Building America: Put New Tools and Content on the Building America Solution Center to Work for You!

July 22, 2015

Chrissi Antonopoulos, Energy Research Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Michael Baechler, Senior Program Manager, Electricity Infrastructure and Buildings Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Gail: Hello everyone! I am Gail Werren with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and I’d like to welcome you to today’s webinar hosted by the Building America program. We are excited to have Chrissi Antonopoulos and Michael Baechler here today to tell you about the latest developments in the Building America Solution Center including new tools and content that builders and industry professionals can put to work immediately.  

Before we begin, I’ll quickly go over some of the webinar features. For audio, you have two options. You may either listen through your computer or telephone. If you choose to listen through your computer, please select the “mic and speakers” option in the audio pane. By doing so, we will eliminate the possibility of feedback and echo. If you select the telephone option, a box on the right side will display the telephone number and audio PIN you should use to dial in. If you have technical difficulties with the webinar, you may contact the GoToWebinars Help Desk at 888.259.3826 for assistance.

If you would like to ask a question, please use the “Questions” pane to type in your question. If you are having difficulty viewing the materials through the webinar portal, you may find PDF copies of the presentation at the website listed here and you may follow along as our speakers present. Today’s webinar is being recorded and the recording will be available on the DOE YouTube channel within a few weeks.

We have an exciting program prepared for you today that will describe new features in the Building America Solution Center. These features include new sales tool that will help builders and sales professionals best describe the house features that make their products unique and of higher value to consumers. You will also learn about a new checklist manager to help builders who want to label their homes as U.S. EPA Indoor airPlus, and expanded information about topics that serve existing homes.

Before our speakers begin, I will provide a short overview of the Building America program. Following the presentations, we will have a Q and A session, closing remarks, and a brief survey.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Building America program has been a source of innovations in residential building energy performance, durability, quality, affordability, and comfort for 20 years. This world-class research program partners with industry to bring cutting-edge innovations and resources to market.

Building America is supported by 10 industry research teams and four national labs.  Each of these teams and labs partner with dozens of industry professionals including builders, remodelers, manufacturers and utilities. The best and the brightest in the residential buildings industry can be found here.

Building America uses applied research to deliver building science solutions, using a four-step framework.  These innovative solutions are tested in homes to develop proven case studies of success the market can point to. Building America provides the tools the building industry needs to ensure the innovations are applied correctly, always keeping an eye on energy performance, durability, quality and affordability. The final step, infrastructure development, is the conduit to getting innovations to the marketplace.

Building America research focuses on how the components of new and existing homes work together through systems integration. As the market changes and evolves, so has the direction of our research in order to add value and drive changes in performance across the residential building industry. In addition to technical challenges we also address market transformation issues such as valuation of energy efficiency. 

In the 20 years of Building America research, we have spearheaded combining ultra-high efficiency with high performance in both new and existing homes.  And, we are consistently achieving this challenging task. 

For example, in 1995, a typical home used 3 times more energy per square foot compared to today, and indoor air quality, comfort, and durability problems were common. Today, a home built to DOE Zero Energy Ready Home specifications uses less than half the energy and is more comfortable, healthy, and durable. By 2030, Building America will demonstrate that new and existing homes can produce more energy than they use.

Visit the Building America Solution Center to find expert information on hundreds of high-performance construction topics, including air sealing and insulation, HVAC components, windows, indoor air quality, and much more and in our webinar today you will learn about some of the new features offered by the Solutions Center. You can find this resource at the URL on your screen. Also, the Building America website provides information about the program, the latest Top Innovations and case studies, and there, you can also subscribe to the monthly newsletter.

And now, onto today’s presentation…

The Building America Solution Center is known for its easy-to-follow, illustrated, step-by-step guides for installing the measures that make up high-performance homes. Our speaker will tell you about a number of new tools and content that has been implemented that you can put to work immediately. If you would like more detailed information about this effort, please feel free to contact our speaker.

Our first speaker today is Chrissi Antonopoulos, an Energy Research Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  Her current work includes analysis of green building technology diffusion in the commercial building sector, valuation of energy-efficient homes, and website development for energy-efficient programs. Chrissi has led research tasks focusing on code development for renewable energy technologies and market forecasting green building in the commercial sector. 

