How Energy Efficient Is Your Ceiling Fan?
I was in one of the big box home improvement stores yesterday and thought I'd take a look at ceiling fans while I was there. Ten years ago when I was building a house and buying a bunch of ceiling…
The Energy Vanguard Blog
Does a Geothermal Heat Pump Count as a Renewable Energy Source?
Here's another rant that goes in my Drives Me Crazy category of articles. I'm in good company, too. Green Building Advisor ran an article this week about making the choice between an air-source heat pump and a ground-source (aka geothermal)…
Release the Kraken! — The Ductopus Is Bad for Air Conditioning
Just a quick little post today to show you the new image I put together. Last year I wrote an article about a type of duct system that's just a complete mess. A lot of home energy pros call it…
How to Grade the Installation Quality of Insulation
Six years ago, RESNET published a major revision of the HERS Standards, called...wait for it: the 2006 National Mortgage Industry Home Energy Rating Systems Standards. One important new feature in the standards was the grading of insulation installation quality. Before…
A Sword through the Ribs of the Building Envelope
The title of this article refers not to the two framers charging the house with a large timber but to the framing timbers already installed above the porch. Home designers, builders, and framers aren't used to thinking about the building…
Green Curmudgeons, Architects, and Outlawing Batt Insulation
Yesterday I observed an interesting discussion on Twitter. Carl Seville, the Green Building Curmudgeon, posted a link to his article suggesting that maybe we should just ban all batt insulation. Greg La Vardera, an architect who really understands the building…
The Easy Way to Convert between Celsius and Fahrenheit
Converting between temperatures on the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales is easy. I've been doing it in my head for over a decade now. Yeah, I know I'm a weirdo, using the metric system here in the US when no one…
You Don’t Need a Vapor Barrier (Probably)
If there's one building science topic that confuses more people in construction than any other, I think I'd say it's the purposes and properties of the various control layers. I'm talking about the materials that are meant to control the…
Why I’m Not a Fan of Positive Pressure Mechanical Ventilation
We want our homes to be airtight. It saves energy. It helps keep water vapor from getting into places where it can cause problems. It keeps bad air from moldy crawl spaces and contaminated garages out of the house. It…
The Deadline Looms for ENERGY STAR Version 3 New Homes
On 1 July 2012, the ENERGY STAR new homes program moves fully (well, almost) into Version 3. Currently, the ENERGY STAR team at the US EPA is up to Revision 5 of Version 3, and some items have been delayed,…