Transduction Technologies

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Omaha, NE
Transduction Technologies

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We provide energy solutions to tenants, home owners, or large commercial building owners.

10/09/2026

WTF Friday - Happy Friday everyone!

10/02/2026

Public Safety Tip # 11: In almost all conditions, adding a powered attic ventilator to a vented attic space is a bad idea. Powered attic fan don't create ventilation by itself. It depressurizes the attic space, and sucks air from somewhere else through the path of least resistance, whether that's the soffit intakes, eaves, gable vents, or conditioned space through ceiling penetrations. ⁠
A powered ventilator can be used when the vented attic: 1) has adequate, properly distributed air intakes (soffits, eaves, etc); 2) attic has unusual configuration where passive ventilation is insufficient; 3) ceiling plane is exceptionally well air-sealed so attic depressurization relative to the house doesn't occur; 4) part of a designed attic ventilation system to solve an issue, which is usually moisture related and not "cool the [vented] attic space". Vented attics do not need to be cooled, but sometimes need to be dried. When the vented attic space is -8 Pascals relative to the conditioned space on a calm day (no wind), the vented attic is ventilator should be turned down/off.

09/23/2026

Why we can’t have nice things – Part 10 – Choosing to do nothing… This building had ~9000 SF expansion 2024. Since the expansion, the owner had experienced high indoor humidity in the summer and extreme dryness in the winter. Owner also experienced flies, insects around the windows, and recently some birds have made their way into the building. Everyone seemed to agree the problem was significant air leakage, just finding out where was the issue. Expansion general contractor requested a proposal from us for building testing to determine site of air leakage. We did a site visit and sent the GC and owner the photos below of all 3 exterior sides of the foyer and said, “I think we found at least part of your problem”. This was over 6 months ago… Nothing has changed! No further work or testing has been done since. We follow-up with the owner & GC every month or so. They say, “this is still under review by our team”. I certainly understand why the GC is kicking the can down the road, but the owner?

09/21/2026

This has been quite the summer of interior condensation. Residential, its been driven by air infiltration hitting cold ductwork in truss spaces. Commercial, its been older buildings with little to no insulation above the roof deck and/or air infiltration and/or thermal bridging, causing air in the plenum space to condensate on the metal roof deck or metal truss work or structural beams, then drip down onto acoustic ceiling tiles. Old, leaky plenum ductwork certainly doesn't help. Glad summer of 2026 is officially past us.

09/16/2026

Why we can't have nice things - Part 9 - Not my job/problem....Went to perform a final total duct test & duct leakage to outdoors and blower door test. We could not get the duct work to 25 Pascals at final, but had no issues at rough-in. 90% of the time, it's because I'm an idiot & forgot to tape off a register somewhere. Couldn't find one..rechecked duct fan & gauge set-up, no issues... pulled out the drawings... realized there was a register in the entrance hallway (Photo 1, red circle) that got covered by the wood paneling sub-contractor (Photo 2, red circle, photo from opposite side of register). ⁠
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2 thoughts - 1) how on earth did the wood paneling installer miss the register when they didn't miss any other ones? Or did they just not care? 2) how many times does this happen? In our area, neither blower door nor duct testing on similar projects would have been required. The residential section completely lacks any quality assurance or quality control (QA/QC).

09/14/2026

ASTM E783 (Standard Test Method for Field Measurement of Air Leakage Through Installed Exterior Windows and Doors) is a testing standard that describes the procedures to determine air leakage rates of installed windows and doors. It is intended to measure air leakage associated with the assembly and not the leakage through the openings and adjacent construction. The acceptable flow rate (air loss) is determined by subtracting the flow rate required to maintain constant pressure to the amount of extraneous air leakage. All windows should pass this test, and ASTM E783 should be performed on at least one window per project.