Also here today to help field questions is Michael Baechler, a Senior Program Manager for the Electricity Infrastructure and Buildings Division at the PNNL. Michael manages the National Accounts Partnership, a part of DOE’s Commercial Buildings Initiative, and PNNL’s support to Building America Documentation and Resource Development.  His Building America work includes developing best practices and case studies for residential energy-efficient construction and technologies in each of five climate zones.

With that, I’d like to welcome Chrissi to start the presentation.

Chrissi:  Thank you, Gail. Alright, I think everyone should see my screen. Gail, please let me know if you’re having any trouble.

Hello everyone. My name is Chrissi Antonopoulos and I’m with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Today’s webinar is about the Building America Solution Center and putting new content on the Solution Center to work for you!

A quick overview of what we’ll be discussing today - 2015 has been an exciting year for the Building America Solutions Center.  We continuously add content since we launched the Solution Center in 2013 but this year we’ve also launched a few new tools that we’d like to share with you. First, we now have a checklist manager that complete…yes?

Gail: Excuse me but I’m not seeing the new slide, the slide progression on your screen…on the screen.

Chrissi: There we go.

Gail: That looks good. Thank you.

Chrissi: Ok. Thanks. Sorry about that. We have a new tool, new checklist managers, supporting EPA’s Indoor airPlus program. We have a new sales tool. We have a new video library with over 80 videos and we’re currently working to expand our existing homes content and influence new navigation to support existing homes guides. At the end of the presentation, I will give you a brief live demo of the solutions center and walk users through how to create an account and add some content to field kits, which is a customization tool we’ve built into the website.

Quickly, an overview of the Building America Solution Center, it is an online tool designed to provide building professionals with fast, free, and reliable building science and efficiency knowledge.  The heart of the Building America Solution Center is made up of guides, which are a compilation of content covering nine critical topics.  For one I think there are about 150 or over 170 individual measures now. You can browse through different galleries of images, CAD files, case studies, or you can filter results by keywords.

We have a wide array of user groups and the Solution Center is designed for anyone interested in accessing technical information about residential construction. Currently we have about over 150 visitors per year and growing. We have over 2,000 registered users including architects, builders, raters, code officials, consultants, contractors, editors, educators, engineers, and many others.

Why should you use the Building America Solution Center? We provide quick access to technical specifications supporting national programs including Zero Energy Ready Homes, ENERGY STAR Certified Homes, Indoor airPLUS, and Water Sense, access codes, standards, and climate information as well as detailed installation guidance. This slide represents just some basic user data and facts, over 175 full guides, over 1,300 images, 115 CAD files, 175 case studies, and over 375 references and resources. 

 The Solution Center supports many programs, including Zero Energy Ready Homes and ENERGY STAR. We are excited about just releasing the EPA Indoor airPLUS checklist as well. We do support Water Sense and are looking to release a full Water Sense checklist in the future. We support existing homes and we also support the Building America program by including a full library of proven performance research.

There are many navigation tools to browse the database. The database is rather robust and it’s easy to get lost so we provide some front end navigation. The building components tool allows you to browse through the Solution Center by topic. Program checklists are aimed to walk you through step-by-step each line item of any of the federal programs we’ve been talking about. Optimized climate solutions are packages of applications for various content types throughout the U.S. The browse file provides galleries of CAD files, images and case studies, and the new sales tool, which we’ll talk about in depth, provides consumer facing value-based messages for home performance and energy efficient measures.

Here you’ll see an image of the home page. You’ll see the URL in the lower left – basc.energy.gov.  On the home page, you will always see the navigation on the left. That navigation will follow you everywhere throughout the Solution Center so you can access the browsing tools.

You’ll also see recently added and updated guides. Like I mentioned before, we’re constantly updating and adding new content to the Solution Center. Check back often and you’ll see new guides posted and other types of content such as images or case studies or references.

So let’s dive in and talk about the new navigation tools that we’ve been developing this year. The first is EPA’s Indoor airPlus checklists. You’ll find it on the left hand navigation pane underneath “Find Your Topic By” and for those of you familiar with the Energy Star or the Zero Energy Ready Homes checklist you’ll notice that this checklist is modeled in the same way so it follows exactly the same format.  You can browse through the checklists and find guidance for each line item associated with that particular measure. So in this case we’re browsing through the radon section and we have found some technical specifications for vertical radon ventilation pipe.

