There’s good news in this soggy story, however: it’s simple to fix. Or at least it can be.

1. Take a walk around your house and look at your downspouts and drainage patterns. If all the rainwater and snowmelt are draining to a single point—namely, a few feet from your foundation—you’ve essentially got a moat, and there’s nowhere for it to go but down.

1. Make sure downspouts extend six feet from your house. At this distance, your yard should be sloped enough to drain water away and not back into your abode. If you don’t have gutters and downspouts, get some, or Mother Nature and gravity are going to send every drop toward your foundation.

1. Don’t settle. If the area immediately surrounding your home has settled to a point lower than the rest of your yard, that’s where the water’s going to go. Build up the earth around your foundation so that it slopes—and directs water—away from your home.

1. Daylight your drainage tiles. This one’s a little trickier, but if you live on a hill (as most folks do in Duluth), it’s doable. Simply bury drain tile (a large-diameter drainage hose) around your foundation, make sure it slopes downhill (even though it’s underground), and expose the drainage end to the open air. This will catch the water trying to seep into your basement and run it out into the yard—or into a basin you can use to water the yard, gardens, plants, etc.

These are simple fixes, but they work. I’ve seen it time and time again. I’ve also seen a builder put up a house in the epicenter of a drainage basin. The owner got over a foot of water in his basement, and hired me to fix the problem. That involved lifting his house two feet, putting gravel over the original basement floor, adding drain tile, and pouring a new basement on top.

That’s not an easy fix. So again, I refer to steps one through four.

See what else I’m working on. 

The home I live in has already hit the century mark, and while some folks might say “I don’t want an old house,” I would remind them: old houses were built at a time when things were meant to last.

Take Europe, for example. They’re living in houses that are centuries old. Centuries. Do you think the average ‘50s ranch is up to that? That people are going to float their little Jetson’s cars into the driveway and the garage door is still
going to open? No. Probably not.

I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but I get upset when I see homes going up with seemingly little consideration for how long they’ll stay up. We need to think about who’s going to live there after us. And after them. And after them, too.

Which brings me to the topic of Futureproofing, a term I first heard in Ireland while studying some of those old houses. The concept requires us as builders, architects, engineers and, especially, homeowners, to consider what we’ll need from our homes in the future.

How much energy will our homes consume in the years to come?
How much water?
Where will that water come from?
How long can a structure stand up to the elements?
And, most importantly, how long can a structure stand?

Futureproofing considers every detail in regard to consumption and construction:

• Drainage – keeping rainwater out of your basement and collecting it for gray-water use (flushing toilets, etc.)
• Insulation – insulate to standards of R60 to reduce the amount of heat your furnace needs to generate
• Rainscreen Principle – when moisture gets into a structure (which it will) this allows the structure to dry out naturally; otherwise you get mold
• WUFI – a technology that allows us to see and control moisture patterns, again avoiding mold, rot and eventual structural failure
• Windows – using them to help heat and cool your home
• Heating – using right-sized, low-temp systems that allow for peak efficiency
• Lighting – reducing electrical load with LEDs and sunlight

Plus countless other technologies and techniques designed for sustainability and longevity

Futureproofing is here, and if we don’t understand it, we’ll keep building the same problems over and over again. And no matter what the future brings, that’s not something we can afford to do.

See what else I’m working on.

I’m not usually a “good enough” sort of guy, but when I started researching Nanogel and discovered that NASA used it to insulate their spacecraft, I thought, yeah, this might be good enough for the houses I build.

Truly, this technology in a modern wonder.

It’s thin, it’s translucent, it’s water repellant, and when you frame it between two panes of glass, you get a thermal panel that blocks out Duluth’s cold climate better than an insulated, 2”x4” stud wall.

A Nanogel wall is really more like a window. It lets in sunlight, yet offers R-16 insulation protection. A typical wall with fiberglass insulation is only R-11.

A typical window, for that matter, is just R-2.

Nanogel’s translucent technology allows homeowners and builders to fill any (or every) corner with light and warmth. Imagine that for a moment: hallways that don’t have to be dark caves; rooms that literally glow with natural light, yet aren’t chilly during Duluth’s harsh winters.

It hardly seems possible, but we’re proving it again and again in a variety of applications. According to Cabot, the makers of Nanogel, the possibilities are limitless.

For me, and for the rest of us who live in this cold, dark climate, that sheds considerable light on how we need to think about building.

See what else I’m working on.

Instead, let’s talk about radiators: those cast-iron behemoths that suck up space in a room (not to mention hundreds of gallons of water) but do a darn fine job of drying out mittens.

It’s these ages-old heating sources that offer the most hope for a warmer, more efficient winter, and while the technology hasn’t been modified much in over a century, there’s a new, smaller, low-temp, high-efficiency model that’s changing everything.

This is the next generation of radiators: 2,400% less water, instant heat, higher output and much, much smaller space.

Built by the Danish company Jaga, (pronounced ya-ga, even though efficiency geeks like myself are, admittedly, ga-ga over them), these convection-based radiators are a complete 360 from what homeowners and builders are used to.

Let me make this engineering marvel as simple as possible:

• Most new homes are being built with solar, geothermal or condensing boilers (water-based heating systems).
• These systems are designed to run at a low 110º to 130ºF (older, conventional boilers run at 180º to 200º, and the hotter the water, the more it costs).
• Jaga radiators can heat a room to a toasty 70º with water that’s only 90º.
• This allows your condensing boiler to run at optimum efficiency, all the time.

What makes them even better is their size. A 3” x 3” x 15” radiator cranks out the same, room-filling heat as, well, an old room-filling radiator. They also use tiny fans to radiate heat out into the space, not back into the wall.

