Summary: If you are new to the Building Enclosure industry, or just new to the Building Enclosure Blog, this is the best place to start. Welcome!
This page is the introduction and backbone of our site. From here, you can follow links to detailed articles and resources. Since the site, and this page, are continually changing, check back regularly. This page is, by design, less humorous than our other pages. We hope to give newcomers an easy to understand introduction without complicating it with our puns and personal issues, even if it meant dialing back the humor. We also generalize a lot in this section, so, for now, know the topics are more nuanced than described below.
As always, let us know if you have questions or comments.
Welcome to the Blog and Defining an Enclosurist
Welcome to the Building Enclosure Blog.
Our goal is simple:
To help you become a better Enclosurist by creating unique resources for Enclosurists from all different fields.
Enclosurist?! Did you make that up? We sure did.
What is an Enclosurist, you ask? It is a word we made up to refer to anybody who is primarily and professionally involved in the design, evaluation, construction, maintenance, or commissioning of building enclosures. It is also the name of our in house cartoon aptly named The Enclosurist.
That is an extensive definition. Since Enclosurists come in all shapes and sizes, we need to find a way to help you get the content most suitable for your needs, questions, and experience.
Enclosure vs. Envelope
Here at the Building Enclosure Blog, we refer to the thing that separates the world outside your building from the world inside your building as the “Building Enclosure.”
It is not entirely wrong to also call that thing the “Building Envelope.” We just decided not to.
There are reasons we prefer “Enclosure” over “Envelope,” and we plan to explain those in a future post.
For now, know that you are among friends, and we don’t judge (too harshly).
What do Enclosurists do?
We think of the building enclosure field as consisting of four practice areas:
- Building enclosure design
- Building enclosure construction (and repair)
- Building enclosure evaluation
- Building enclosure commissioning
There is significant theoretical and practical overlap between the practice areas, but also substantial differences.
For example, in my work, I’m involved in the evaluation, design, and commissioning of enclosures and observing enclosure repairs. However, when I perform the commissioning role, my responsibilities are not the same as in my design role. My experience, knowledge, and training benefit me in both practice areas.
Let’s take each area at a time.
Building enclosure design: This area deals with the design of enclosures and involves the definition of a basis of design that satisfies the Owner’s requirements and a range of State and Local codes. It consists of selecting specific materials and components and documenting how they fit together to make the various systems that separate the inside from the outside. Architects typically do this daily.
Building enclosure construction (and repair): This area deals with physically constructing and repairing enclosures. This involves the means and methods required to put together all the pieces that make the enclosure. The construction process involves many parties, ranging from the construction manager to various sub-contractors, tradespeople, manufacturers, and vendors. While these people do not necessarily need to know how to design the enclosure, they need to know how to build it.
Building enclosure evaluation: This area addresses the knowledge, tools, and techniques to evaluate and test enclosures. Think about thermal imaging, water testing, blower door testing, and good old fashioned visual evaluation. All these activities fall into this practice area with the focus to identify defects or determine performance.
Building enclosure commissioning: This is likely the most expansive area of enclosure practice since it touches on the design, construction, and evaluation of enclosures. Building Enclosure Commissioning (BECx) is a process that attempts to confirm that the design and final building satisfies the requirements set forth by the building owner.
Each of these fields deserves a much longer explanation, but this will need to do for now. We will link to additional articles as they become available.
Enclosures and the building creation process
Depending on your background and experience, you may be familiar with the traditional design and construction phases. For our purposes, we expanded the stages to come up with the following:
- Project definition (OPR): The Owner defines the project requirements, goals, budget, etc.
- Programming (P): Design team develops the basis of design and initial project criteria.
- Schematic design (SD): Development of schemes and outline specifications.
- Design development (DD): Selection of preferred schemes and further development of the design.
- Construction documents (CD): Development of detailed drawings and specifications that can be used to bid and construct the building accurately.
- Construction (includes bidding and construction) (C): Owner requests and received bids. The contractor constructs the building.
- Operation (includes the end of life) (O): Building is occupied and operated. This phase lasts until the end of the building’s life. (Yes, buildings have lives.)
We like to associate each of these phases with Building Enclosure areas of practice previously discussed:
- BE Design: Prog, SD, DD, CD
- BE Construction: Construction (bidding and construction)
- BE Evaluation: Prog, Construction, Operation
- BE Commissioning: BOD – Operation
For each practice area, the Enclosurist needs to have mastered specific content, tools, or techniques. To help structure our website, we identified six general topics important to the Building Enclosure practitioner (Enclosurist).
What type of Enclosurist are you?
The Three Types of Practitioners
When writing an article, we consider the experience level of the readers we are trying to reach.
To keep it simple, we assume that everybody visiting our Blog finds themselves on one of three experience levels:
Beginner: This reader has just started to discover the Building Enclosure world and knows very little about the field. Content for these readers is introductory and focuses on defining key concepts and relationships.
