Repairs, Renovations, & Retrofits in Hot, Humid, Climates

Last month I was able to attend the Building Enclosure Council’s presentation on this relevant topic at the Stern Center.

The Building Enclosure Council

“The Three R’s: Repairs, Renovations & Retrofits in Hot, Humid Climates”
By Joseph Lstiburek, Ph. D, P.E., ASHRAE Fellow

First of all, I had no idea the Stern Center had such a pleasant looking open space on the interior of the block. The lecture was very relevant, and covered crawl spaces, floors, walls, and roofs. Mr. Lstiburek is an enthusiastic speaker, and for people interested in this sort of thing (like me), the talk was pretty interesting. Mr. Lstiburek has a leaning towards sealing up buildings well and ventilating them right – I think he has a slogan for it even, but maybe it’s trademarked.

Part of the discussion revolved around the location of the insulating material and what you can do to protect it. The relevance of the location of the kraft paper on Batt Insulation (Face in or Face Out), Mr. Lstiburek argues, is irrelevant because of the way the Kraft paper responds to the varying relative humidities of the summer and winter months. He suggests that if you use batt to go with the unfaced stuff so that you can’t get it wrong anyway.

Lstiburek has a bias against OSB and other materials composed of wood particles and glue, pointing out that they do not breathe as well as plywood. Another reason for using plywood rather than OSB for the sheathing material.

Another item mentioned was the importance of Capillary barriers in buildings foundations in order to discourage the rising damp effect of water moving up masonry elements.

His website has some good information, and is worth a visit. The principal lesson learned is that we can’t afford to ignore building enclosures, and that in retrofitting historic ones it’s important to do it in a manner that won’t due harm to the buildings given their transition into the age of air conditioning and airtight insulation.