A year or two ago, I remember getting trapped in my car one evening listening to Ira Glass's show This American Life. It was an episode titled When Patents Attack, and I was riveted. They described how a seemingly small…
Duct leakage testing has come a long way. We've gone from doing the subtraction method with blower doors to having specialized duct pressurization blowers. We've also evolved in how we seal the ducts for a test, going from kraft paper/masking…
Last night I was at the Energy Avenger...er, the Energy Logic hospitality suite at the end of a great first day of the RESNET conference. I got a chance to talk with many of the wonderful people in the HERS…
HVAC contractors own a lot of equipment. Of course, they have the pressure gauges to test refrigerant charge in air conditioners and heat pumps and many more pieces of technical equipment. One piece that few contractors own, however, is a…
We went through a record-setting heat wave recently in the US. Here in Atlanta, we set an all-time record of 106° F. Homes with properly-sized air conditioners—yeah, yeah, I know they're few and far between—are sized for our design temperature…
In our last home energy rater (HERS) training class, we saw something very interesting on one of our field visits. We were doing a Blower Door test on a new house, and one of the bedrooms upstairs had plastic taped…
Let's get back to the Pretty Good House concept now. Last month I wrote part 1, called What Would a "Pretty Good House" Look Like? There I discussed mainly the design, building envelope, and heating and cooling systems. Here I'll…
What is it about Maine? Some of my favorite people in the home energy pro community live there. We just signed up our first HERS Rater from the state (Diane Milliken of Horizon Residential Energy Services). Now, some folks there…
The number of people at the 2012 RESNET Conference was about the same as last year. It's the first time in a few years that it hasn't grown over the previous year's attendance. Does that mean anything? I think so.…
For about the same price as you'd pay for an iPad, you can buy a home energy audit to give to a loved one this holiday season. Yes, the iPad is sexier. Yes, the iPad is more fun. Yes, everyone…