Health, Safety and Comfort: House as a System

Three essential parts impact whether a home is comfortable, safe, durable, and ultimately energy efficient. Come explore these parts and how the house operates as a system with a focus on air, heat, and moisture flow, the interactions or lack of interactions between the essential parts (and their sub-systems), and how that impacts a home’s performance, for better or worse.
We’ll explore the fundamentals of air flow and how controlling the causes (and consequences) of unwanted air movement improves building performance and protects health and durability. We’ll dive into heat transfer mechanisms and identify strategies to minimize heat loss (and gain) with an emphasis on improving comfort, building durability, and energy efficiency. We’ll prioritize identifying moisture as a leading cause of building failure, identifying the transport mechanisms by their ability to cause damage and discuss solutions to protect occupant health and building durability.
Through a variety of images, demonstrations, and videos, we’ll discover how the house is a system focusing on the essential parts and impacts weatherization can have on existing homes and the lives of the people who live in them.