Blog Post

LIVE Contributor: Peter Yost

Peter Yost is Vice President - Technical Serviceas for BuildingGreen, Inc. in Brattleboro, Vermont. He has been building, researching, teaching, writing, and consulting on high performance homes for more than twenty-five years. His expertise stretches from construction waste management and advanced framing to energy efficiency and building durability. Peter has made significant contributions to the work of many leading homebuilding organizations and initiatives — NAHB Researcher Center, Building Science Corporation, 3-D Building Solutions, EEBA, Masco's Environments for Living program, USGBC's LEED for Homes program, and the US Department of Energy's Building America program. Peter is currently Lecturer for Yale's Graduate School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, an instructor for the Boston Architectural College's Sustainable Design Certificate program and a Research Associate with the University of Massachusetts Department of Building Construction and Technology program in Amherst. He is a past co-chair and current Materials and Resources Technical Advisory Steering Committee member of the USGBC's LEED for Homes program.

Published April 22, 2008

(2008, April 22). LIVE Contributor: Peter Yost. Retrieved from https://www.buildinggreen.com/blog/live-contributor-peter-yost

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Comments

Peter Yost
Building-Wright
BuildingGreen Premium Member

September 22, 2018 - 8:44 am

Very interesting Robin - sort of like a bilge pump in a boat with a porous hull...

And it does seem as though you might have hydrostatic pressure, at times, that overwhelms the perimeter drainage.

Thanks for sharing.

Robin Rader
BuildingGreen Basic Member

September 20, 2018 - 2:34 pm

I watched your presentation Waterproofing Buildings from the Inside and wanted to offer some lessons learned.  We were tasked with replacing the function of exterior dewatering wells installed to protect a 10' deep basement at our local hospital used for storage.  A new addition was being added that surrounded this basement which included ground densification reducing permeability by 10x.  We wanted to seal the inside but the structural engineer nixed it.  The floor was not built to resist hydrostatic pressure.  We installed the "Hand in Hammer" approach but it did not work.  We could only get within 10' of the footer per structural and only 18" deep with perf pipe.  The summer after construction was wet with ground water coming within 4-5 feet of the surface.  The floor was still wet.  One day an imaginative maintenance tech who was pouring water collected off the floor into the sump decided to see what would happen if he connected the vacuum directly to the sump vent.  Low and behold instead of water bubbling up through cracks in the floor the water was being sucked into the cracks.  The hospital installed a permanent vacuum pump on the sump and has maintained a dry floor since.  The sump pumps still operate fine without NPSH being exceeded.