Meet the guys behind the Unbuild It Podcast
Jake Bruton
Jake Bruton is a builder and remodeler in Columbia Missouri. As the owner of Aarow Building for more than a decade Jake brings his education in art to energy efficient, durable, and architecturally significant homes. Growing up in a remodeling and repair business positioned him for success when building because of the vast amount of time fixing, repairing, and replacing the mistakes of previous methods of construction. All of this repair work has driven Jake to educate himself on building science and learn to apply those ideas to his high performance projects. Jake regularly writes for Fine Homebuilding, Journal of Light Construction, Pro Remodeler, and Pro Tradecraft. He is a weekly contributor to Buildshownetwork.com. As a speaker he has presented at JLC Live, Fine Homebuilding Summit, JLC Deck and Remodeling, and EEBA. Jake is currently raising a family of three children with his wife in Columbia Missouri.
Steve Baczek
Steve Baczek is a registered architect with over 30 years of construction industry experience. As a sole practitioner, he typically works with clients on select custom residential projects. Utilizing his strong Building Science background, he strives to integrate sound design practices with good construction practices to provide exceptional design solutions to their design problems. Most of his “new construction” projects are considered “high performance” residential work. They range from over 50 Leed Platinum Homes, to Zero Energy Homes, and numerous Certified Passive Homes. In addition to new construction projects, he does extensive work giving older, existing homes a second chance at success. Many of these renovation projects are also designed to be Zero Energy, Deep Energy Retrofits, as well as the first Certified Passive House Renovation in the U.S. under the “Enerphit” program.
His association with the Architecture Profession and Residential Construction Industry goes far beyond his personal architecture practice. He routinely volunteers his time for the betterment fo the building community as an Architecture Critic at a School of Architecture or on a agues panel at a building industry event. You can also find him on other industry podcasts, as an influencer on Instagram, providing lectures at various conferences, or writing articles for various national media outlets.
Peter Yost
Peter Yost is the sole proprietor of Building-Wright in Brattleboro, Vermont. Building-Wright is a high-performance building consulting firm. Peter has been building, researching, teaching, writing, and consulting on high performance buildings for more than 30 years. His expertise ranges from construction waste management and advanced framing to energy efficiency and building durability. Peter has made significant contributions to the work of many leading building industry organizations and initiatives—NAHB Research Center, Building Science Corporation, 3-D Building Solutions, EEBA, Masco's Environments for Living® program, USGBC's LEED for Homes and REGREEN programs, the US Department of Energy's Building America program, and BuildingGreen, Inc. Peter was the principal author of the NAHB Advanced Green Building-Building science course materials and a co-author of the USGBC REGREEN workshop curriculum.
Peter is currently Technical Director for GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, a lecturer in Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and an adjunct faculty with Keene State College Department of Architecture and the University of Massachusetts Department of Building Materials and Wood Technology program in Amherst.
Peter has a Bachelor of Science in Agronomy from Virginia Tech and a Master of Science in Resource Economics from the University of New Hampshire. Peter is an Accredited Building Enclosure Commissioning Process Provider
(BECxP)/Commissioning Authority+Building Enclosure (CxA+BE).
Peter has been awarded both NAHB Green Building Educator of the Year and SeventhWave Educator of the Year.