Why Did My Water Heater Energy Use Rise?
As I'm sure you do, I track my energy use at home. I've got a spreadsheet with the data from all of my electricity bills since we moved into this house in 2019. I also track individual parts of my…
energy efficiency
Does Radiant Cooling in a Humid Climate Make Sense?
Imagine a sunny spring day. You're feeling warm from the sun as you walk down the street. Then you go into a big concrete parking deck. Suddenly, you feel a chill. That's radiant cooling. (And it was radiant heating from…
Duct Leakage Can Cost You a Lot
For those of us who heat and cool our homes with forced-air systems, duct leakage can matter a lot. I say "can" there because as with most things in building science, "it depends." For this article, I'm focusing on ducts…
Induction Cooking Pot Hype vs. Reality
I needed a new induction cooking pot. So I searched Amazon and decided on one that seemed like it would do the job. It said "Induction Cooking Pot" right there in the title (screenshot below). The description reinforced that: "The…
![House Burping Means Opening The Windows To Increase Ventilation, But It's Got Problems. [by Catalina Dondiuc, CC BY 2.0]](https://www.energyvanguard.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/open-window-house-burping-luften-ventilation.jpg)
The Lunacy of House Burping
Some years ago in a previous century, I spent the month of January in Germany. It happened to be a winter of extreme cold, with a low temperature of -40 degrees† at one point. And yet, my German companions liked…
7 Ways Airtightness Improves Your Home
One of the most effective ways to improve your home is to make it more airtight. But airtightness is about much more than reducing your energy bills. I have here a list of 7 ways that airtightness improves your home,…
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…
Blower Doors and Body Mass Index
Let's talk about the blower door today. It's one of the most important tools for analyzing the performance of a house. And it's THE tool for quantifying air leakage. That, of course, is related to energy use, comfort, indoor air…
A BTU Is A BTU…Or Is It?
Since we're on the topic of energy, let's extend last week's discussion of electric resistance heat efficiency. I've sometimes told people that "a BTU is a BTU." (For the rest of the world, the conversion is simple: "A joule is…
Is Electric Resistance Heat Really 100 Percent Efficient?
I've been making a statement for a long time that sometimes gets called out as inaccurate. The story began in the second month of this blog back in April 2010 when I wrote an article titled When Is 100% Efficient…