Meet the Researcher: Aaron Grin, Associate, Senior Project Engineer/Senior Research Engineer
A big part of what makes RDH Building Science Laboratories unique is our researchers. Their enthusiasm for building science and their commitment to learning and sharing knowledge is what makes difficult problems solvable. If you haven’t had the opportunity meet the team at one of our events, here’s your chance! Every other month or so, we will be posting an interview with a different researcher from our BC and Ontario offices.
In this inaugural interview, Laura Dunlop from the Vancouver office speaks with Aaron Grin from Waterloo.
Tell us a bit about your role at RDH.
My role as an Associate here at RDH is multifaceted and I assume the role of Senior Research Engineer or Senior Project Engineer, depending on what I’m working on at the time. I’ve been working with my team since finishing my master’s degree at the University of Waterloo and have been fortunate to have my hands in a lot of different kinds of work across North America.
I work on and enjoy a range of research projects, from developing new systems and equipment to creating protocols for testing. I’ve also been involved in instrumentation and monitoring projects in test huts, hygrothermal analysis, and design reviews for residential and ICI buildings, just to name a few.
Forensic work is also a large part of my role at RDH and something I enjoy because it poses the unique challenge of figuring things out on the spot, and often, there are people relying on the answers you find—whether that’s lawyers, building owners, product developers, and sometimes others within the field of building science. I like being involved across the board because so many of these paths intersect and overlap in meaningful ways that should be directly affecting and informing one another.
How did you become interested in building science research?
I think a research-type individual isn’t something that you build—you start with someone interested in the how and why of things. I would certainly characterise myself as an inquisitive person and have always had a curious mind. From bugs and trees in scouting, to making small engines work (and work better); from biology and science classes in high school, to getting into a real scientific method during my university studies—research has always been a big interest for me.
What types of research have you done?
The bulk of my research is related to building material products and systems, but some of it deals with mechanical systems, too. Some of my early work involved simple vapor permeance testing and building a custom constant climate room. This led into full-scale mock-ups of those products and the development of test huts (or field exposure facilities) located all the way from Florida to Vancouver, Portland to Waterloo. These huts have 8 to 32 wall systems that are full scale (4’x8’ or 4’x10’ test walls) and we measure and compare a variety of aspects, from interior vapor control to exterior insulation levels and cladding venting.
Another area I’m heavily involved in is advanced thermal performance testing, which began with the Thermal Metric Project. I develop research plans, oversee day-to-day operations, run analysis, and complete reporting. This work usually stems from a product manufacturer having a product or system that they want to take from the lab into the field and they want to know how it is going to work. Both the test huts and thermal performance testing have a strong focus on durability and energy efficiency.
I’ve also done some structural system research for wood-framed residential wall systems—a collaborative project between the Building Science Laboratories team and Dow in Midland, Michigan. In this study we ran tests on multiple iterations of a hybrid wall (which is an exterior insulated wall system that uses the exterior insulation and spray foam in the stud bays to create a structural wall system from spray foam). Not only did we look at the assembly structurally, but we also looked at its thermal performance, and how it performed hygrothermally to assess its durability. We later used a version of that wall system on a field implementation study of about 20 houses in Wyandotte, Michigan to gather information on the wall assembly’s buildability. We truly looked at these hybrid walls from all angles to understand how they would perform in the field. I’ll be speaking about this topic at our next LAB Event.
Why is research important?
The biggest thing for me is that it’s part of a scientific process that informs new product development and proper implementation; part of a closed loop where you can find things in the lab that directly impact your work in the field. Part of it too, is establishing a basis for everything we do. It’s important to look at the historical context of things and previous research so we aren’t repeating mistakes but using what we already know and digesting it in a different way.
Research can be a new way to do something with existing products or it might be figuring out how to use a new product. It might be solving a problem by looking at every part of the equation in depth. Sometimes, it may even overlap with forensic work to help determine why something didn’t work the way it was supposed to.
Research is a lot of different things, but I enjoy it because it’s usually tough problem solving and an ever-evolving process where you have to be paying attention to the results as you go and making decisions.
What interesting things have you done recently? What are you working on right now?
There’s a lot of work going on with our advanced thermal testing. A lot of it is related to product development, so I can’t say too much on that front, but what I can say is that the project just continues to grow. Over the last seven years, we’ve done full-scale wall testing over a range of exterior temperatures for a variety of wall systems and looked at the effects of framing factor on overall R-value, how a lack of air tightness can degrade R-value, and how a range of insulating materials (e.g., cellulose, open cell, closed cell, and a couple of different exterior insulation products) actually perform at real world temperatures. In the fall of 2015, we ran an extended test set of wall systems while varying the RH in the chambers and found that there was a correlation of the RH, and likely the equilibrium moisture content of the wood framing, to the R-value of the walls system. It wasn’t insignificant either! It was almost as much as the temperature-dependent R-value of the insulation itself. So, things are always evolving. Sometimes we go in with one hypothesis and partway through the test we figure out that we are in fact running two parallel research paths. There’s never a dull moment.
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