Joseph Lstiburek: From Rocket Science to Building Science

Meet building science expert Joseph Lstiburek.

September 1, 2022

“People don’t seem to know they’re not getting the right information, and they’re not taking the time to really understand what’s going on,” said Dr. Joseph Lstiburek, Ph.D., ASHRAE Fellow, and founding principal of Building Science Corporation.

As an expert in building codes and practices, Lstiburek is continually working to educate people across the industry—including home inspectors. He’s made a particular impact in the areas of air barriers, vapor barriers, and vented and unvented roof assemblies. His work with industry partners through the Department of Energy’s Building America program led to significant research into the wetting and drying of walls and ultimately to a major code change relaxing the requirement for vapor barriers in the International Residential Code.

Lstiburek is scheduled to teach two sessions at the upcoming InspectionWorld in Las Vegas in January 2023—one on healthy homes and another on indoor air quality.

“People don’t really understand very much about indoor air quality and healthy homes because of the misinformation that’s being given out by people who have vested interests,” he said. “You shouldn’t have bad stuff in your house that makes you sick. It’s not complicated.”

In his Healthy Home course, Lstiburek will define what makes a “healthy home” and how to create, operate, and maintain one. Does a healthy home mean that the occupants are not doing unhealthy things in the home? Does it mean that the builder hasn’t used materials that are unhealthy? How can a home inspector look at a home and decide if it is healthy?

“One of the misunderstandings of healthy houses is people think if they bring in a lot of outside air they can exhaust the pollutants in the house,” Lstiburek said. But he likes to point out: “Dilution is not the solution to indoor pollution.” He said using air to flush contaminants out of a building is not very effective in dealing with strong contaminants, though. “Any powerful contaminant will overpower your ability to dilute it out. Ventilation works best for people and the odors that people generate. You should ventilate for the contaminants the human itself gives off and then everything else you use source control. This concept is not new; it’s just not being executed very well.”

Lstiburek’s Indoor Air Quality course will define indoor air quality, identify contaminant sources, identify strategies to provide acceptable indoor air quality, and more. How does humidity affect indoor air quality and buildings? And how will Covid change indoor air quality?

Lstiburek has been teaching home inspectors and others in the building industry since the late 1970s. But this wasn’t always the plan. His father was a builder, and a young Lstiburek put himself through school as a builder before getting an aerospace engineering degree. He graduated as a rocket scientist in the late ’70s—a time when jobs in the field were difficult to come by. So he returned to the construction industry.

“I went back and became a laborer. I was one of the few people who could read plans,” he said. He started asking questions about why things were being done the way they were being done. Soon he was hooked. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.

Lstiburek holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering, a Master of Engineering in Civil Engineering, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Building Science. As an undergrad, he worked as a residential construction manager, and while he was getting his master’s he developed the Air Drywall Approach to air barriers. He also worked on the Canada-wide Super Energy Efficient Housing R-2000 program.

Today Building Science Corporation provides a diverse range of services to the industry—from forensic investigations to building performance consultations.

Read more at Building Science.

And learn more from Lstiburek at the upcoming InspectionWorld, taking place Sunday, January 29 to Wednesday, February 1, 2023.


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