think
Reuben Saltzman (01:13.472)
Okay. Okay. All right. Good. Good. Well, that’s all I got to say about the weather here. It’s gonna keep getting warmer. We’re going in the right direction.
Tessa Murry (01:24.034)
We’re headed in the right direction. Hold on, because you knew that there was going to be another winter after those 70 degree days that you had.
Reuben Saltzman (01:31.406)
Of course, of course, but I’ve already, I’ve already got in a fair bit of disc golfing this year. And normally I don’t get to throwing until April, like April, if I’m lucky. So I count myself very lucky this year. Yeah. This is a, yeah. Yep. I’m not complaining. It’s good.
Tessa Murry (01:39.598)
That’s impressive.
Tessa Murry (01:47.424)
Really? Wow. Yeah, thank you Global Warming. Okay, sorry. Sorry! Sorry.
Reuben Saltzman (01:57.87)
Well, talking about global warming and things people try to do to stop it. I’m doing my best at a transition. Wait a minute, Tess, hold on. Shout out to our show sponsors. IEB, Inspector, yeah. Inspector Empire Builder. Fantastic organization. I talk about them every week. We’ve got the IEB Unite coming up.
Tessa Murry (02:05.121)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (02:11.318)
there we go. Yes, almost forgot.
Reuben Saltzman (02:26.99)
In May, this is the big conference that IEB has every year. It’s gonna be in San Antonio, Texas It’s at the very end of May. It’s gonna be May 28th through the 30th Tons of education tons of networking. It’s it’s just a fantastic group of people. We start the days Doing group workouts for everybody who is into that kind of thing. I’m just looking at this photo from a few years ago. There is a
Tessa Murry (02:29.39)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (02:46.35)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (02:50.616)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (02:56.322)
gang of us. I mean, there’s got to be probably 50 people in this group that did the morning workout. We all got up before breakfast, went out and did a big exercise. If I remember right, we did the Murph, a modified version of the Murph, which is where you run a mile and you do 100 pull ups. think we did sit ups instead because we didn’t have pull up bars. You do 200 push ups and 300 air squats and then you run a mile.
Tessa Murry (02:58.101)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (03:08.994)
What’s the Murph?
Reuben Saltzman (03:25.714)
And we didn’t. It was awesome, and I don’t think we did the full thing, but. It’s pretty perfect.
Tessa Murry (03:26.38)
Wow, sounds like a great morning. I was going say, your perfect morning. Waking up at 5 and doing an intense workout, yes.
Reuben Saltzman (03:38.638)
But the thing is, I’m looking at a group, there’s like 50 of us here. I mean, this is a driven, motivated group of people. And I don’t think you get that at lot of conferences.
Tessa Murry (03:42.454)
That’s impressive. Yes. Yes. Yes. Definitely. I just don’t like the physical. I just I’ve never been a fan of the physical pain.
Reuben Saltzman (03:51.796)
I know what you mean. I know what you mean. It’s an acquired taste.
Tessa Murry (03:55.79)
It is, it is. You know what, since I’ve been in Florida, I have been doing a lot more kayaking recently with a little bit more of the free time. And I would much rather be, you know, pedaling my butt off to get away from a gator for my cardio than doing that.
Reuben Saltzman (04:02.42)
really?
Reuben Saltzman (04:13.496)
Where are you kayaking?
Tessa Murry (04:16.042)
there’s so many good places here. Okay, so recently, we were just at a county park that is south of Tampa along the Bay E.G. Simmons Park. Before that, though, a beautiful place called King’s Landing. The water is like there’s different parts to it, but there’s crystal clear water. You can see the bottom. It’s this little kind of freshwater stream, I think, although there can be alligators in it. Anyways, absolutely beautiful.
Um, that was fun. And then the Alifaya river is another location we’ve been to. And so it’s just, there’s so many, there’s so many good spots to kayak. You just have to be careful. We went two days ago and, uh, we kind of worked our way in this little inlet. Sorry, I’m going down a rabbit hole. Short story. This little inlet and all of sudden, I have been waiting to see an alligator live in person since I’ve been here. Have not at all. And
Reuben Saltzman (04:49.473)
You’ve been all over.