The Solution Center is comprised of guides. Guides are really at the heart of content within the Solution Center. Let’s quickly go through the guide tabs. There are now nine. We’ve added a new tab in June. The first tab is the “Scope” tab, which provides a basic scope of work for any application.

It’s followed by a “Description” tab. The description tab will give some basic background information, technical details, and step-by-step installation instructions. There are often a lot of images as well as outside resources as well.

The “Success” tab will provide any safety information, planning information, access information, or any other supplementary details necessary to successfully complete the measure.

The “Climate” tab will provide you with an overview of any climate specific details that are applicable to that particular measure. The training tab now has three components. The first are right and wrong images showing correct and incorrect application. The second are presentations, usually the opening of either a PDF or PowerPoint that can help walk through installation or other information and now we have also included videos. This particular one is not showing one but a video link will open in a new tab and play a relevant video associated with that guide. The “CAD” tab includes CAD drawings, which are available through either the original .dwg file, if you have autoCAD software or a .pdf. The “Compliance” tab will walk you through any program specific information. It will also walk you through any information regarding current codes and standards associated with the measure.

The “More” tab will provide you with direct links to case studies and other outside references and resources and the new tab, the “Sales” tab, will provide you with a consumer facing value message associated with this particular measure. We’ll go through this in a little bit more detail coming up.

The “Sales Tool” is now available under the “Find Resources” section of the primary navigation. The Sales Tool provides a new glossary of sales themes that can be used across the industry to consistently reinforce the value of high performance homes. There are ten basic building topics. Clicking on any one of building topics will take you to a list of terms associated with that highest level topic. Once you find your term…sorry, ahead of myself there. Once you find your term there are a few components. First is the translated term, which will provide translation from the technical building science term to a value-based theme – more consumer facing; a brief technical description, which will provide a brief overview of the technical specifications of the measure; alternate terms represent one of six value propositions; engineered comfort; healthful environment; ultra-efficient; advanced technology; quality built; and enhanced durability. A sales message, which is a detailed statement capturing the value of high performance building science measures.  You can access the Sales Tab from any BASC guide and find this information or you can use this tool to browse only sales related themes. This tool is integrated throughout the Solution Center.

Here is an example of what the content looks like. In this case we’re looking at HVAC ducts in conditioned space. You’ll see the technical description, alternate terms off to the right. There’s always an image associated with the content as well as a sales message associated with the content.

Coming soon you will be able to download a PDF of this or print this page. You’ll also be able to add these pages to your field kits, which we’ll review in a little bit. Also coming soon you will be able to create customized lists of terms. Each list will allow you to add your logo, create lists of high performance measures based on your building techniques and based on one of the six value propositions that we covered. The examples that you’re looking at is for healthful environment. Measures are described using their sales message since it is more of a consumer facing product. You can save and print out worksheets to share with consumers. There are two types of worksheets that you’ll be able to print out – one similar to what we’re looking at here, which is just kind of a quick list of all measures applied to a home. The second measure you’ll be able to pick and choose very specific items and those will include a full sales message. So these will be more detailed lists and we’ll be releasing this later this summer.

The Sales Tab and BASC guides will also allow you to access all of this information without using the tool to navigate through so anywhere you are throughout the Solution Center you can always access the more consumer facing information by clicking the Sales Tab, the very last tab.

Let’s move on to the video library. The Solution Center now has a library of over 80 videos ranging from air sealing and HVAC to window and indoor air quality topics. Building America worked closely with Building Media this last year to produce many of these videos. Videos are embedded into the guide training tabs but we’ve also added a link to the navigation that allows you to browse through videos as a standalone content type just like you can images or CAD files. You can filter videos by keywords to find specific topics.  Here is an example of what the video landing page looks like. Each video will have a title and date posted and it will give you a little sentence with a basic description of what you’ll find in the video. Times for the videos range from around a minute and a half to about four minutes or so. Videos are also included on the training tab. You will see at the very bottom of the training tab any video applicable to each measure guide that you’re visiting.

