Research Interests:

Mr. Withers has been part of buildings research at the Florida Solar Energy Center since 1990, where he has performed field and lab research, in more than 20 projects. He has extensive experience in field investigations in over 250 homes and 110 commercial buildings involving evaluation of energy efficiency and indoor air quality issues. His involvement in research has diagnosed air flow and moisture control problems in buildings and evaluated implicated energy impacts, discovered excessive ventilation rates in restaurants, and evaluated radon intrusion and radon control methods. He was involved in identifying outdoor radon as a significant factor causing elevated indoor radon levels and helped design an innovative way to measure subslab pressure fields in new construction. His most recent completed project as PI involved an evaluation of energy conservation opportunities and energy billing analysis at the Orange County Convention Center. This convention center consists of two primary buildings having about seven million square feet of conditioned space for approximately 1.5 million visitors each year and is the 2nd largest convention exhibition space in the nation. Other recently completed studies involved a second-phase study of energy-efficient methods of controlling humidity in unoccupied homes in hot and humid climates, and an evaluation of unbalanced return air impacts in single-family residences built after a relevant change in the Florida Building Code took effect in March 2002. He is first author of 6 peer-reviewed research papers, co-author of 25 published papers and 29 final reports. He has also been author/co-author of nationally published articles in the ASHRAE Journal, ASHRAE IAQ Applications, and Smart Homeowner Magazine. Mr. Withers has significant training experience that he has used to help transfer research findings to building and utility professionals. He has shared his experiences in more than 16 different building science short courses over the past 12 years. He is currently PI for the Designing and Maintaining the High Performance Green Building 5 course series.