Reuben Saltzman (05:00.728)
Whatever. This is our podcast test.
Reuben Saltzman (05:10.776)
They’re everywhere, aren’t they?
Tessa Murry (05:12.366)
Apparently they are but I keep missing them and and and we were paddling and all of sudden there was a splash like right in front of our boat and I missed it but Andrew said that was an alligator I was like, oh my gosh, it was a baby one that was like three feet long I missed it and then there happened to be splashes off to my left like a couple feet away and Flying out of the mangroves were snakes. I like couple snakes
Reuben Saltzman (05:28.736)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (05:40.21)
like fell out too just right next to the boat i was like my gosh all right i’d rather have snakes falling next to me than spiders though so i was okay with that but yeah
Reuben Saltzman (05:41.742)
Cool.
Reuben Saltzman (05:50.21)
Yeah, that’s a tough one. I don’t know what I’d prefer.
Tessa Murry (05:53.678)
No, if it’s in the boat, that’s a different story, but you Yeah, yeah, so there’s a lot of great like outdoor adventure Opportunities here and I thought I would prefer that to be my exercise I hate running I hate you know the marathon stuff that I admire people that can do that, but I have never been one for for pain so
Reuben Saltzman (05:54.722)
Yeah. yeah. No, thanks.
Reuben Saltzman (06:17.996)
Yeah, I’m with you. The running is not my jam. It’s just something you had to do before and after. All right. I’ll do it, but I’m going to be slow. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (06:22.134)
It’s okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure you’re a lot faster than I am. Anyways, I run for like two minutes. I’m like, I’m Yeah. Okay, sorry. That was a tangent. Anyways, I’m excited to get into what we what the topic of the day is today. Ruben, do you want to introduce it? We teased it last time.
Reuben Saltzman (06:46.798)
All right, all right. I teased it and here’s how I’ll present it. Tessa, the more energy efficient you make a house, the less durable that house will be, all things being equal. Change my mind. There’s your challenge.
Tessa Murry (06:52.322)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (07:05.23)
God. That is a tough challenge. Well, first of all, I mean, that could be a very polarizing statement. And this is a tricky one. This is a tricky one because, you know, it makes you not want to build an energy efficient house because you’re like, why would I do that? Why would I take those risks or create those problems? that is the predicament we’re in. Like, if you want to have a more energy efficient house that takes less money to heat and cool, is more environmentally friendly.
Reuben Saltzman (07:13.104)
yeah.
Tessa Murry (07:35.474)
was drawn, you know, the utilities and the systems and everything, you need it to be energy efficient. But as soon as you start adding insulation and making it more airtight, you reduce the amount of transfer of energy through the building envelope. And you don’t have the same kind of, at least in a cold climate, you know, you don’t have the heat moving through the wall like you used to and the airflow moving through the wall.
Reuben Saltzman (08:03.011)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (08:03.162)
And you know in a hot humid climate, know, you don’t have the same transfer of heat. So it’s it can In some situations some climates by making it more airtight. It does it makes the house less durable Less likely to dry out. Yeah You’ve got your hand raised
Reuben Saltzman (08:22.176)
Okay, you said in some climates, are there any climates where this doesn’t apply? I’m pushing you Tess.
Tessa Murry (08:31.326)
I know. Okay, so here’s what I was just thinking, and I don’t have much experience with this yet, but, you know, spending more time in a very hot, humid climate in southern Florida, if you have, if it’s really hot and humid outside and it’s cold inside, you got your AC running, you’re pulling in hot, humid air through the cracks in the building envelope, heat moves from more to less, moisture moves from more to less. And so I
You know, you are actively pulling in that humid air through any sort of leaks in the building envelope. That could potentially create condensation issues if and when that hot humid air touches a cooler inside surface. So in that sense, like some air leakage, I mean, you are making more energy efficient building by adding more insulation and making that difference between the inside and outside greater, the temperature difference. However, if you have
Still some of that hot humid air moving through, could condense and create moisture problems. But again, that goes back to this whole question of you’re adding more insulation, you’re making more air tight. Before, if you’re not doing that, you don’t have any insulation, you don’t have to worry about condensation, that hot humid air isn’t going to touch anything cold. As soon as you start to control your environment and make it cooler, if you have a little bit of air leakage, that’s when you run into problems. That’s when you get condensation.
