Cooler Attics - Radiant Heat Barrier

These days there are many ways one can have a home that is more energy efficient. If you are building a new home in the south, one of the most efficient (as well as comfortable) things to is keep the heat out. There is a great product I found at a home shows a few years ago that I highly recommend. It is a product called Tech Shield. It comes in 4x8 sheets and is applied on top of the roof rafters of your home. The advantage of this product is that it has a thin layer of foil adhered to one side. This may not seem like much but test have shown that this thin layer of foil can cut your monthly energy consumption by 17%. The foil side faces toward the attic and acts as a radiant heat barrier. It is amazing how much heat it keeps out of your attic. When I have specified this product, contractors who are installing it for the first time have been amazed at the effectiveness of the thin layer of foil. In the middle of the summer, they are especially grateful for the coolness in the house. By keeping the heat out of the attic, the air conditioner gets a break, you save money and your home is more comfortable. Check out this great product by clicking on the link above.

Tech Shield remains a favorite product of mine, because it is such a simple, cost effective solution to saving energy.

Trim, the thick and thin of it all

These days we are bombarded with more options than we care to have to review when it comes to selecting what we wrap our window and door frames with, bump the vacuum into, or hide the sheetrock joint at the ceiling line.  These items fall into the category of interior trim.  When selecting trim, keeping the basic design of these three elements in the same family is key to keeping the hodgepodge to a minimum.  If a period style, such as Federal is being built, it would be architecturally incorrect to put anything other than moulding profiles that were common to that period of history. Consistency in design selections plays  a key role in the enhancement of spaces.  

In recent years, I have been pleased to see MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) being used for some of the trim components.  When this product first hit the market, may years ago, trim carpenters didn't care for it because when cut, it would chip and flake.  Since then, the products have become far superior and trim carpenters tend to prefer to use this product for crown.  Its most redeeming features are that it does not expand or contract like wood, and it takes paint really well.  With wood, when winter sets in, the low humidity often  causes cracks to form along the caulk joints of trim because of the amount of shrinking that takes place. What we have found that works best is to use MDF for the crown, and keep the casing and base as wood, most commonly Poplar.  This minimizes the cracking problem and puts easily repairable wood in places than can get damaged.  Not only is MDF more stable at varied moisture content, it also is less expensive than solid poplar,  and some manufacturers produce it as "green". What more you could you ask for of a product?

MDF used as crown moulding has become a great asset to residential architecture, combining workability, longevity, and cost savings into a single product.  I highly recommend its use.

Crawl Spaces - The pit of despair, or maybe not... Read on.

Back in the 50's North Carolina adopted a building code from Minnesota.  Not sure why, but they did.  One of the requirements of the code made it necessary to have the areas that we all know as crawl spaces be ventilated.  Come to find out, this code has probably caused countless numbers of health issues with the people living over these spaces.  

Here in NC, when the summers are hot with temperatures into the 90's and humidity also in the 90's, one could not ask for a better place to grow mold than in the average crawl space.  Not long after the hot, moist air enters the cool crawl space, the water is pulled out of the air and the environment becomes ripe for mold growth, and insect infestation.  The air in a house flows upward and it has been estimated that 20 percent of the air in the main level over a crawl space was recently in the crawl space.  

To combat this problem, we are sealing crawl spaces. A thick membrane is installed over the ground so that all moisture gets blocked from below.  Around the perimeter of the crawl space, a rigid insulation board is applied and all vents are sealed up.  The crawl space then becomes what is referred to as "Sealed".  For more detail on this technology I would suggest that you go to crawlspaces.org  This site is the result of an intensive research study concerning crawl spaces in our Southeastern climate.  

A vented crawlspace in the Southeast may very well be the worst code ever created.  I, for sure, will never specify another one.