Intermediate: This reader likely has a background in architecture, engineering, or construction and has a working knowledge and some experience of building science and building enclosures. When developing content for these readers, we focus on introducing emerging ideas and technologies and discussing more advanced concepts with real-world applications.
Expert: This reader has likely been involved in the building science and building envelope field for multiple years or has developed a specialized knowledge about a specific building enclosure topic. These readers have forgotten what many of us still need to learn. When creating content for this group, we also focus on emerging technologies and products. Our goal is to address topics that might allow readers to expand their focus on less familiar but equally relevant issues in the building enclosure field.
Now that we’ve made a distinction between experience levels, we also need to distinguish between project types.
Three Types of Projects
Not all Enclosurists work on the same type of projects. For a contractor building single-family homes, articles about the thermal bridging technologies for curtain walls may not be relevant. Similarly, for an architect designing a zero energy lab building, residential basement drainage strategies may be less helpful.
To keep it simple, we divide our content into three general categories:
Single-family homes: Projects focused on the enclosure systems related to single-family homes and the associated buildings. Projects can range from traditional construction up to complex zero energy projects.
Multi-family homes and light commercial: Multi-family projects or light commercial or institutional projects where the expectations for the enclosure are higher. Think about schools, public libraries, and other public buildings.
Commercial+: Projects where the building programs require an exceptional level of performance from the building enclosure. This category’s projects may include high-performance laboratories, hospitals, art galleries, museums, cold storage facilities, and natatoriums (swimming pools).
If you come up with a better way to categorize the projects, please let us know.
Experience vs. Projects
If you were to combine our different experience levels with the various project types, the following matrix emerges:
| Single Family Homes | Multi-family / Light Commercial | Commercial + | |
| Beginner | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Intermediate | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| Expert | 7 | 8 | 9 |
We decided to assign a number to each square in the matrix to serve as a combined experience/project complexity indicator. We then use the number to organize our articles. The lower the number, the more suitable it is for beginner practitioners or practitioners focusing on residential or light commercial projects. The higher the number, the more complex the issues we hope to address.
We know that this is not a perfect system, but it is relatively simple and work well for our purposes.
Six Building Enclosure Topics
For purposes of this Blog, we identify six general topics, each with multiple specific subcategories. The first four categories align with the practice areas previously discussed. The last two are foundational to all other practice areas.
The six topics are:
- Building enclosure design: The process, theory, and tools required to design the building enclosure. Questions here include, “How do I design an enclosure?”. And “What tools can I use for thermal simulation?”.
- Building enclosure construction: The process and tools needed to build or repair the enclosure. Questions here are “What is substrate preparation?”, “How do I measure film thickness?” “Is this membrane installed with a reversed lap?”.
- Building enclosure evaluation: The types of assessments, testing procedures, and tools required to evaluate enclosures. Here we ask, “How do coatings fail during a pull test?” “What are typical masonry defects to look out for?” “How can I find air leaks in a building?” “Is that stain wet or not?”.
- Building enclosure commissioning: The purpose, process, procedures, and tools associated with BECx. “How do I help a client develop project requirements?” “What makes a good Commissioning Specification?” “How do I perform a peer review?”
- Building enclosure science: The science underlying the building enclosure practice areas. Central to the field are the interior and exterior environments and how the environments interact with the enclosure. (Spoiler alert: Almost all Building Enclosure Science is Building Science. The rest is fiction and theatrics). Questions here are, “What is the relationship between temperature and humidity?” “Does heat rise, or only warm air?” “What is the psychometric chart, and is it important to my window selection?” “What are the building control layers?”.
- Building enclosure materials: Enclosures are made from materials, and the materials are arranged to form components, assemblies, and systems. The building enclosure practitioner needs to be familiar with things such as foundations, windows, doors, insulation, siding curtain walls, and coatings. This is the topic we group all those things under. Questions here are “What are the basic building systems?”, “What types of foundation walls are commonly used today?” “Where do I put the insulation?”.
Types of Posts
To answer these and other questions, we plan to publish several different posts:
- Educational Post: Longer post of a technical nature.
- Definition post: Shorter posts defining key concepts.
- Book review: Reviewing relevant Building Enclosure publications.
- Product review: Reviewing Building Enclosure related products.
- Organization profile: Profiling important trade or professional organizations.
- Checklist / Cheatsheet: Roadmaps to help you work smarter, not harder.
- Tool Introduction: Introducing you to new and helpful tools.
- Tutorial – How to: All Building Enclosure topics starting with “How do I…”
- Contest: We will be launching a design competition (the brief is a secret.)
- Myths vs. Facts: You’ve heard those before…
- Case study/lessons learned: Project examples for reference.
- Expert interview: Hearing from those who know more than us.
- News roundup: Giving you the news you may have missed or like to hear again.
- Graphics / Detail: Model detail to consider (or avoid) in your designs.
- Guest posts: Opportunities for others to use our podium (or soapbox).
If you made it this far, Congratulations!
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That’s it for now. Be well!
