Certified Building Envelope Analysts

Blower door test set up

Several Timber Truss personnel have attended and completed a week long intensive training class on becoming Professional Building Envelope Analysts. The classes were taught by the Building Performance Institute, an Energy Star partner, at the New River Center for Energy Research & Training (NRCERT). Gary Saunders, Kevin Davis, and Buford Self took the classes in Christiansburg at the NRCERT training facility during the second week in January, 2011.
This class was conceived and taught by the Building Performance Institute and will award a professional designation to those passing the requirements. The class focuses on analyzing building science to properly diagnose a building’s energy problems and to suggest corrections to those faults. Proper flues, flue pressures, and proper installation of gas lines are all part of the class. Proper Combustion Appliance Zone (CAZ) conditions and spillage and venting are a large part of the combustion safety portion of the program.
Many special instruments uses are taught and practiced during the class including the Combustion Analyzer, the Blower Door test procedure and equipment use set up, Manometer, personal carbon monoxide monitors, gas leak detector, chemical smokers and other high tech tools.
The most interesting portions of the course were the analyzing of the air sealing of building envelopes and retrofitting problem areas with corrective measures. The air infiltration barriers (pressure barriers) and the thermal barriers (insulation) must be adjacent to each other for the total insulation package to work properly. The principals that were taught were very valuable to apply in future detailing of architectural details in our TrussMark Home packages available at Timber Truss. This was a very intense and useful class with a tremendous amount of technical content as well as a very aggressive homework package for 4 nights. All of us passed the written test and are awaiting our field tests to become a professional in the Building Envelope Analyst category.

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