Reuben Saltzman (09:44.364)
No. No.
Tessa Murry (09:56.128)
And so there’s this gray area. like, can make a house more energy efficient, but you have to, you have to make sure you’re conscious of any potential air leakage that’s happening through the building envelope. Because if you just even have a little bit in a, in an, an extreme climate like Minnesota or Southern Florida, you will get condensation problems. It’s very unforgiving because now there’s less, there’s less heat transfer or there’s less, ability for it to dry.
Reuben Saltzman (10:19.725)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (10:25.666)
You’ve got a wall cabinet filled with insulation, condensation does get in there. It can’t dry. It’s just, it’s less durable. It’s less forgiving. So you have to be, you have to be really detailed and cautious when you are building an energy efficient house or when you’re adding more insulation to control pathways that air is taking through that building envelope.
Reuben Saltzman (10:49.44)
Agreed, agreed. And that’s why I say all things being equal. It’s not to say that if you make a super energy efficient house, it won’t be durable. We can still do it and make it durable, but you can’t leave all things equal. That’s the important part. I mean, you take…
Tessa Murry (11:00.813)
Right.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (11:08.084)
Mm-mm. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (11:11.726)
You take a stick frame house and you have no insulation in the walls and you have all kinds of air leakage and all kinds of energy loss. You can have leaky outside walls. You can have water leaking in every time it rains and you may not have any consequences. And if you do have consequences, it’s going to take a long time for them to show up and they’re not going to be severe.
Tessa Murry (11:16.994)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (11:26.188)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (11:31.362)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (11:35.564)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (11:37.952)
And now you put insulation, you put an air barrier in and that exact same leak is going to be catastrophic.
Tessa Murry (11:41.826)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (11:46.604)
Yeah, if the wetting is greater than the drying, then it stays wet and you’ve got a problem. So yeah, you reduce the drying potential by adding more insulation and adding these vapor barriers or air barriers. So you really have to pay attention to moisture coming from the outside and coming from the inside.
Reuben Saltzman (12:11.5)
Yeah, agreed. And let’s talk about other stuff. What is going to be more problematic? What would be worse for a house? Having a gravity furnace where you are, you know, half of your heat is wasted into the chimney.
Tessa Murry (12:14.392)
So it’s a trade off.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (12:31.235)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (12:39.52)
and you’ve got a big chimney just going up on the outside of the house, it’s masonry, or you have an 80 % efficient furnace venting into that same chimney and it only loses a little bit of heat going up the chimney. Which chimney is going to perform better?
Tessa Murry (12:47.555)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (12:54.838)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The hot one, obviously. You don’t have to worry about condensation of the flue gases on the inside of the liner or the chimney, and you don’t have to worry about that eating through the chimney or degrading it or anything like that. If it stays hot, it stays dry. You don’t have to worry about condensation and degradation. It’s the exact same principle. So that’s a great example, Ruben.
Reuben Saltzman (13:01.166)
Yeah
Reuben Saltzman (13:19.95)
All right, so that’s chimneys. Let’s talk about furnaces again. You’ve got an 80 % efficient furnace heating your house. And then, and where does it take its combustion air?
Tessa Murry (13:29.1)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (13:34.37)
from the house.
Reuben Saltzman (13:35.342)
Okay, and where does the house get its combustion air? Okay, all right. Now we’re gonna change that over to a high efficiency, 95 % efficient furnace. Where does that get all of its combustion air?
