Paying for advise can be cheaper than paying for the wrong product or service.

I cringe every time I hear it. "We replaced our (boiler/windows/insulation) and the house is still uncomfortable and the heating still costs too much."

Usually I'm on the phone. Someone has called, they've already spent a lot of money, have very little satisfaction and now find themselves calling someone who is probably going to charge them money to tell them they made a mistake. To be honest I probably feel just as bad as they do. I'm going to charge them money, tell them they need to spend money on something else to save energy and feel more comfortable and I have to do it without saying that they made a mistake. My job isn't to rub it in.

So make us both feel better, pay me first. Really.

Why call me (or perhaps some other building consultant) instead of just calling a contractor? So that when you spend money on your home you'll be comfortable that it was well spent, because you had a plan. I don't sell anything, I only work for you. My job is to make the process easier for you. I help you make the plan.

How do we start? Usually with an energy audit. The process gets me to see the important parts of the building. Plumbing, heating, electrical and structure in addition to the insulation, ventilation and windows. We might be done at this point. Depending on your goals you might feel that you have enough information to proceed on your own. A lot of people do and that's fine. Please drop me a note after you're done to tell me what you've accomplished. Send some pictures too.

Suppose you've got big plans for your house. An addition or major rehab, residing, new electrical work or maybe finishing the basement for that man cave. Do you want to use this as an opportunity to add insulation? Does the basement have water problems? Is there some mustiness in the laundry room that you'd like to get rid of too? How do you know where to start?

We can make a plan. Once the energy audit is complete we can talk about how you can integrate the information from that with your overall goals. If you need further guidance I can write specs for each step of the process. I can suggest the best order to do things so that work doesn't have to be undone and redone. That can get expensive. Do you need help evaluating bids from contractors? Perhaps you need someone to inspect the work as it progresses to see to it that your work is done according to the specs we laid out earlier.

The important thing is that each plan is designed for you. The combination of services will be what you need, no more or less. I like to think of myself as a mapmaker for my customers. I want to get you safely, efficiently and cheerfully through your projects.

It all starts with a call. If you call me first you can call the rest of the contracting team with more confidence. You'll have a plan.

Old houses are like old people. You can learn a lot from them if you take the time and respect them.

One of my indulgences is taking time to look at a detail in an old house and trying to get into the head of the craftsman who made it. I can't say that every try is successful, but when I do figure it out there have been some great "Aha!" moments. More than a few times it's taken years and some other discoveries to see what was going on.

Sometimes it's a structural choice; how were two pieces of wood joined, why was that support here and not there. It could be material choice or why did that window go into THAT corner. Sometimes there's a really good, smart reason, other times it's tough to figure and there are some clear mistakes. These are lessons that are sitting right there waiting to be learned and many of them are still applicable today.

One important thing about successful (surviving) old buildings is that they could dry out if they got wet. Quickly too. And that's the important part, if wood stays wet it rots. If it dries quickly it's fairly forgiving of some periodic wetting. If you let it get too wet too often your building won't survive for future generations to see how stupid you were.

How did they dry and are there lessons about that for today? They dried because of lot's of air and energy flow and materials that don't trap moisture. No insulation and free air movement in wall cavities are a recipe for drying. Interior horsehair plaster dries very rapidly which also helped keep the walls dry. Of course in the 18th & 19th centuries showers and hot tubs were in short supply and indoor swimming pools were even rarer. So buildings had lower moisture loads to deal with and had good drying potential. That's a good way to make a building that will last.

We have become more regular in our hygiene and with high energy costs we want insulation in our walls and ceilings. This puts us in a bit of a bind because we just messed up our building longevity strategy. What to do? Let's go back to our original building and see what else we need to change. Well, if the walls won't dry, maybe we should keep them from getting wet! Some of those old details will still work for us and some won't. If we are expecting better thermal performance we need to give the walls (and other building parts) better water management so they can make it to the next generation and beyond.

With future posts I'll explore the details, but new construction will have different solutions than rehab, probably. With rehab or retrofit you have to think more carefully about what the strengths and weaknesses of the building are, what the extent of the planned work will be and what can realistically be done within those constraints. The reason I love working with older buildings is that I can use all those lessons I mentioned earlier and, with luck, get some more.

Oh, one more thing. When you do undertake a rehab on an old building remember to leave a penny with the year you completed the work where someone will find it when they get around to their own project in the future. They'll know that you were thinking about them and maybe take the time to learn a few lessons of their own.