EEBA Academy

High performance zero energy homes provide many benefits including cost savings, energy resiliency, durability, comfort, and sustainable operation. While these types of homes have been built for a long time, the knowledge of how to build them has historically been kept by few. Now with increasingly stringent building codes across the U.S., driven by long-term energy policy and growing demands on the energy grid, all builders and implementers need to know how to build high performance. 

Since the 1990s residential buildings have shown dramatic and consistent improvement in their energy efficiency: Average energy use per square foot is down substantially, and so are average energy use per household and average energy use per household member. How do we account for this extraordinary progress, and what can architects do to continue to improve energy efficiency in residential architecture?

The building science principles forming the foundation for high performance are how heat moves, how moisture moves, and how the two always work together. 

Consumers are more aware of their options and they demand better homes. Air sealing lies at the heart of any successful building, addressing 3 of the 4 major risk controls (vapor, air flow, and thermal controls).