For the first time ever, I wish there was a 100X Thumbs Up button.

As an HVAC professional and perpetual student of building science, I highly appreciated this speech by Dr. Lstiburek, and derived much good info in spite of what some may perceive as caustic delivery from the speaker. Thank you, BerkeleyLab, for making this publicly available on KZfaq. It is imperative we get both the envelope and the HVAC system right if we hope to achieve any reasonable measure of "green" to our buildings.

I am a home owner, and all I know comes from my interest in building, construction and architecture. I take forerver to understand. However, the more I listen, the more I learn. The big lesson, if you are not rich, you really do need to keep learning. So to all my teachers, thank you!

Extremely interesting, in the 8 years since this was recorded I am currently being taught all of this stuff in detail (mechanical electrical, building science, structural etc) in a 2 year Architectural Technologies program. It seems to me that the message is getting across especially if the next generation of professionals are learning from these mistakes.

This is the best building science video on KZfaq. Here we are in 2020 and the design process is as broken as ever. There is so much exterior insulation being installed wrong it has become a joke. Joe is the MAN.

I don't find doc caustic at all. I've been saying commercial buildings are stupid too particularly the HVAC. I don't see why people would reject the truth because they don't like the package it came in. This guy is spot on.

This guy is brilliant! And I love how he doesn't sugar-coat issues. Just says it like it is! Bravo Sir!

I just realized: This is who I was aspiring to be my whole life! (I'm an HVAC Mechanical Engineer too.)

As a glazier who now owns a 50,s built solid foundation house. Who worked curtain walling systems in Aust England. I get what your saying. As a tradesman, the amount of time I have solid debates with Architects over a design floor we could sit down all night and drink beer. The laws of nature have to be worked with, but a lot of Architects just don't get that brilliant lecture. Let me know if you ever want to come to Australia. I have so many things I would like to talk over with you. Again Thanks . Jeff Moore

We always enjoy his seminars, very informative and fun to attend

I could watch this all day. Joe is the man!

The lecture at the Q&A at the end is about the best I've heard in 20 years.

You are very professional and can hold an audience captive. Your input is well appreciated and I thank you for your input on KZfaq.

Brilliant straight talking common sense ............

I try to remember that his abrasive manner is probably the result of a lifetime of dealing with unscientific, ridiculously flawed building structures.

I enjoy Dr. Lstiburek's delivery, we are polishing turds, LEED is stupidity, and the ego is more important than energy efficient buildings. Preach on brotha!

Great lecture! I will say this though… Joe says he’s never received a call from a client complaining “my building is leaking air”. Perhaps that’s the reason architects haven’t been drawing detailed 3-D “air control barrier” drawings…until VERY recently. But many DO draw detailed 3-D roofing and waterproofing drawings…often done by highly paid and skilled consultants. Yes…”bulk water” from rainfall and ground will always be the highest priority. It’s like going to the hospital. The first and foremost issue will be infection control, antibiotics and acute care. Meanwhile nobody will care about your metabolic health and the hospital snack-bar will be full of processed food that can lead to diabetes…20 years down the road.

thanks ! I showed part of your videos to my grade 10 construction class. They loved the parts about venting attics and insulation r values over time. This is what we should be teaching in science class.

I like this guy...class is in session.

I love this. Common sense and a straight shooter.

This is the Lewis Black of building science...and he actually kind'a looks like Lewis Black!

Great information! Thank you Joe.

The greens actually like rockwool as much as he does. It's certainly better for the environment than plastic foam. Generally it's only major drawback is that when used as cavity insulation it tends to be installed wrong like all batt insulation does.

Informative and easy to understand. Great job Dr. Joseph Lstiburek & thank you Berkeley Lab

Ooh this gets good the the end!

He is legitimately very, very funny. Brilliant dry, acerbic sense of humour coupled with brilliant, common sense information.

So its 10 years on - did things improve?

Brilliant presentation... love it everytime Joe speaks. :) You can't argue with good sense (unless you're an architect apparently... lol) Glad that some of these basic ideas/principles he has been advocating for years are FINALLY starting to catch on!

I would have been laughing NON-STOP! This guy is GREAT! Darn kids missed all of his punchlines! He is just too darn smart for them I suppose :/

hose those architects Doc. im an architect and love it.

GETS GOOD AT THE END

This guy speaks the blunt truth about that GSA mess.