Tessa Murry (13:38.19)
from the outside.
Tessa Murry (13:46.807)
Mm-hmm.
directly from the outside. does not change the dynamics of pressures in the house.
Reuben Saltzman (13:53.91)
Yes. So which one makes for a happier house from a building performance aspect, not energy.
Tessa Murry (13:58.56)
Exactly.
Tessa Murry (14:03.638)
Okay, well that’s a great question. would say it depends. Are we talking about kind of a… I guess when you’re running your furnace, it’s going to be cold outside, so in theory it will be drier air. So you’re pulling in dry air through these cracks and leaks in the building envelope, which in theory is going to dry out, potentially dry out the house, dry out the building envelope, which is better for durability. So in that case, you know, you’re getting this air exchange from inside to outside.
through the building envelope. Uncontrolled, I guess. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (14:37.996)
Yeah, so you can’t leave all things equal. You can’t just take that furnace out and go to a high efficiency furnace and expect your house to perform the same way. You can’t leave all things equal. You need to do something else. You need to add another device that’s going to do what your old furnace used to do. We call them air exchangers or heat recovery ventilators or energy recovery ventilators to help offset that durability impact we get by upgrading our furnace.
Tessa Murry (14:42.221)
now.
Tessa Murry (14:52.91)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (14:57.112)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (15:00.822)
This is it. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (15:07.874)
Well, and when you say durability, defined durability, because in my mind, the ERV isn’t necessarily going to provide the same kind of drying that was happening with pulling in outside dry air through the building envelope with the old type of furnace running. An ERV, if it’s installed properly, it’s supposed to provide balanced ventilation. It’s not creating a negative pressure or positive pressure, pulling air through the building envelope or pushing it out.
Reuben Saltzman (15:32.983)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (15:35.842)
So it’s literally just an isolated system that’s pulling air from the outside, mixing with your internal air, whatever. in terms of building durability, I don’t know if the ERV, if I would look at it that way, but it definitely provides airflow on the inside, better indoor air quality, and it can help reduce humidity levels on the inside of the house, which does lead to durability. So there’s durability in that sense of controlling indoor humidity levels. OK.
Reuben Saltzman (16:02.412)
That’s what I’m thinking of. Yeah, is the humidity because it’s replacing humid indoor air with dry outdoor air.
Tessa Murry (16:05.612)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (16:11.328)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and there’s so many, you know, people that I’m working with these days that are in that stage where they’ve had these kind of updates to their homes. They’ve put in higher efficiency furnaces or appliances, but they don’t have any additional ventilation. And they’re having issues. And most recently, this was a kind of a 1960s
modern home in one of the suburbs in the Twin Cities and it had a very low slope roof like a 312. It was a ranch style house and it had vaulted ceilings and it had a tongue and groove wood finish on the inside and it had some big exposed beams along the peak and this couple bought the house and they needed a new roof and so they ripped off the old roof
and worked with a contractor and the contractor installed spray foam in between the rafters and then put the roof deck back on. And they did a hot roof, so there was no continuous ventilation or anything like that from the soffits to the peak. And right away, the homeowners had moisture issues. So in the wintertime, they had water dripping in.
Reuben Saltzman (17:25.206)
huh.
Tessa Murry (17:37.472)
several locations through the tongue and groove, not from an ice dam. There were no ice dams this winter. It was after we had really long cold spells of, you know, below zero weather. And then the first warm up we got, they had the water dripping in. And then the second moisture events were happening in the summertime. And this is something I hadn’t, I haven’t seen that much of or heard that much of happening, but they had a lot of moisture forming on the beams.
in some areas of the house and in the ceiling and it was dripping down as well. So like in their kitchen and in the bathroom and these beams actually, kind of a, it’s a beautiful home. It’s a mid-century kind of designed home, beautiful woodwork. But these beams go continuously through the house. They are the structure, but they also go through the exterior walls and out to the soffits. They’re a structural member that goes all the way through the wall. So when it’s,
Reuben Saltzman (18:31.19)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (18:35.63)
really hot outside and humid outside and it’s cold inside and they got their AC running that cold air is you know is well that beam was cold where they had some air vents and that hot humid air was just condensing on those beams as well that were colder on the inside because they did have some air leakage through the spray foam
Reuben Saltzman (18:56.288)
Mm. Sure.
