Energy Vanguard Blog

Neville poked his head up through the scuttle hole into the attic and surveyed the situation. Troy immediately heard a scream erupt and had to get out of the way as Neville quickly jumped down off the ladder.

If you were a really strange person, or even a normal person who maybe just has some really odd ideas, and you wanted to breathe the gaseous emissions from a dead, rotten decaying possum, while in your home, how would you do it? I know what I'd do. I'd go get a dead, rotten decaying possum and put it right in my living room. That'd do the trick. And if I needed to turn it up a notch, I'd throw some more dead, rotten decaying possums on the pile.

Let's face it. Some ideas are just plain stupid. The photo below shows one of them. The product description^† says, "Use to decoratively cover up A/C units..." Yes, they include heat pumps, too. What do you think will happen if you put that over the condensing unit of your air conditioner?

Amy Musser has a PhD in Architectural Engineering and, like me, used to be a college professor. Her husband, Matthew Vande, is an architect with an MS in Architectural Engineering. He is also a treehugger (photo at right). Together, they founded Vandemusser Design, a firm that provides green design, certification, and consulting. They walk the talk, having designed, built, and moved into their net zero energy home in Asheville, North Carolina.

You may not realize that among his many other accomplishments, Dr. Joseph Lstiburek, the well known building scientist and Canadian firebrand, invented the Turbo Thermo-Encabulator Max. He's tried to keep this secret and you won't find anything about it on Building Science Corporation's website. I've known about it for a while, though, and I was perfectly content to keep it a secret...until last week.

The ENERGY STAR New Homes program deserves much of the credit for bringing high performance to the mass market. Aside from a widely recognized and respected brand, ENERGY STAR accomplished that which previously eluded industry pioneers: it created a uniform verification and certification procedure that could be replicated on a mass scale at a reasonable cost.

Occasionally I get asked if it's OK to put the condensing unit for an air conditioner or heat pump in a garage or other room that's a buffer space. The thinking is that since the temperature may not be as hot in summer or as cold in winter, the system will operate more efficiently. I just saw yesterday that this same question came up in a column in Home Power magazine, so I thought this would be a good time to cover this issue (once and for all?) here.

I've written a lot about duct problems, especially those in flex duct because they're so abundant. A couple of years ago, I even wrote an article about whether or not flex duct should be banned. My answer was no but that we need better quality control. When I updated and reposted the article recently at Green Building Advisor, Jack Lagershausen, the executive director of the Air Diffusion Council, sent me a letter.

I've been going to the RESNET conference at the beginning of each year since 2009. I also went in 2004, and I can tell you that it's a great learning and networking opportunity if you're in the home energy industry. Are you on the fence about coming to the RESNET conference this year? Are you not on the fence but just haven't registered yet? Even if neither of those apply, see my list below and you may find a reason that you hadn't considered.

Heating and air conditioning contractors, like the rest of us, make mistakes. They make mistakes that hurt performance and efficiency of the HVAC systems they install and maintain. They make mistakes that hurt their customers sometimes. And they make mistakes that hurt their businesses. Let's look at 7 of the biggest mistakes today.