Bad Siding

In the past decade, the building industry has introduced pre-weathered galvanized siding for buildings. Same idea as weathered new blue jeans I guess. However if you look at the new building shown here, you'll see that the siding is quickly deteriorating because of combustion gases from a condensing furnace. Other random places on the siding seem ready to rust straight through after only 5 years.

Bad Siding's Evolution

Galvanization is the process of coating  steel with  zinc in order to prevent rust. Galvanized steel is used in many building products such as roofing, flashing, and air ducts. In particular, corrugated galvanized steel  is widely used to roof agricultural and industrial buildings. About 20 years ago to my great surprise, galvanized steel became chic for building siding and even for interior wall cladding. Salvaged and rusted galvanized steel was even more chic for siding and even roofing. Why the building officials permitted this reuse of heavily weathered material on brand new building exteriors I'll never know. When they ran out of the old weathered stuff, they decided to manufacture glamorous rusty siding. The siding in these photos was galvanized with the typical process and the washed with acid to cause rust. Crazy, right? I wonder where the poisonous zinc goes when they wash it off of millions of square feet of galvanized steel siding?

Recent Details: Superinsulated Retrofits

This post is for building and insulation  nerds. I've been thinking a lot about the superinsulation projects I've accomplished over the past decade and what those retrofits cost. Yesterday I got an eMail from Eric Doub of Ecofutures in Boulder Colorado about a superinsulation project his company is doing that Eric calls the Big Wrap. Eric and I will be presenting on superinsulated retrofits at the Affordable Comfort conference in Denver next week on Thursday at 3:30 PM. Eric is wrapping a home using a frame wall and closed-cell spray polyurethane foam. The details he described are interesting and truly unique.

[caption id="attachment_4461" align="alignright" width="180"] Young men contemplate the beauty of their surroundings on a frisbee-golf tee near Sheep Mountain. Picture by Mary Coster.[/caption] Mother Nature had mercy on Montana  yesterday dumping 5-20 inches of heavy snow over a wide area: Snow depth depends on elevation. Saturday offered a blustery spring folf match, and Sunday snowed a winter blizzard most of the day.  Horray for moisture however we get it and horray for the cool weather that keeps snow in the mountains!  

[caption id="attachment_4458" align="aligncenter" width="300"] John and Mary's house on Earth Day[/caption]

The Fear of Not Enough Slides

I just finished a slide show on opportunities in commercial energy management. As usual, I created too many slides. From more than 30 years of presentation experience, 10 slides is enough for most one-hour presentations. Too many slides forces the presenter to focus on the slides rather than on the audience. OK then, why did I create 35 slides for a 1.5-hour presentation? I think that presenters have a fear of somehow reaching at their last slide halfway through their presentation time slot. However, I've never exhausted my slides early in a presentation. On the contrary, I have to skip slides in the interest of time and this can be frustrating to a curious audience. Why do I create too many slides then?

ACI in Denver

In two weeks, we at Saturn will attend the ACI Conference in Denver. Affordable Comfort or ACI is an exemplary conference that nurtures the energy-conservation-home-performance-weatherization community with opportunities for growth, learning and networking. I've attended most of these conferences over ACI's  more than 30-year history. The conference is well planned and well-executed. Presenters are generally well-prepared and have good expertise in their specialties. We exhibit at the conference and consider ACI our best marketing opportunity of the year. We hope to see you in Denver. Please stop by our booth and say hello if you attend. This year's conference offers a great selection of sessions. Saturn staff will present at four of the sessions.