Tessa Murry (19:02.656)
They did some blower door testing and IR imaging and there were areas where there was air leaking through that, you know, hot roof. And so that hot human air is being pulled inside through those little leaks, through the foam, those little pathways, and then touching those cold beams and condensing. And so they were having a lot of moisture issues too. And part of the problem is as well, is that by doing this hot roof, they also spray foam their rim joist. So they spray foamed a pretty leaky portion of the house, you know.
at the rim joist and then they did an entire hot roof. And so they really changed how leaky this house was. So we talk about durability. They increased the energy efficiency tremendously by doing all this insulation, improved insulation, air sealing. But now they’ve got all these condensation moisture issues happening in winter and in summer. So with decreased ability to dry because there’s no airflow through any of the attic spaces.
So if something gets wet, it stays wet. And so then that’s when you rotting out roof decking and creating other problems. So the challenge was this spray foam, it had so many leaks in it I couldn’t figure out why. And I think part of the reason was the contractors, because of the tongue and groove,
Reuben Saltzman (20:14.647)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (20:25.952)
There’s no there was no vapor barrier poly or anything like that behind the tongue and groove So was just the tongue and groove and then the attic space, you know and like a two by six you know rafter and then the roof decking And they put cardboard down against the back side of the tongue and groove so they had a backer for their spray foam So it didn’t come out through the cracks which I totally get, you know, you can’t have spray foam coming out every little crack in the house. I mean that’s
going be a huge problem. You’re going to get callbacks, complaints from the homeowner. they put this cardboard down. But because that spray foam wasn’t adhered to the tongue and groove, there was a lot of air leakage happening kind of between the cardboard and the tongue and groove and all these exterior wall tops and transitions and everything. So it was kind of just creating these little channels and tunnels for that air to flow through, which is, yeah, yeah. And convection, yes, all of it. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (21:14.435)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (21:20.086)
action.
Tessa Murry (21:25.038)
Yeah, so it’s kind of the perfect storm. They also changed out their AC unit. They got a new one put in, and it might be oversized. I asked them, said, when the AC runs in the summer, does it run for really long time when it’s really hot outside, or is it short little periods? And they’re like, oh, it just runs for a little bit and then shuts off. like, OK. So we’ve got a house that now has a ton of spray foam, making a lot more airtight.
And we don’t have any kitchen exhaust fan. We’ve got one bath fan for the whole house. And you’ve got an AC that’s oversized, not running, helping with humidity issues. And now you’ve got all these moisture problems. So it really is, it’s like, you want to make your house more energy efficient, but you have to kind of really think about, again, the house as a system.
If you make it more airtight, how do you provide the fresh air you need, the air quality you need, dehumidification if you need that. You might be installing an ERV, more bath fans, potentially even for this house. I said it might be good idea to get a dehumidifier for this house because of the design and the style and everything that’s been done to it. You guys have all this excess humidity. Look into something like that. Not to mention just the potential problems with the moisture.
That’s a whole other, you know, problem. So, it’s tricky and the scope of, you know, I just think a lot of contractors I’ve talked to and worked with as well because this is not the first client I’ve talked to that’s had this problem this year. I’ve probably talked to like seven different people within the span of like two months when it got really cold and warmed up.
Reuben Saltzman (22:53.432)
Sure, sure.
Tessa Murry (23:15.682)
that had this type of issue, the condensation dripping back in and having a vaulted ceiling and tongue and groove. The scope of work, how you install the foam, what type of foam you use, what the roof assembly looks like. Do you have venting or not? Do you have a secondary roof deck or not? Do you have?