We’re also in the middle of revamping the Building Components Tool.  It exists right now on the home page. It’s called “Building Components” and it’s a way to browse through Solution Center guides by topics. We’re redesigning the tool to help streamline the integration of the Existing Homes Guide. The tool will really focus on making Existing Homes Guides very accessible for users without having to browse through A to Z lists of guides. Guides applicable to both new and existing homes will have a brand new tab with existing homes information. Guides that are specific to existing homes will follow the more traditional BASC outline, including the nine full tabs.

We’re also producing a wheel for the building components tool that will replace the kind of block images that we currently have on the website. Clicking on any one of these primary topics will produce a popup on the screen that will allow you to drill in further and select the topic that you are most interested in.

Once you select that topic you’ll be taken to a page with all of the BASC guides that pertain to that particular topic. You will find two important filters over on the right hand side of the screen. The first is the “Construction Type” filter that will allow you to toggle between new homes and existing homes. There will also be an option to view all so you can see both. There will also be a keyword filter that will filter, further filter, content that you’re interested in.    

The “Optimized Climate Solutions” Tool is something we released at the end of last year but the tool has been up and running now and we thought we’d share it today. Building America and the Zero Energy Ready Home Program created recommended measure packages used by builders to meet or exceed the 2009 IECC by 30% in each climate zone.

The content is a standalone tool in the Solution Center. Each climate zone page includes direct access to proven performance case studies along with the specific packages. You can also download PDF documents for each climate region.

You’ll find this tool under the “Find Resources” left hand navigation. Clicking on that will take you to this landing page. The map is dynamic so you can click on any climate zone to take you further into the tool and provide you with specific climate zone information. In this case we’re going to hit hot-dry and mixed-dry and we’re going to go to this page. For each climate zone you’ll find some basic items. First, you’ll see this energy savings data that compares the average new home to different programs. You’ll find very specific guidance in the Thermal Enclosure, HVAC system, and Efficient Components tab for applying these methods. At the bottom of the screen, not shown here, you’ll also find a list of detailed case studies supporting each climate zone.

We really want you to become part of the Solution Center community. One of the great advantages of registering to become a member is that you can customize your content. You can also provide direct feedback on content on guides and also submit content. You’ll find the registration page on the upper right hand corner of the Solution Center above the search box.

Once you register you’ll have access to field kits. Field kits are customizable folders that you can use to bookmark different kinds of content throughout the Solution Center. Right now field kits support guides, images and CAD files and coming this summer they will support videos, as well as these customized sales materials that we were talking about.

Each time you create a field kit you can name it anything you want and you can add anything you want into it. Once you’re in your field kit you can then browse through the different content that you have saved. In this example I’m browsing through my CAD files and I’m going to a guide. To add any guide to your field kit you must be logged in. Once you are logged in, above the guide, you will see a little brief case. If you click on that or even if you hover over it a pop up will come up and it will allow you to add a field kit to or add the guide to any field kit that you’ve created and I will go through this with everyone to show a short demo of how this is done. Once you’ve added items to your field kit you can then access them in the field using the Solutions app. You’ll find a link to the Solutions app on the home page. You’ll also find it here on the slide. It’s basc.energy.gov./solutions. There is an app for android phones as well, or android devices as well, as iOS devices. Download the app to access media, access guides, and access your saved field kits for specific construction projects. All you need to do is put the app on your phone or other device. You must have an account. Once you log into your account, your account will sync with your saved data and it will then become accessible regardless of whether you have an internet connection or not.

Coming soon we have, we’re working on, updates now to support Energy Star Version 3, Revision 8. There are some changes in Revision 8 that we need to implement. We’re redesigning the home page to highlight some of these new tools that we’ve implemented. We’ve expanded Existing Homes content and we’re also redesigning the Building Components tool. We’re going to implement customized sales materials into the Sales tool. Next year we’re going to update the Building Science Publications tool. We’re going to update the Mobile apps and we’re looking to add a full Water Sense checklist as well.

So with that I will end by leaving the basc.energy.gov URL up on the screen. Also please look at the Building America website at buildingamerica.gov. Both will give you access to these tools and many others.

