BUILDTank / buildCAST

Aron Jones is the Co-founder of Big Dog Construction in Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada. He started his career in the military which led him to become a construction technician and then ultimately a builder once his service ended. In Canada it is common to enter the trades through an organize apprenticeship program call Red Seal and although Aron was already building, he received his carpentry...

I spoke with Brent Davidson, the Creator of the US heat Pump Summit which will be held in Worcester Massachusetts on November 18th and 19th of 2025 and again in September of 2026. Brent saw an opportunity to develop a niche conference that is gaining momentum alongside the push to electrify our homes. The aspirations of this summit have grown to not only tackling the technical side of air and wate...

Over a 30-year career in construction, Fernando Ruiz has become a dedicated proponent of building innovations and their relationship with affordable housing. He is the author of Building an affordable house which became clear in our conversation is not the same as building a cheap or poorly performing house. Fernando’s fundamental goal is to use his understanding of the rules contained in building...

Beau Brown is the founder of C & H inspection, a family owned and operated home inspection company located in Salt Lake City Utah. Beau started his career in the construction industry with his father and grandfather at the age of 10, building houses and garages all through his teens and early 20’s.  He then gained experience leading teams as a Chemical Technician conducting waste clean-ups wit...

Brian Shanks is the Manager of National Accounts and Governmental Affairs for Beazer Homes.  Beazer is a production home building company based in Atlanta, Georgia. The company is the 11th largest homebuilder in the United States and now operates in 13 states. Brian’s construction career has been aligned with energy-efficient and performance building in the world of large production builders, and...

Lisa Morey is a professional engineer and architectural designer who starting building with adobe bricks while living and working in New Zealand in the early 2000’s. While there she worked with a design/build firm that constructed nearly 50 earth block homes that was the catalyst for her company Colorado Earth.  Lisa is now a champion for earth block construction, not only how to make the earthen...

How did Sam Myers become the building scientist at Retrotec? Find out in this episode of the BUILDTank / buildCAST. Like most of us, the industry found Sam and a passion for building science blossomed. Unlike most of us Sam has created and grown his position in the industry on the back of his passion for finding unique ways of educating everyone that he comes in contact with. During the COVID most...

Thanks for listening to the buildCAST. In this episode we hear from Steve Baden, the founding Executive director of the Residential Energy Services Network or RESNET. RESNET is the governing body of the HERS home energy rating industry which was established in 1995 by the National Association of State Energy Officials, Energy Rated Homes of America, and the National Mortgage Industry Association t...

Thank you to Nicole Tysvaer Founder and CEO of Symbi Homes for being on the BUILDCast. Symbi Homes is a sustainable construction firm reinventing home building with an emphasis on wellness, energy-efficiency and technology. Symbi short for Symbiosis immediately got my thinking about building science, systems thinking, and the synergistic interactions that take place in construction of high perform...

We dove quickly into the Water Efficiency Rating Sore or WERS system with Mike Collignon Executive Director & Co Founder of the Green Builder Coalition.  So quickly in fact that we did not have time to talk much about the other cool things the coalition is doing, so definitely check out their website in the show notes to find out how they are a uniting voice for sustainable home building espec...

Vincent Deorio CEO, Mike Davidson Sales and Marketing, and Ben Walker Sr Architectural Manager at RedT homes, share what it’s taking to grow their company into a regional production builder that is offering LEED platinum homes. Their unique business model incorporates land acquisition, entitlement and design, architecture, and construction along with real estate-focused marketing and sales. Their...

Starting in tech, moving into solar, Stephen Kane found his home at SPAN where he is helping builders integrate smart electric load management to lower the cost of electrifying homes while giving homeowner’s a better user experience.  Our conversation touched on both new construction and existing homes as the move toward electrification is touching both worlds.  I have to say that I found our exis...

Jacob Deva Racusin, based in Vermont, is the Co-Founder and Director of Building Science and Sustainability with New Frameworks. He is also the lead researcher and BEAM Tool Co-Developer with Builders for Climate Action.  As a builder, consultant, researcher, designer, and educator, Jacob has merged his passions for ecological stewardship, relationship to place, and social justice with building sc...

Rob Howard began his construction career with Habitat for Humanity where he built ENERGY STAR homes through Advanced Energy’s System Vision program. When he became director of construction at Habitat he built the first Net-Zero Energy Home in North Carolina in partnership with the Appalachian Energy Center in 2005. He now only builds DOE Zero Energy Ready Homes and was a 2024 Housing Innovations a...

Happy New Year! I begin 2025 with a conversation I had with Randy Williams. Randy is well known for his Northern Pro Build blog that concentrates on applied building science, energy efficiency, and cold climate construction. He followed his brother into the building industry and quickly made a name for himself once he caught the building science bug. He was introduced to building science when he b...

Robby got selected to be on the 2027 IECC consensus committee to develop the new energy code and his mind started turning, about if he really wanted to go through this for the fifth time. To quite his mind he starting talking. So here is his riff on the 2027 IECC. BUILDtank inc

Josh Butzbaugh, Senior Project Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, has been focusing his research on Heat Pump Water Heaters (HPWH). His research has helped to demonstrate the impact HPWH’s can have on efficiency, carbon reduction, and peak demand response. The problem with implementing the technology is that replacement happens at a point of failure and consumers want a new water h...

Robert Lewis is the Radon Program Manager at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. He wrote a paper and presented on the History of Radon from 1470 to 1984 which I found to be an interesting way to approach the subject of Radon in our homes. Early in my career I combined home inspection with energy ratings and offered a radon measurement service. At the time I had to get an EPA...

Before dedicating his career to integrating solar energy into the new construction market Dennis Helblig worked for a variety of builders including Colorado’s favorite regional production high performance builder Thrive Homebuilders. Seeing the efficiency of the housing stock continue to improve, Dennis moved on from building and worked for industry leading solar companies like SolarCity, Sun Stre...

Scott Doyle is the managing director of quality assurance for the Residential Energy Services Network, or RESNET. RESNET governs the home energy rating system or the HERS® Energy Rating Index. Scott became a HERS® Rater in 2003 and since being certified has inspected and tested the energy performance of thousands of homes across a variety of construction types and climate zones. In 2007 he became...

Early on in my carrier when working for a regional production builder, the president and owner suggested that indoor air quality was that path forward to communicate the benefits of applied building science, resilient, and energy efficient construction. I think he was right, but it still has taken living through covid to get the consumer to understand its importance to health in our homes.  Versio...

Stephen Davis is the product manager and director of building science for Quadrant Performance Materials. Quadrant is a spray foam insulation manufacturer that produces the EnvironSeal line of spray foam. Stephen has been working in the industry for the past 25 years and has always offered himself as a resource for all questions regarding spray foam, from building science to manufacturing and inst...

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