The Big New Challenge in Residential Design and Construction with Christine Williamson
For the past 30 years, we have achieved dramatic and consistent improvements in the energy efficiency of residential buildings partly thanks to big improvements in building enclosures—notably, more intelligent and effective approaches to glazing, insulation, and air-tightness.
The building industry remains well-positioned to continue our success in this area, but we now seek to complement those advances by enhancing occupant health through improved indoor air quality. This is not a small challenge—it requires a deep understanding of mechanical ventilation, how changes to the interior environment will affect the enclosure, and what design adjustments will be needed to ensure that our air-quality efforts don’t undercut building better enclosures.
Building enclosure designs that do not account for higher relative humidity in the interior can have serious adverse consequences for durability, putting the single largest asset of most homeowners at risk and ultimately leading to poor interior air quality. The switch from exhaust-only ventilation to balanced ventilation with filtration and humidity control gives us the opportunity to achieve comparable air-quality improvements in a very short time. Join Christine Williamson as she talks us through the risks and tradeoffs—and the tremendous opportunities awaiting smart and creative building-industry professionals.
