July 2023 - A House Needs to Breathe, or Does It? With Dr. Allison Bailes

Jeff Flaherty opens with a two-year-old custom-built home where a child's bedroom ran seven degrees colder in winter and seven degrees hotter in summer. Jeff's team pulled the attic insulation, air sealed properly, and cut the blower door reading by 32%. The fix was immediate. From there Jeff brings in Dr. Allison Bailes III, author of "A House Needs to Breathe, or Does It?" and founder of Energy Vanguard, to talk about why "a house needs to breathe" is usually just a contractor's way of saying they don't want to spend the money on air sealing. Allison covers why diffusion is not the main moisture problem in cold climates but why it still matters here more than in Atlanta, why the first building science certification gives you just enough knowledge to break houses, and why the gap between energy code and passive house has a name: a pretty good house. Plus why builders who add a last-minute attic furnace as a game-time audible are making a very expensive guess, and why the book is written for anyone on the early part of the building science learning curve.