It is still interesting, especially when not finding good instructive material to build a residential including details showing drarawing and materials fo a good design of walls ect. Thanks

Dr Joe Lstiburek:, "Life is tuff enough as it is, its harder if your stupid ,... Don't do stupid things!". John Straube Instructor - Building Science, "You got the Rot, We got the time".

Office buildings are sooo overairconditioned. I would love to for a change work in a building that had less A/C and maybe even windows that could be opened for normal air. In general office buildings are the most oppressive and uncomfortable spaces imaginable climatically. Really a great case for working from home. Nothing worse than walking through the parking lot on a nice summer day with a warm light breeze and sunshine and then walking into the building and being hit in the face with a wall of cold, heavy, oppressive air. Only remedy is to quickly walk to my desk and turn on the space heater under my desk and breath a sigh of relief. And then stressfully wonder - WHY does it have to be this way?

I do have to add that although research into LEED performance post occupancy is showing LEED projects not performing as intended, the documentation trail LEED required is instrumental in being able to conduct post occupancy evaluations. I can only imagine if LEED not around how much more difficult to do “forensic” building evaluation.

Thank you .

Wonderful man, really enjoying his presentations. I have graduated from technical university, I have structural engineering bachelors degree, we have got ton of stuff to learn, and basically almost none of these fundamental things which is being tought here, even though I always wondered, it didn't really come, mostly it was mechanics + mashup of everything :D I wonder if it is like that in so many other technical universities. +1 on students not being active socially, +anotherone on students being boring, true.

Dr Joe Lstiburek is a GIFT to MANKIND!

Wonderful! He is not stupid

Thanks for all the knowledge transfer.

Thanks for the video!

29:50 Dunkirk Joke... This guy is ahead of his time...

I done with you guy! I need a beer! Lol 😂 Joseph is the greatest

its a learning experience from Rodney Dangerfield.he's a good handle on making a system that's available and been around to laymen forever. its basic fundamentals. and hes right they are being lost and not taught any more because of time. now here the lecturer exposes a comment upon every message hes trying to teach. his style is [read other comments] ton which they feel its abrasive. i think he wastes alot of time. he could give more reference to back uppish genius.

so if you added sound proof drywall with metal between it. on the outside wall it would mold wouldn't. so is it only for inside walls right?

Folks should know Joe isn't so brash in other lectures. Maybe he slept in one of those all glass hotels the night before and got no rest :) He is on point about Greeny weenie worthless awards. Just yesterday I was trying to find a house that was designed by undergrads and won one of those Solar Decathalon awards. Well, I couldn't find it because the house doesn't exist!! It was an award for a house on paper only! OK house model but it's the same because it didn't get built. That should stop. Don't experiment on us living in these buildings based on untried models or biased baselines and then praise people for not following through. As another example, I found one of the double envelope passive solar homes with Earth berm from the 1980s on the market. Went to take a look because it was being sold by the original owners who had it comissioned. Oh the problems it had were so sad but so basic too: heavy vapor and water damage. Everything Joe talks about here. So this newer age of innovation in building has me skeptical that it's creating problems again instead of sticking to basics.

Wow, where is this building with no A/C?? I want to work there!

Some of the negative commenters are academic rookies and this is too advanced for them. They should read books that explain the dumbed down basics. Those of us with life experience in both the science and the construction field details really enjoyed this and don't mind the humorous delivery which is mild compared to real construction projects language. I spent 25 years technical and on construction projects, chief building inspector of a city.

Could a drop ceiling return plenum just be changed to a drop ceiling supply plenum? (run the fan the other direction) To generate a positive pressure instead? Would there be other problems resultant of this technique?

OMGoodness 😂 love I have no vowels in my last name he is spot-on right and hilarious

Tight glass?? I want an open window!

wow ... sarcasm plus! yes, he is very abrasive even though he is pointing out very very real problems.... you can show that there are problems without attacking everyone! So get that textbook written Lstiburek!

Great lecture but around 1:04:00 I don´t understand why there is a discussion being avoided with the member of the audience.

He's like the Ron White of building.

30% glass

Do you know of anyone who has implemented or any resources about an air ondol system that moves air from an attic down to the crawl space and back up to the attic? Is this feasible for attics with blown-in insulation and crawl spaces with a dirt floor?

