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Top Ten Smart Things To Do In Any Climate
- Know your site - annual rainfall, prevailing wind speed and
direction, monthly average dewpoints, ground water depth, existing
surface water patterns, soil conditions (agronomic properties and
contaminant/pollutant content). Then design and build
accordingly.
- Know your stuff - Require your suppliers to give you the
information you need to determine how their product contributes to any
assembly or system of which it is a part. If the supplier is unwilling
or unable to work with you on understanding how the assembly or system
in question works, find a supplier who is.
- Respect gravity: it’s the law, not a recommendation.
Weatherlap the elements of your drainage plane from ridge to grade to
footer.
- Fit, rather than force, HVAC. Design and integrate
mechanical systems into your buildings, rather than superimposing them
after the fact.
- Ventilate: it’s good for you, your buildings and their
occupants. Ventilate building assemblies whenever possible for their
“health and well being;” always ventilate buildings for occupant
health and well being.
- Manage air and moisture flows with the same level of rigor
as you manage the flow of energy in your buildings.
- Manage moisture in order of priority - liquid water,
air-borne vapor, vapor driven by diffusion.
- Treat quality as a three-legged stool - quality of design,
quality of materials, quality of installation. Without all three, you
go from sitting pretty to falling on your _____.
- Study your trash. Use your site dumpster as a quality
control tool—the nature and the amount of what ends up in your waste
stream can tell you a lot about the quality of your process and
product.
- Empower your owners/occupants. Give them the knowledge they
need to operate the high performance building you created.
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