Don’t use materials that burn. I considered ending the article right there. It’s not that hard. Does it burn? Yes? Then you can’t use it. “What about…” “Does it burn?”

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Building with Science #011: Reclaimed Incandescent Heat

I’m republishing this article from a couple of years ago as BWS #11/28 because I still think it’s clever and no one has argued with me about it yet. Come

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I’m stealing and building on a metaphor from Karl Jones at a seminar in 2019. You can tell I’m ready to get out of COVID19 lockdown and back to the

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Building with Science #009: Passive Solar Design Explained (The Potatoe Analogy)

Heat gains and losses is complex discussion. You literally need complex software and skills to even begin to predict the energy use of a building and if then you’re probably

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Building with Science #008: Testing of Building Facades

You should test the weather tightness of a curtain wall, windows, and designs under cyclonic winds, rain, and earthquakes but you shouldn’t think that is a guarantee of performance in-situ:

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Building with Science #007: Building Enclosure Control Layers

When talking about building enclosure performance, we commonly refer to control of the following elements: water, heat, and air. Controlling the free flow of these elements across and into the

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Building with Science #006: Pliable building membranes and underlays (NZS 4201)

Remember procedure BW from BWS005? The one that looks like a roof? Well let’s use that same idea for a wall underlay that is pliable and see if water drips through.

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Building with Science #005: NZS 4858 Wet Area Membranes

A test for the waterproof-yness of a waterproof membrane. Is the waterproof membrane actually waterproof? Seems like a completely fair question to me. Well funny enough, in NZS 4858, our

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Building with Science #004: Standards vs Understanding

Standards are not a replacement for mastery, they are not a best practice guide, they aren’t even applicable in many cases. They are just a benchmark of some sort of

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Building with Science #003: Measuring Energy Use

We’ve totally fucked this one up. Energy use in buildings is complex and difficult to predict even for the smartest of people (performance gap explained here) and even with the

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