So I’m going to exit out of this presentation and I’m going to go into the tool itself and walk everyone through how to log in and create a field kit. Feel free to do this along with me or just watch. Here I am on the home page. Right now I am not logged in so I will not see field kits anywhere. To log in, to register, click the register button. We’ll ask you for some basic information and you can create a new account. If you’re already registered, click the log in button and provide your user name or email address and password. Once you’re logged in the biggest change you will see is over here on the right you’ll see a block that says “My Field Kits.” This will now follow me around everywhere I go throughout the Solution Center. This way you can always find your bookmarked content or you can add to it or delete from it. It’s very simple to create a new field kit. Just click the plus button. It will ask you for a title. I’m going to call this July webinar and now I have my new field kit here.  If you want to delete a field kit, just click the minus sign or if you want to add a new one, click the plus sign. So now I have my July Webinar field kit. It has zero items and I want to find some items to put into it. I’m going to go to the Indoor airPLUS checklist. Let’s say I’m working on pest control for my project. We have two guides that support pest control. I’m going to look at reducing pest intrusion and here I am now on this guide.  Above the guide I will see my field kit and if I hover over it I will see my list of field kits that I have created for this account. So, I want to add it to my new July Webinar field kit. All you do is push the plus and now you’ll see it belongs to one field kit and you’ll also see that my July Webinar now records one item in there. Let’s say I have more browsing to do. I want to go and find more CAD files. I can visit the CAD file gallery and clicking on any of these CAD files will expand it. I can download a PDF. I can save it as a .dwg file or I can add it to my field kit. Then let’s go out of it just for fun.

Let’s say I’m interested in finding some HVAC insulation. I can use the keywords over here to filter down the images. You can see we have almost 1,400 images in here so it can be a bit daunting.  So if I’m looking for HVAC insulation, I can start by hitting HVAC. I’ve narrowed it down to 313 images but I can also use the remaining keywords to further filter my selection. What did we talk about? Insulation. So now here’s insulation. Now I’ve filtered the 1,400 images by HVAC, insulation, and I’ve come up with 35 images. I can browse through and find the particular image that pertains to my project and then I can add it to my field kit here.

Let’s say I’m done adding content to my field kit. You can access your field kit anytime by just clicking on the link and I have very few things in my field kit so it doesn’t look very exciting but I can see the CAD files that I saved. I can see the image that I saved and I can see the guide that I saved. It is bookmarked here so I can just pull it up immediately and maybe I have something in the training tab that I want to show some people or maybe I would like to share the step-by-step instructions of how to reduce pests entering through concrete floor foundations.

You can create as many field kits as you’d like. You can call them anything that you want. You can delete them at any time as well. Let’s say I’m finished with this project and you have 20 of these things and it’s getting cumbersome so you just delete and it is now gone. Here is a field kit. Here is a good example of a field kit that has quite a bit of content in it. I have a number of guides here and a number of images as well. Like I mentioned in the presentation we will also be adding videos and the sales message, messages, along with these tools.

One other thing I will show you is that for when you are also logged in you can see that your field kits follow you but you also have the ability to provide feedback for guides. Not only do you have this field kit link above every guide you have a feedback link. Click on the feedback link and it will produce a form that you can fill out. It will include the guide title. It will include your email so we can get back to you and it will ask you some basic questions – Do you have suggestions to improve this guide? Did this page resolve your questions or did it help you learn? And other comments? This feedback will go directly to our inbox and we greatly appreciate it.

With that I’m going to hand it back to Gail and we will take some questions and answers.

Gail: Ok, thank you, Chrissi. We have time now for a few questions and we already have some great questions from the audience and you may submit additional questions through the “Questions” pane on your screen. Our panelists will answer as many as time allows. The first question is – can I share my field kit with others?

Chrissi: Right now you cannot email a field kit or directly share with others. What you can do is create joint accounts with others. So if you have, if you want to create field kits to share with your whole organization I would recommend creating an organization account that multiple people have access to. That way you will keep all your field kits in one shared area that anyone can access.  We are working on developing a tool that will allow users to have some sort of email communication between accounts but that is still in the pipeline.

Gail: Ok thanks. Here is another question about field kits. Can I put customized brochures in my field kit? Currently you cannot put customized brochures in your field kit, however, we are developing the customized sales tools that will allow you to upload a logo and your own name and it will include all of the sales messages that you’d like to hand out to consumers. That will be coming late this summer.

Michael: Chrissi, this is Michael. Hi everybody. Let me ask that question in a slightly different way and maybe you can answer it. Will the field kit be the only way that a user can download those customized brochures?

