Book Club - Book 4 April-June 2021
Because the hosts of the BS* + Beer Show all love to read, we thought we would celebrate the authors in our industry by adding a book club to the show every few months. We’ll announce the book, give you a few months to get it and read it, and conclude with a BS* + Beer Show episode where we will invite the author to join us, present, and take questions.
We have selected our fourth book: Musings of an Energy Nerd: Toward an Energy-Efficient Home by Martin Holladay, which can be purchased at the Taunton Store.
We hope you will pick up a copy and join the discussion on July 8, 2021.
Book Club - Book 3 Jan-Mar 2021
Essential Building Science
Understanding Energy and Moisture in High Performance House Design
Poor heat and moisture management are the enemies of durable, comfortable, and efficient housing, and good building design and construction starts with a solid understanding of good building science.
Essential Building Science provides a highly visual and accessible introduction to the fundamentals of building science for residential construction.
Part one covers the rationale behind high-performance design and the fundamentals of building physics, including thermal dynamics, moisture transfer, and hygro-thermal dynamics such as vapor drive and condensation.
Part two teaches the vital critical thinking skills needed to consider buildings as whole systems and to develop thermal and moisture control strategies regardless of the specifics of the design. Case studies and examples from across North American climatic zones illuminate real-life problems and offer builders, designers, and DIYers the insights and tools required for creating better new buildings and dramatically improving old ones.
Good science plus critical thinking equals high performance buildings.
Click here to view an excerpt and here to see the table of contents.
About the Author
Jacob Deva Racusin is a sustainable and natural building designer, builder and educator. He is co-author of The Natural Building Companion, contributor to The Art of Natural Building and Systems Director and Co-Owner of New Frameworks Natural Design/Build, focusing on mechanical, water, energy, and enclosure system design and quality control. He is also a Building Performance Institute-certified Envelope Professional and Building Analyst. Jacob is the program director of the Building Science and Net Zero Design Certificate Program at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School, and has taught natural building and building science at various universities and building schools. He and his family live in a 2000 sq ft high-performance, natural home in the mountains of northern Vermont, where they run a small-scale Permaculture-inspired homestead.
Click here to search for all books from this author.
Buy the book: HERE
Book Club - Book 2 - Oct 1 - Dec 17
Healthy Buildings
“This book should be essential reading for all who commission, design, manage, and use buildings—indeed anyone who is interested in a healthy environment.”—Norman Foster
As schools and businesses around the world consider when and how to reopen their doors to fight COVID-19, the Director of Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program and Harvard Business School’s leading expert on urban resilience reveal what you can do to harness the power of your offices, homes, and schools to protect your health—and boost every aspect of your performance and well-being.
Ever feel tired during a meeting? That’s because most conference rooms are not bringing in enough fresh air. When that door opens, it literally breathes life back into the room. But there is a lot more acting on your body that you can’t feel or see. From our offices and homes to schools, hospitals, and restaurants, the indoor spaces where we work, learn, play, eat, and heal have an outsized impact on our performance and well-being. They affect our creativity, focus, and problem-solving ability and can make us sick—jeopardizing our future and dragging down profits in the process.
Charismatic pioneers of the healthy building movement who have paired up to combine the cutting-edge science of Harvard’s School of Public Health with the financial know-how of the Harvard Business School, Joseph Allen and John Macomber make a compelling case in this urgently needed book for why every business and home owner should make certain relatively low-cost investments a top priority. Grounded in exposure and risk science and relevant to anyone newly concerned about how their surroundings impact their health, Healthy Buildings can help you evaluate the impact of small, easily controllable environmental fluctuations on your immediate well-being and long-term reproductive and lung health. It shows how our indoor environment can have a dramatic impact on a whole host of higher order cognitive functions—including things like concentration, strategic thinking, troubleshooting, and decision-making. Study after study has found that your performance will dramatically improve if you are working in optimal conditions (with high rates of ventilation, few damaging persistent chemicals, and optimal humidity, lighting and noise control). So what would it take to turn that knowledge into action?
Cutting through the jargon to explain complex processes in simple and compelling language, Allen and Macomber show how buildings can both expose you to and protect you from disease. They reveal the 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building, share insider tips, and show how tracking what they call “health performance indicators” with smart technology can boost a company’s performance and create economic value. With decades of practice in protecting worker health, they offer a clear way forward right now, and show us what comes next in a post-COVID world. While the “green” building movement introduced important new efficiencies, it’s time to look beyond the four walls—placing the decisions we make around buildings into the larger conversation around development and health, and prioritizing the most important and vulnerable asset of any building: its people.
About the Authors
Joseph G. Allen is Director of the Healthy Buildings Program and an Assistant Professor at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health. A renowned forensic investigator of “sick buildings,” he is a regular keynote speaker and advises leading global companies on Healthy Building strategies. His work has been featured in National Geographic, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. As of March 19, 2020, Allen is serving as Co-Chair of the International Well Building Institute’s Coronavirus Task Force.
John D. Macomber is a Senior Lecturer in Finance at Harvard Business School. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Forbes, the Harvard Business Review, and the Wall Street Journal Asian Edition. He is the author of more than thirty case studies on infrastructure projects with particular emphasis on office buildings in the United States, housing in India, water in Mexico, innovative project finance in Africa, and private-sector–led new cities in Asia.
Book Club - Book 1 - July 20 - Sept 20
Building to Cool the Climate
by Bruce King
"Green buildings" that slash energy use and carbon emissions are all the rage, but they aren't enough. The hidden culprit is embodied carbon — the carbon emitted when materials are mined, manufactured, and transported — comprising some 10% of global emissions. With the built environment doubling by 2030, buildings are a carbon juggernaut threatening to overwhelm the climate.
It doesn't have to be this way.
Like never before in history, buildings can become part of the climate solution. With biomimicry and innovation, we can pull huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and lock it up as walls, roofs, foundations, and insulation. We can literally make buildings out of the sky with a massive positive impact.
The New Carbon Architecture is a paradigm-shifting tour of the innovations in architecture and construction that are making this happen. Office towers built from advanced wood products; affordable, low-carbon concrete alternatives; plastic cleaned from the oceans and turned into building blocks. We can even grow insulation from mycelium.
A tour de force by the leaders in the field, The New Carbon Architecture will fire the imagination of architects, engineers, builders, policy makers, and everyone else captivated by the possibility of architecture to heal the climate and produce safer, healthier, and more beautiful buildings.
About the Author
Bruce King has been a structural engineer for 35 years, designing buildings of every size and type around the world. He is the Founder and Director of the Ecological Building Network (EBNet) www.ecobuildnetwork.org and the BuildWell conferences on green building materials. Bruce's decades of research into alternative building systems has led to building code changes in California and globally. He is the author of Buildings of Earth and Straw, Making Better Concrete, and the landmark Design of Straw Bale Buildings. Bruce lives in San Rafael, California.
The BS + Beer Show Book Club
Because the hosts of this show all love to read, we thought we would celebrate the authors from our industry by adding “Book Club” to the number of great topics that we host on the show. Book club will run quarterly with a book selection, some book discussion over at Green Building Advisor, and end with a BS + Beer Show episode where we will invite the Author to a book review style show. We are very excited about this new adventure and who knows where this will take us! If you’re a book fan, join the club and the discussion! Please also feel free to suggest book recommendations and authors. Everyone is busy, so we don’t want to add too much reading, but we welcome you to join us!
~ The BS + Beer Show Hosts