No local builders are bulding with GBA and BSC knowledge
The building code officials here mandate
fiberglass insulation in studded walls in basements covered with poly.
Energy Star, our national government advocates R-5 rigid foam on exteriors from zone 5-8. GBA and BSC say that is asking for trouble and should never be done!!
A builder near my home is adding Dow 2″ foam over a well built but 16″ OC frame that has at least 25% wood in it. There are huge 6″ microlam beams in the valleys and ridge. Think about the R factor of those giant beams we now are mandated to use. We went for 2×4 and 2×6 rough sawn lumber in our camps around the lakes (which still exist and support snow) To 6″widex12″ high microlams everywhere on the plans and in the homes.
Maybe energy costs don’t matter when the property taxes are $15,000-45,000 for these homes.
Anyway… Energy Star, add R-5 to the exterior in my zone 6 and you’re superinsulated. NOT!
Get out all the cute marketing CRAP that EStar wants you to put up and sucker the suckers!! What you really are doing is keeping the employees at EStar employed and due for raises and conventions in Las Vegas to gamble with our dollars.
Total Bull pucky.
What say you?
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
Replies
I made a mistake about the home going up near me. The Dow foam is not 2".
The foam is 1/2" thick!!!! It's and inch short of what GBA says works verses what may actually enhance crap growing in the walls.
And to boot I just looked closely to see this and much of the Zip sheathing tape is coming up around the windows. Great. No way the building inspector will catch it.
We have a huge layer of government over site and it does diddly squat.
What a joke.
Nathaniel that was so well said. Bravo and I agree totally.
Energy star site... marketing crap, pictures of smiling homeowners. What crap.
Kool aid servers and kool aid drinkers. lovely world.
[Note from editor: AJ Builder added this comment. It was accidentally posted as a separate thread. It belongs on this page.]
NYS is in the dark ages, don't they know of GBA and BSC???
R-2 to R-5 for wall continuous insulation.
GBA says use 1.5" of EPS not 1/2" or get ready for structural damage possibilities.
The number one reason for codes is for occupant and community safety.
Do our Code approval folks have access to GBA and BSC?????
Or are they on their puters watching ****?
I don't get it. We are locking up poor folks for a little welfare fraud like crazy but
when it comes to building codes... naw... keep the old timers happy as they don't
want no stinkin extra costs to put 2" of foam on a build.
Get your heads out of the money pots code people. Read up on BSC as to what works and what is marginal.
I am going to send links to lots of this to my code folks... may end up in jail for jay walking next.
--AJ Builder
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Glad you said it AJ!
Had I stated those clear facts you posted I would be placed under the guillotine by you and a few others! Glad to see your wising up to what I see all the time in SE CT. Your not alone Sir.
The entire government infrastructure surrounding building is a huge joke designed to subsidize banks and homeowner's insurance companies, and for imposing and justifying absurdly high construction fees and property tax rates to bring in desperately-needed revenue for chronically mismanaged city governments. The inherent personality of the kind of person who becomes a building inspectors leads such people to be more concerned with following the rulebook they internalized decades ago rather than caring about modern progress or even what works; it's always about the rules, not the result. Because of the incentives involved, expecting governments and government building inspectors to lead us out of an epidemic of shoddy buildings (that they are at least partially responsible for starting and spurring on) is a fool's errand. Change comes from people who care, not people who can impose taxes, fees, and penalties.