Chrissi: It will be embedded into the field kit functionality. Yes. So that will be kind of the avenue for creating customized content.

Michael: Ok, thank you.

Chrissi: Yeah. You can always download any content from the Solutions Center and use it in your own customized materials. That is allowed. This is all public knowledge but in terms of using the tool to upload a builder name or a logo or a kind of brand, the tool content itself, that will happen through the field kit functionality.

Gail: Ok, and there was kind of a follow on question on that topic. It says – can we use these images, videos, and text on our website for homeowners and contractor staff? How would we get copyright credit?

Chrissi: So the Solution Center gives copyright credit to all of our contributors. This is also a government website, which means that all content on it is publically accessible and publically available. Private contributors to the website have signed copyright release forms. So a user should be able to download and use the content however they would like.

Michael: We would encourage folks to credit the Solution Center and send folks to the Solution Center if they want to get further information on whatever materials that you’re using.

Gail:  Ok, and the next question is – how do I know if a measure is required in a program if I don’t find it by going in the checklist tool?

 Chrissi: So on the scope tab and on the compliance tab of every guide you will see Zero Energy Ready and Energy Star notes. You will also see Indoor airPLUS notes. So those notes describe the program requirements as it pertains to that particular measure. There’s also links on those two tabs that will take you directly to those program requirements and checklists.

Michael: Sometimes there’s a situation where we are presenting a best practice and the best practice is not specifically required by a program but it falls within, say, a broad category of measures that the program does require so, for example, a ceiling air handler box. We actually had Chrissi and I took a look at this one this morning. There’s no specific requirement that you seal an air handler box but there is a more general requirement that you make air distribution systems as tight as possible. So we provide that more general guidance that in that particular instance comes from the Energy Star program and we’re providing a specific measure that helps you meet that more general requirement. So we do provide the more general requirement and, as Chrissi mentioned, the links so you can go back and see in the context all program requirements what it is the program is after.

Gail: The next question is – how do I provide feedback on the guides and the field kits?

Chrissi: So, at the top of every guide there will be a feedback link. If you click on any guide there will be a feedback link there that will open the form. The only caveat to this is that in order to provide direct feedback you must be a registered user and logged into your account. The reason for that is we need an email address to be able to answer you back to.

Gail: Does that also pertain to the specific field kits?

Chrissi: Yes, so we also have a contact us on the home page. The field kits are a little bit more of a generic item. So if you go directly to the home page you’ll see a link for comments. That will get you directly to our inbox and for any general comment please feel free to email us and provide your input.

Michael: I will just add to that and this is a….we haven’t gotten a ton of comments but the ones we’ve gotten, for the most part, have been very specific to issues related to guides and very very helpful to us in terms of updating a guide or at least considering an ambiguity in a guide. You know, it wasn’t exactly clear what I was supposed to do at this particular step. Once again I encourage folks if you have comments on the guides and you think you have a better way of presenting the information or a photograph that will help to make the information more useful, please provide those comments. They’ve been extremely useful to us.

Gail: Then, here’s a question about the videos. Are they closed captioned?

Chrissi: The videos all include a transcript. The videos all come from YouTube video channel and going to that channel will allow you to download a full transcript of each video.

Gail: Does the registration require me to provide personal information?

Chrissi: No, the registration does require an email address and a user name but none of that has to be personal information.

Michael: And I’ll jump in here too. When folks register the one thing you do provide is you do identify a climate zone and you do identify sort of your occupation or your interest and when you identify a climate zone that activates, within the Solution Center, a feature that will tell you – tell you the user – when you are looking at a measure that may not be applicable to your climate zone. So you get a little red flag that gives you some additional information that you may want to take into account as you’re looking at a particular guide. The second thing that it does is it helps us. It helps us to figure out who it is that’s using the Solution Center in terms of our folks. Architects? Are they raters? Are they builders?  And that’s useful in terms of the kind of information we want to provide the users as well as knowing who the audience is and how to best reach out to that audience. It’s pretty general information that we ask for but it’s very useful for us just in terms of helping to understand the best ways to communicate with some folks.

Gail: Alright, and we have one final question. Please clarify about your app. Do you have an app available?