Exterior rigid insulation to reduce thermal bridging or not. you use open cell or closed cell? Do you have a vapor barrier underneath the open cell? Did you have a backer for your closed cell spray foam or is it here directly to the back? All of those little details actually matter in this situation. You just have to be even more cautious when you are making a house more energy efficient.
Reuben Saltzman (23:54.498)
Yes, and if you didn’t want to have any of these problems, you could just have no insulation at all in your attic and you could just pay a big energy penalty, but you wouldn’t have any issues, right?
Tessa Murry (23:59.116)
Thanks.
Tessa Murry (24:03.126)
Exactly. You would melt all the snow off the roof? Maybe if you had some big soffits you could have some ice. Well, maybe. This house did have big overhangs, so I guess in theory, like, if the soffit was big and they had enough snow melt, it could create an ice dam. But I hear what you’re saying. Yes. If it’s the roof is hot enough, you don’t have a big overhang. Yeah, melt it all off and you won’t ever have ice dams. Yes. Yeah, exactly. It’s a trade off. Yeah. No.
Reuben Saltzman (24:11.158)
Never have Iced Amps.
Reuben Saltzman (24:18.945)
Okay.
baby.
Reuben Saltzman (24:28.534)
Yeah, you won’t have frost in your attic.
Okay, yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:34.494)
Yeah, if the roof stays warm enough because you’ve got so much heat loss happening you’re warming up the roof deck It stays above freezing when you’re never gonna have frost either Yeah
Reuben Saltzman (24:41.954)
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you want to eliminate all these problems, just pull all the insulation out, but okay Tess, this is all ridiculous. Yeah, we’re going way backwards. We’re never going back to that again. We will never do that again. We’ll never build them without insulation and air sealing and without making them as energy efficient. Well, I shouldn’t say if we can, we can do more, but we’re making them very efficient today. And I, you know, I’m not advocating.
Tessa Murry (24:47.47)
Now we’re going backwards. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:57.462)
without insulation. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Reuben Saltzman (25:10.718)
going backwards that’s never going to happen. What do we need to do to make it so we don’t have problems in our houses to keep them durable?
Tessa Murry (25:12.718)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (25:23.35)
We need to realize that houses are complex and to be able to look at the house like a building scientist, to think about how heat, and moisture moves through a house and how that impacts everything from comfort to energy efficiency to durability. And just realize that houses are going to become a lot more, well,
I think we as occupants have become more finicky and picky about what we expect and desire in terms of comfort and temperature and all that stuff, but our houses are going to become a lot more fragile as well. If you have a lot of heat and air movement through these assemblies, they can dry out. If you don’t, well then you really need to be cautious about any little bit of airflow you do have that’s leaking through the building envelope. You need to really get dialed in about how
Controlling that heat moisture and air in the structure and through the structure So we just have to have I think the first step is just education of all the people that work on houses out there From from my perspective seeing this every day all day. I mean, I’m like, okay, this is just like breathing I understand this but you’d be surprised at how many contractors are out there that build houses They don’t understand those potential consequences of these incremental
improvements or quote unquote energy improvements and they do these things and they okay we’ll just fill it with spray foam and that’s great and then they have no clue why their client is having all these condensation or moisture issues so i think it just goes back to you know helping contractors and builders and and people that work with houses understand if you change one thing
you could impact another thing and create these unintended consequences. And you have to look at more than just this one thing that you’re doing. You have to think, how does this one thing impact everything else?
Reuben Saltzman (27:18.445)
Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (27:28.066)
Yes. I always think of it in my mind as like having, I think of like a sound control board and you got one slider that adjusts volume on the left speakers and another for the ones on the right. one of them is energy efficiency and the other is solid building practices. And as soon as you slide one up,
Tessa Murry (27:39.712)
Yeah. Yes.
Tessa Murry (27:48.878)
Mmm.
Reuben Saltzman (27:51.372)
you’re going to need to slide the other one up at the same time, but it’s not going to be balanced. So if you’re going to, you’re going to increase the efficiency here, what else are you going to do for the rest of the building to make sure that this doesn’t cause problems? Like, okay, we’re going to make our walls not leak a whole bunch of air.