And unlike their predecessors, they can actually be controlled. If sunlight fills your living room during the day, shut them off in that room. When the sun goes down, you turn them back on and they heat. Instantly. This not only saves on your energy bill, it keeps your living room from being 93º in January.

Again, I get pretty amped up about this stuff, but when you see the science behind it, you’ll have a warm spot in your heart, too.

See what else I’m working on.

This is one of those really crazy ideas. One of those far-out, that’ll-never-fly concepts that only looks good on paper. Except that it works, right there on the side of your house.

It’s bark. Yep. Bark. As in the stuff that grows on trees.

And now, instead of throwing it away when we harvest the timber that frames your home, we keep it. And we turn it into a rustically beautiful, completely sustainable, totally natural, virtually impervious siding material.

Seriously. Bark is perfectly designed to protect trees—it keeps out water, it has natural inhibitors which keep out bugs, it lasts for hundreds of years—and it’s uniquely suited to protect homes.

When we look at homes sided with bark—over a century ago—they’re not only still standing, they still have their original siding. No painting. No peeling. No problems.

Now, I’m not suggesting you cover your entire home with this miraculous old technique, but it certainly merits consideration.

• Bark offers eye-catching appeal in places where you might use cedar shake or some other highlight material.
• It’s wonderfully textured and totally unique.
• It can be harvested sustainably, without harming the tree.
• It’ll outlast every other siding product, without paints, stains or chemicals.

Bark may well be the most valuable part of the tree.

Instead of tossing it out, we need to reconsider using it. And as crazy as it sounds, it’s one of those ideas that’s going to last and last and last.

See what else I’m working on.

Which brings me to my point: we can see it now. And not only can we see where it is, we can see where it’s going.

That means we can stop it.

Stopping moisture damage has long been a guessing game for architects, builders and homeowners (myself included), and we see the results of this guesswork every day:

• 5/8” plywood walls so rotted you can stick your finger through them
• A 13-year-old roof that’s little more than shingle-covered mush
• Black mold inching it’s way through new (yes, I said new) homes, threatening the very lives of their inhabitants

We can’t live like this, which is where WUFI comes in.

WUFI is a German software modeling program that analyzes every inch of your home, tracks how and where moisture is moving, projects what that water will do over three years of northeastern Minnesota weather, and gives us concrete data we can use to control—permanently—your home’s moisture issues.

To put it bluntly: WUFI can keep your home from rotting to the ground.

Sure, not every home is rotting, and maybe you don’t need this type of testing in your abode or new build, but even a few of the country’s most prominent structures could have used it to assuage their suffering.

Take the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s $300 million Frank Gehry building, for example. You’ve got that type of architectural and engineering brain-power going into a building, and you still end up with a total disaster.

Wow.

I was talking with a local architect the other day—a guy who’s struggled with moisture concerns as much as anyone—and I showed him what WUFI is capable of.

He said, “Randy, this is a game-changer,” and I think I saw a little excess moisture there in his eyes.

See what else I’m working on.

Let me be perfectly clear when I make the “wet newspaper” analogy: I’m not exaggerating.

For all it’s inherent qualities (and not-so-immediately-apparent flaws) cement fiberboard siding is hydroscopic. It absorbs water. And water turns siding into mush.

Much like newsprint left out in the rain.

Why am I telling you this? Because I care what you (and I) use to build our homes.

Let’s go back ten years to when the product was introduced. The manufacturers made bold claims and grand statements, and I called the company for proof. I got it, too, and I couldn’t wait to make an order.

Fortunately, you couldn’t get cement fiberboard siding in Duluth at the time, and that simple fact saved me and dozens of homeowners years of headaches.

I’ll admit I have used it, and because I build using a rainscreen principle that allows siding to dry out and stay dry after a rain, I’ve had good luck. In some cases, that is. In others, I’ve seen total delamination and complete product failure.

One builder came to me just two years after installing cement board siding—he was replacing it because runoff from the roof had destroyed it. In two years!

Who cares if there’s a 25-year paint warranty when the product itself is deteriorating after two years?!

I get upset because I get excited when new products promise success and sustainability. You see, I follow a five-generation philosophy, and I design homes that last far longer than their inhabitants.

I literally search the world over for new materials and technologies that make such structures possible. And when I find one that fails me (and you, and our planet), I’m going to make sure you read about it.

Maybe even in the newspaper.

See what else I’m working on.

And if you build a house in a place like Duluth, Minnesota, you’re dealing with much more than a 20 mph breeze. On a scale of 1 to 10 weather-wise (where 10 is a raging blizzard riding in off the world’s largest lake on 60 mph gales), we’re an 11.

What we need are stiffer door frames and beefier windows.

Take an off-the-shelf storm door, for example. A strong wind will push that door in ever-so-slightly—maybe only a fraction of an inch—but water driven by wind doesn’t need much of an opening to feel welcome. It just comes right on in.

Same thing goes for windows, and I can’t tell you how many homes I’ve seen—new homes, too—in which the walls around windows are so molded and rotted you can stick your hand right through them. (Actually, I can tell you, there’s just not room to list them all here.)

I worked with aerospace engineers to create doors and windows that stand up to anything Mother Nature’s got.

They don’t bend, they don’t bow, they don’t let water into your home.

• They’re made from pultruded, non-conductive fiberglass
• They offer (and here’s an idea!) more than one piece of weather-stripping
• The frames are insulated
• We’ve fused the glass to the frame itself

No gaps, no leaks. You can have a door or huge picture window, and it’s like there isn’t even a hole in the wall.

Why isn’t anybody else doing this? Well, they are, in Europe. (You know, the place with all those centuries-old buildings?) Here, planned obsolescence reigns, and if a window only lasts ten years, you can sell one every ten years. It’s good for the economy, right?

It’s not good enough for me. Or for your house.

See what else I’m working on.