08/25/2026

Multi-family (MF) Construction - Why it Sucks - Part 4: Lazy or cheap Owners/Managers. In the month of August alone, I've actually had the following conversation with at least 3 different MF staffers: ⁠
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MF Staffer: We are getting lots of complaints about high humidity and brown spots on the ceiling drywall from tenants. ⁠
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Me: This is due to air infiltration. Hot & humid outside air is hitting your uninsulated and cold ductwork, causing the outside air to condensate on the ductwork. Then, the condensate drips down onto the drywall, and causes the brown spots on the ceiling. ⁠
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MF Staffer: Have you send this before? ⁠
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Me: About 8,000 times. ⁠
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MF Staffer: Well, our HVAC contractor says it's because the ACs are undersized. They suggest we spend tens of thousands of dollars upsizing all our ACs? ⁠
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Me: sigh... 1) your AC is already oversized for the apartment it serves; 2) upsizing will actually make it worse; 3) the much cheaper solution is to air seal the band joists and exterior walls. ⁠
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MF Staffer: [Silence] ⁠
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Me: How about this... for $500, we'll test the air infiltration of one unit, show you where the air infiltration is occurring with an infrared camera, & show you where the ducts are sweating/dripping (photo above). ⁠
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MF Staffer: Well, I'll have to talk to my manager/owner. ⁠
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Me: Hello again, I spoke with you a week ago, any decisions on how you're going to tackle the high humidity complaints? ⁠
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MF Staffer: Owner/manager said they didn't want to pay for the diagnostics or new ACs. We're just telling tenants to buy a dehumidifier or crank down the thermostat. ⁠
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Me: Again, that's not going to stop the duct work in the truss space from sweating. ⁠
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MF Staffer: Well, in another month or so, it will cool down & it won't be a problem anymore. ⁠
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Me: 🤦

08/05/2026

Congrats to and John Connor & Maryana Heilman for achieving their preliminary blower door test of 0.57 ACH50 and 0.04 CFM50/EA.

08/03/2026

Why You Test [& perform load calculations] – Part 8⁠
This 2006 single family house recently replaced its HVAC system by a national service company. According to the owners, when the old system was replaced, the national service company told them that they did proper load calculations to determine the size of the new equipment. Since then, the owners have had trouble with their atmospherically vented hot water heater just to the right of the furance/air handler (Photo 1). The 8-year old, methane gas, domestic hot water (DHW) heater seems to frequently backdraft (Photo 2). According to the owners, this had just started in the past few months. No building shell upgrades had occurred. After speaking to several contractors who couldn’t solve the problem, we were brought in. ⁠
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Most weatherization contractors know where this is heading. We turned on the air handler, closed the door of the mechanical room, and measured the pressure (Photo 3). The air handler with the undersized return ducts (Photo 1) had depressurized mechanical room to -7.8 Pa. The atmospherically driven, natural flue draft was only -3 pascals. So whenever the air handler was running, it would pull the flue exhausts back into the mechanical room. The mechanical room needed either makeup air, larger returns, or additional returns. Alternatively, a flue exhaust fan could also be added. There are several ways to solve this problem. ⁠
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The furnace installed was a 98,000 BTUH. Not sure how they did their “proper load calculation”, but our quick analysis was about half that size (~52,000 BTUH). Oversized furnace also led to an oversized air handler, which runs between 1,090 and 1,914 CFM. Point being, the incorrect load calculation (if any at all) led to a bigger system with a bigger air handler. The larger air handler requires a larger return volume. The lack of sufficient return air forced the air handler to get its required CFM from the mechanical room. This led to the mechanical room depressurize and overcoming the atmospherically vented, DHW flue.

07/27/2026

IRC Section 703.7 requires 2 (two) water resistance but v***r open barriers (WRB) when stucco is applied directly over wood-based sheathing (no air gap or rainsceen). What products are you using as your 2 WRBs and how are they applied? For example, a common approach is Zip or similar sheathing with building wrap product mechanically fastened. But will the building wrap survive the application of the stucco? Thanks for your input.

Address

Omaha, NE
68132

Website

http://www.transductiontechnologies.com/

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