Chrissi: We do have an app available. You can find it, a link to it, directly on the home page. It will say “Get the Solutions App”. We are in the middle of redesigning this on the page so we’ll make it really obvious on our redesign as well.  The solution app is available on the iTunes store as well if you have an Apple device. If you do not have an Apple device, you are on an android, you will need to install per the instructions on our website. And again, if you just want the raw URL it’s basc.pnnl.gov or basc.energy.gov/solutions.

Michael: And what the app does is it allows you to synchronize…so you create your field kits. You can always access your field kits from any computer, right, you don’t have to have a mobile device to access them as Chrissi demonstrated in her presentation. You can always go into your field kits but what the app does is it allows your mobile device to synchronize with your field kits and then you can take your field kits wherever you need to go. Chrissi make the comment that the app allows you to access that information whenever you need it. The point there and she said without an internet connection. The point is that once you sync that with your mobile device, you go out to a construction site or into the basement of city hall to talk to the code examiner, you can actually pull of any of that information that you want to, because it’s on your mobile device, and share it with whoever it is that you need to share with. If you wanted to train a crew, you just wanted to provide additional information to that codes official, then that gives you that capability and you don’t need to have cell coverage or internet coverage as long as you’ve synchronized it before your go there.

Gail: Now we did have a couple of questions come in so I’ll go ahead and ask those. The first one is – I work in three climate zones can I select three zones only or do I need to select all?

Chrissi: You can select multiple climate zones, however many you would like. You’ll see a dropdown in the Climate Zone tab and you just hold down Control and click as many as you would like. There is also a little tool tip underneath the Climate Zone box that tells you how to do that. You can also select all. There is an option to select all so you can be as specific or as broad as you would like.

Gail: And there is another question here about the EPA airPLUS. Will the EPA airPLUS be offering any guidance in regard to reducing any risks associated with fire hazards within the kitchen area of a residence? Not sure if you have the answer to that.

Chrissi: Umm…

Michael: I don’t have an answer to that and I would just encourage the…whoever is asking that question to specifically look at the Indoor airPLUS website for the program as a whole and you can get more specific program information there. When you talk about fire in a kitchen that sounds like it could be anything from burning the bacon in the pan to calling the fire department to take care of something that is quite serious. So I am not quite sure how to approach an answer there but I would encourage you to go to the Indoor airPLUS website to see how the program is responding to that particular issue.

Gail: Ok, that’s all the questions we have for today. Thank you everyone. Chrissi and Michael, before we take our quick survey, do you have any additional or closing remarks you’d like to make?

Chrissi: No, thank you everyone for your time and please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions.

Michael: I’ll just add this. We have a…this is obviously an ongoing process. This is a living tool. Folks when you provide us with input, whether it’s through comments or grabbing one of us – by us I mean folks that are working on Building America – and provide input, it’s really helpful and I would encourage you to do that. I’ll also note that we’re going to be finishing up a number of the features that Chrissi mentioned today around the Sales Tool, and some of the other features, and we will be talking about those at the EEBA Conference in early October. If you have plans to attend the conference please come to the session. You’ll have an opportunity to meet us. Now there’s an opportunity for you, as well as, you know, if you’ve tried the things out and you want to give us input, you can do that or if you just want to learn more about what those features are and see them kind of in person – close up and personal – you’re welcome to come to the session.  So that will be at the EEBA Conference in early October.

Gail: Thank you, Michael. Now we’d like to ask our audience to answer three short questions about today’s webinar. Your feedback will help us to know what we are doing well and where we can improve.

The first question asks whether the webinar content was useful and informative. To answer click on the radio button right in the GoToWebinar panel.

The second question asks about the effectiveness of the presenter.

And, the third question asks whether the webinar met your expectations.

Thank you for taking our survey. The August 26 Building America webinar will be Part 1 on our series on Ventilation Strategies for High Performance Homes. Registration will be open soon on the Building America meetings page. Also you can subscribe to receive notices about upcoming webinars and other news at the URL on the screen. On behalf of the Building America program I would like to thank your expert speaker for presenting today and our attendees for participating in today’s webinar. We’ve had a terrific audience and we appreciate your time. Please visit the Building America website to download a copy of the slides and learn more about the program. We also invite you to inform your colleagues about Building America resources and services. Have a wonderful week and we hope to see you again at future Building America events. This concludes our webinar.