Training, Education, & Confrence

ACECET’s Grand Opening & Ribbon Cutting

Ah what a great day for a ribbon cutting ceremony at Calhoun Community College. Today they officially opened the doors for the new Alabama Center for Excellence in Clean Energy Technology (ACECET). The 11,000 square-foot ACECET building was originally constructed in the 1960’s & was extensively remodeled and earned LEED Platinum status. It is now […]

BPI at the Crossroads: (Exams, New Certifications, Standards)

Lately BPI (aka Building Performance Institute, Inc.) has been growing exponentially and making plenty of waves in the certification field. Just this last July they had 25,000 “active” certifications and closed out 2011 with 31,662. Originally there growth while slow was also pretty steady as shown on this chart of BPI accredited contractors. Enter in […]

Alabama Code Updates, Confrence Recap, and Misc. Tidbits

Whew, what a way to start of the year; the insurance company finally came through on the one project which we almost have wrapped up, the Habitat project is in full swing, IBS was a blast, and we are finally ready for the Huntsville Home & Garden Show (better be seeing it is next weekend). […]

Alabama Storm Water QCI Training

This week instead of heading to Austin for the RESNET conference, I choose to head south to Montgomery to ABLE aka Alabama’s Better Living Expo. One of the reasons was to catch up on the updated Storm Water codes & regulations that apply here in Alabama (and the rest of the country). Like many EPA […]

IBS 2012 – Day 3 the People, & Some Cool Tools

It just seemed like a really odd day where everyone was dragging just a bit and the show was a little quitter than usual. The last two days were almost non-stop, while today many people were actually checking their luggage in at a special TSA desk for later flights in the afternoon. I had never […]

IBS 2012 – Day 2 and is it?

Today started off in the Outdoor Pavilion with the award breakfast for the Building America program hosted by BASF. Sam Rashkin was the keynote speaker & in typical Rashkin style, even though he had a script, he managed to go off on a few side tangents. I think the best on was the shot he […]

International Builders Show 2012

Wow, people weren’t kidding when they said you needed at least a few days to walk the whole show. I only managed to walk about a third of inside aisles today and then there still is the outside pavilion. I did manage to catch a couple of the classes, and I must say they are […]

Becoming a LEED AP: Habitat for Humanity, BOULD, and You?

So you have decided you want to earn or become a LEED AP. There is just have one small issue, unless you have or are working on a LEED project, just how are you supposed to gain the experience & show documented involvement on a project registered or certified for LEED? (AKA a letter of […]

NorthernStar, DOE, Foundations & Basements Recap

Thanks to Michael Anschel we are able to provide the second day of the NorthernStar Conference which was covering foundations & basements on this day. (The first day & more information) This event was composed of individuals from DOE, Verified Green & the University of Minnesota among others working on creating better guidelines for the […]

NorthernStar, DOE & Windows – A Recap

I just loved this tweet – “I really like days when Michael Anschel attends and tweets some interesting conference to which I am not invited.” Well that makes two of us, but fortunately Michael is nice enough to tweet about them. Speaking of nice, he was also nice to allow me to pull them all […]