It ought to be a requirement to say the right way to build a building, before presenting to the public so all the mistakes in any science. It’d be nice if he told stories of good examples, before ranting on mistakes of others. “Learn from our mistakes” is a fallacious proverb. “We make mistakes and hopefully don’t repeat the same mistake.” We believe In a thousand more things than there is to believe in Judging from experience. Collect absurdities, you become an absurdity. He has knowledge. Wish he expressed what he knew for more than 120 seconds of this talk, instead of the useless information-failures of others.

If we can't get more energy efficiency into our building, then I must say all the experts in the field are over qualified for their positions. What do you think?

I don't like how these old people want to fight with him. I think there's more hope with the younger generation.

When is the last time a building fell down...ouch

don't worry I tell you how stooped I am but getting something out of it

Wow!

Awesome guy , knows his stuff and highly practicle . Canadian humour just like Australian humour . Doesn't translate well to Americans though ...... obviously ! Lol ....

Dude sounds like Jeff Goldblum

Holy facadists batman! I knew I didn't like steel framing in houses before, now I have a new reason why. How any architect failed to notice that steel inside large skyscrapers gets insulated before attaching anything to it is wilful stupidity. One after thought for Joseph: next time you're in California speaking, don't take the first question until after you crack open a beer. Such dumb questions... I thought there was going to be a literal hair pulling moment. Collegiate types whining about having to read white papers and insisting nothing gets learned without a textbook? No wonder the state is in a downward spiral: educators are hooked on format instead of facts.

second video I watched still don't understand maybe its because I'm a painter

Isn't the simple answer to all of whining about energy efficiency in these buildings that they weren't designed for energy efficiency? And why would they be? Energy is cheap, and people are willing to pay for buildings that allow in tons of light and look good. Hence all the glass. If people want to pay for energy efficiency, they obviously can. But it's not obvious why they should. I own a house that was built in the 1980s. It's terrible from an energy efficiency standpoint, as most houses built in that era are. I have a heat pump. My electric bill is still less than $200/mo even during hot summers. If my house were built with modern energy efficient building science, it would have been much more expensive. So it's a simple trade off that the homeowner (or building owner) has every right to make. I get the jaded view of "green" on the commercial side, but it's easy to explain. Commercial building owners like to pretend to be "green," because there's a senseless, almost religious commitment to "green" today, without any consideration for cost and tradeoffs. Which is to say, there's no consideration for basic economics. What is the cost of "being green" versus the cost of not being "green?" And what do people prefer and at what cost? The problem with this lecture, and most modern attitudes among engineers and designers, is they don't care what the buyer wants or can afford. They don't care about the difficult tradeoffs and choices that homebuyers and the builders they hire must make in order for real humans (which is to say, middle class humans) need to make. This guy's irritating sarcasm just bleeds contempt for anyone on a budget who wants a house.

but how does this help me build better jenga towers. i want answers, doctor.

Guy is funny

99% of them give the other 1% a bad name. :)

You have thing thought throw. Thank You The smarter I've been the stupider idiots make me look.

Well In 2014 he preaches vented roof and now in 18 he speaks unvented WHAT THE HELL? Clear it up please. Distinguished? when you change opinions every other year I do not feel it.

Any of you guys work in office? Without glass windows , life is terrible . This guy is excellent in his game ,but also too ignorant .

The jokes r just a polite way to entertain. He has too back up his shtick with real world hard won knowledge

exothermic insulation

Funny how he ridicules architects, "greeny weenies" and LEED certification. Green roofs with "dirt" as he calls it and "goats" might be less efficient than "stupid insulation" or white reflective roof but the good news is it's not only about energy efficiency. There's also so much benefits that you wouldn't have from only super efficient insulation (better air quality, less heat island effect, better aesthetics...) I'm an engineering student and I think engineers and architects should work together. Increased ventilation in LEED buildings might be more energy-consuming but what about volatil organic compounds, better air quality and the like? We need an holistic approach and stop bashing about other professions, everyone should work together. In my opinion, he has some good points but an argument cannot be presented with "stupid" as the main reason.

hardee har har, he soooo funny

Please translate, "Fiberglass is a horrible thermal insulation but a fantastic acoustical insulation." Translate "fantastic" to a quantified number and unit of measurement. BTW, are you taking drugs for your artery disease? It's stupid to not know you have artery disease. You DO know, don't you?

He must of had a bad childhood.

This is very informative and could have been much better without all those stupid jokes

not sure what's worse, his smug arrogance or his condescending humor

Some good content, but not a very good teacher/lecturer

An unfunny lecturer who thinks he's funny completely ruins any informative quality his presentation might otherwise have had.