MC024-1.1 Energy Conservation and Moisture Control in Buildings
How Heat and Moisture Meet at One Surface — and Why That’s the Key to Every Warm, Dry Building
About This CPD
Join us for a foundational technical CPD on heat and moisture in buildings. This session starts with a corner: one corner of a room that’s always a little colder than the rest, where a dark stain of mould creeps back every winter. The reason is the whole point of this session.
Presented by Eugene Korch (IAST), this course shows why heat loss and moisture problems are not two separate faults, but one fault showing up twice — meeting at exactly one place: the surface temperature of a wall.
This course covers:
Why these two belong in one lecture — the cold corner that ties heat loss and mould together, and the one shared point where the two topics meet
How heat moves, and where a building loses it — conduction, convection, and radiation; thermal conductivity and resistance; the U-value and its mirror image, the R-value; and the linear, point, and geometric shapes a thermal bridge comes in
How moisture behaves — where the water in a building’s air comes from, why warm air holds more of it, and relative humidity, dew point, and vapour resistance in plain terms
Where moisture becomes a problem, and the link back to heat — surface versus interstitial condensation, and why a cold spot and a damp spot are always the same place
Using plain language and everyday analogies throughout, this CPD gives you the vocabulary and physical intuition that every later, calculation-based course in this series builds on.
What You'll Learn
Explain why heat loss and moisture problems are not two separate faults but the same fault showing up twice, meeting at one shared point: the surface temperature of a wall
Describe the three ways heat moves through a building — conduction, convection, and radiation — and recognise all three acting together across a real façade
Explain thermal conductivity (λ) and thermal resistance (R) in plain terms, and describe how a wall's layered resistances stack up to a single overall value
Explain the U-value in plain language, state the rule that lower is better, and recognise the R-value as its mirror image used in the USA and Australia
Identify where a building's envelope loses heat — walls, roof, ground floor, and windows — and explain why the envelope only works as a whole
Recognise linear, point, and geometric thermal bridges by their shape on a drawing, and explain why each becomes both an energy leak and a cold spot
Explain the difference between accidental air leakage and deliberate, controlled ventilation, and why "airtight" does not mean "sealed shut"
Describe a building’s heat balance as losses against gains, and explain how good design manages both sides of it
Explain why warm air can hold more water vapour than cold air, and use that idea to explain condensation, relative humidity, and dew point in plain terms
Explain vapour resistance and the "tight on the warm side, open on the cold side" rule for a healthy wall, and why that rule reverses between a cold climate and a hot, humid one
Distinguish surface condensation from interstitial condensation, and explain why the hidden, interstitial kind is the more dangerous of the two
Explain why a cold spot and a damp spot are the same location, and why warming a surface typically solves a heat problem and a moisture problem in a single move
Describe the health, durability, and performance consequences of leaving heat and moisture problems unaddressed
Who Should Attend
Architects, Architectural Technologists, Junior Façade Engineers, Envelope Designers, Façade Specialist Contractors, Building Envelope Consultants, Project Managers, and Design Managers.
This session is designed for anyone building a foundational, practical understanding of façade building physics, and assumes only the introduction to the course series as prior knowledge.
Speakers
Eugene Korch
Programme Director, IASTEugene is a façade engineer and educator who leads educational initiatives through the Institute for Architectural Science and Technology (IAST) and Facade Intelligence, delivering training to construction professionals.
Course Schedule
Format: Online
CPD Points: 2 hours structured CPD / 2 Learning Units
Certificate: CPD certificate provided upon completion
MC024-1.1
Energy Conservation and Moisture Control in Buildings
How Heat and Moisture Meet at One Surface — and Why That’s the Key to Every Warm, Dry Building
Course Fee £120
Free for FI Pro Members