Tessa Murry (27:57.291)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (28:05.013)
Exactly.
Reuben Saltzman (28:08.482)
All right, we need to be way more detailed about our flashing on the outside and we need to pay more attention to roof lines and making sure that our outside walls stay dry and nothing is leaking in if we’re gonna have a durable wall. The levers need to move at the same time.
Tessa Murry (28:08.908)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (28:13.607)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (28:20.086)
Mm. Mm. Yeah.
Agreed. Agreed. it’s tough because everything, it’s not just the flashing details and the design of the house and the roof, all that’s important too. But then you have to think about the mechanical systems in the house and the ventilation strategies and everything. It’s all connected. It’s all connected. I think it’s just retraining people to realize that you have to take a holistic view when you’re
when you’re changing houses, and especially when you’re making them more energy efficient, there is so much room for building performance problems, durability issues, mold problems, condensation, when you when you do that, because you’re taking away the transfer of energy.
Reuben Saltzman (29:12.428)
Yes, yes, and that is so well put Tessa, you are removing the transfer of energy. And when you do that, the walls, everything becomes less happy.
Tessa Murry (29:20.622)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (29:25.504)
Yeah, more fragile as Pat Hellman would say, my professor from, yeah, from U of Yeah, it is. Older houses were leaky, drafty, uncomfortable, expensive to heat and cool, but they were very durable and he would say robust. And compared to new construction, that is a lot more energy efficient, more insulation, it’s more airtight, you know, cheaper to heat and cool.
Reuben Saltzman (29:27.66)
more
Reuben Saltzman (29:42.103)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (29:52.95)
a lot more comfortable inside, less temperature variations, but also a lot more fragile.
Reuben Saltzman (29:59.896)
Yep, yep, well put, Tess. All right, I don’t think we can do any better than that.
Tessa Murry (30:01.304)
Yeah, it’s the trade off.
Tessa Murry (30:06.926)
If anybody listening has any other thoughts on that or input, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to shoot us an email.
Reuben Saltzman (30:15.992)
Yeah, podcast at StructureTech.com. We read them all. We want to hear from you.
Tessa Murry (30:24.003)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (30:25.038)
All right, cool. Well, for next week, we’ve already got our guests lined up. We have a repeat guest and we’re going to talk about new ways to test air conditioners. got former ASHE president and building. Well, I shouldn’t say building science. Home inspection guru. He teaches. He has taught a lot of classes over his career.
Tessa Murry (30:33.816)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (30:47.34)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (30:54.19)
Mark Kramer Looking forward to this. He teased it a little bit on the phone for me and it felt like it was way over my head But I thought maybe if we do a whole podcast episode, maybe I’ll be able to grasp what he’s talking about here So I’m really excited to dig into that with him. Yeah Cool
Tessa Murry (30:54.638)
extremely knowledgeable.
Tessa Murry (31:08.622)
I’m looking forward to it Yeah, me too me too. All right. Well, thanks Ruben. This was a good discussion and yeah, and you know, I think as we deal with more and more extremes with climate and the challenges with insurance and Building more energy efficient homes and that becoming the norm all of these little things we’re talking about are you just gonna become more and more evident and sometimes
Reuben Saltzman (31:33.667)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (31:36.458)
A lot of times, humans, we learn the hard way. We don’t change unless we have to. And so until you’ve been on the other side of that as a homeowner or a contractor and experienced the pain, why would you change? But I see that happening a lot because that is my world. So I think that’s the direction we’re heading and it’s going to be a process, maybe a little painful process, but hopefully we’re going in the right direction.
Reuben Saltzman (31:59.554)
I think we’re going in the right direction. All right. Thank you, Tess. Good to see you too. Catch you next week.
Tessa Murry (32:03.158)
All right. Good to see you. Yep. Thanks for listening everybody. Yep. Catch you next week. Chinks.