I spent three days in Pittsburgh last week going through session proposals for the Affordable Comfort Conference. Every conference seems to have a different process for choosing which sessions to offer, and ACI (Affordable Comfort, Inc.) has a really interesting one.…
When I was up in North Carolina this past summer, I went to a restaurant that had the duct you see in the photo here. You may not be aware, but this duct design has a fatal flaw. Well, it's…
The Energy Efficient Mortgage is waiting for you to come calling. It's the best mortgage product that almost nobody knows about. I've written about it a number of times here in our blog, spoken about it at conferences, done a…
I’m not a Cajun myself, but I lived with the Cajuns in south Louisiana for eight years. In 1971, my mom moved us to that area, and we ended up in a place called Chauvin on a narrow strip of…
Here's a house we designed for a builder in the historic Grant Park neighborhood in Atlanta, which should be completed by January 1, 2012. The home is 2-stories, has 4-bedrooms and 3-and-a-half baths, and is just under 2,200 square feet. The builder decided…
Imagine designing and building a submarine. What's the most important thing you have to do? Keep the sailors alive! How do you do that? By making sure that when the sub dives below the surface, no water leaks in. The…
Air conditioners don't last forever. Shocking, I know. The good news, though, is that if you have an old air conditioning system, replacing it should save you money. Efficiency has improved a lot since that old hunk of metal and…
Oh, man, how can I say there's a single book that I'd call "the best book I've ever read"? That's just not possible. But it's the topic of today's Let's Blogoff, so, as usual, I'll answer the question the way…
Ah, so what exactly is this hidden flaw? "My HVAC guy put a zoned system in my house and told me it was the cat's pajamas," you may be thinking about now. Or maybe your HVAC installer described it as…
At Building Science Summer Camp a few weeks ago, I heard from Sam Rashkin that changes to the ENERGY STAR Version 3 guidelines and implementation schedule were on the horizon. This week, the EPA announced those changes—and some are rather…