Gazing at an Anode Rod
Most people in the U.S. have tank-type water heaters, and most of these tanks are glass-lined. Yet almost nobody looks at the anode rod, which is the biggest key to making your water heater last a very, very long time. …
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The 6 Worst Indoor Air Pollutants
Consider the multitude of air pollutants you could inhale. You're probably inhaling some of them right now. Which of them, though, should you worry about the most? Well, IAQ researchers have begun addressing that question. The early work is showing…
4 Ways to Control Humidity in an Encapsulated Attic
Bringing an attic within the building enclosure that defines the conditioned space has a lot of benefits. By having the insulation and air barrier at the roofline, the attic stays close to the temperature in the living space below. That…
2 Common Comfort Problems Caused by Air Conditioning
No, that's not an art installation or a privacy screen. What you're looking at in the photo above is a hotel room I stayed in recently. Behind the chair and the ironing board is the air conditioning system. The bed…
Controlling Exterior Water With a Rain Garden
As I wrote in a recent article, controlling exterior water is the starting point for solving and preventing moisture problems in a house. In that article, I included a video showing how the water drains in my yard and what…
Eliminating Filter Bypass for Cleaner Air
When it comes to the air moving through your HVAC system, filter bypass is not a good thing. The lead photo above shows a bad case of bypass. What you're looking at is an old-style high-efficiency pleated filter. I don't…
Do Mini-Splits Really Have a Dehumidification Problem?
It's time for another update of my ongoing personal heat pump case study. I wrote here in 2020 about how the inverter-driven mini-split heat pump serving most of my main floor is undersized for cooling and for heating. And I…
Mosquito Death Buckets, My 2 Week Update
My four mosquito death buckets have been set up in my yard for two weeks now. So how are they doing? Well, that's not enough time to reduce the adult population of mosquitoes yet, but there are three things we…
Try the Mosquito Bucket of Death
I usually focus on the building science of homes, HVAC, and indoor environmental quality. Today, though, I'm going to cover a topic of outdoor environmental quality. I've had mosquitoes in my backyard since we bought the house in 2019. This…
Fix More Houses!
Which do you think would have the bigger impact: Building better new houses or fixing existing homes? Well, let's do the numbers. In 2024, building departments across the US issued just shy of 1.5 million building permits for new homes…