The Latest from the Energy Vanguard Blog
Today we move another step down the road of duct design. I started the series with a look at the basic physics of air moving through ducts. The short version is that friction and turbulence in ducts results in pressure drops. Then in part 2 I covered available static pressure. The blower gives us a...
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In part 1 of this duct design series, I discussed the basic physics of moving air in ducts. Now we're going to take that and use it to figure out how to make all the parts work together properly. First we choose a blower that will give us the total air flow we need. Then we design a duct system...
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When it comes to heating and cooling homes, forced air distribution is king. Yeah, my Canadian friend Robert Bean of Healthy Heating pushes radiant for both heating and cooling, and my Texas friend Kristof Irwin drank that koolaid and installed what may be the first radiant cooling system in Texas...
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The photo above is from one of the home energy rater classes we taught a few years ago. We had 13 students in that class. Only one was a woman. That ratio actually is comparable to what you see in construction as a whole. According to OSHA (see chart below), about 9% of all workers in construction...
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Just a quick note for you this morning about some building science resources I found on the Web this week. As alluded to in the title, one relates to the top of the house (cathedral ceilings) and the other to the bottom (waterproofing basements). And actually, these resources that I'm referring you...
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I've been guilty of perpetuating a myth. Last month I wrote an article in which I said installing insulation, "cavities are filled completely with as little compression as possible." But is compression really such a bad thing? When I posted that same article on Green Building Advisor, commenter...
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Dick Kornbluth was an insulation contractor in Syracuse, New York back in the 1970s. Then he discovered home performance. It's really the logical place insulation contractors, HVAC contractors, and similar companies to end up. Rather than doing just one job to make a building better, he did several...
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The Atlanta housing market is booming again. I see renovations, infill, and tear-downs all over the place lately. There's a rebuild after tear-down happening now along one of my main walks. You saw a little about it already. Remember that house with the terrible joist blocking to the garage? Well,...
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What happens to the heating and cooling loads when you encapsulate an attic? With the insulation and air barrier at the ceiling below the attic, you're excluding the attic space. That volume of air up there isn't involved in the conditioning of the home. But when you move the enclosure to the...
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After taking classes for the past 15 years, my sister graduated from college last week. While I was in Lakeland, Florida for her graduation, I took the photo above. It's a hotel under construction. I took this picture because I was surprised to see curtains in the windows at this stage of...
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