I recently got a couple of questions from someone who's interested in changing out his air conditioner and furnace with a heat pump. With the Inflation Reduction Act and all the talk of electrification, the question is becoming more common. …
This past week I learned the truth about another one of many building science lies. It's the first one in my list here. Having my eyes opened to that lie made think of some of the other ones out there. …
You may recall that I wrote about my undersized mini-split heat pump a couple of years ago. It's undersized compared to both the heating and cooling loads, as you can see in the table below. I'll discuss the heating performance…
Last year I bought the Emporia Vue whole-house electricity monitoring system.* This past weekend, I finally installed it. The photo below shows my electrical panel with the monitor installed. Yes, it looks like a mess at the moment. The panel…
Ah, mini-splits. They’re all the rage in the world of high-performance HVAC. But what exactly is a mini-split heat pump? Unfortunately, the terminology around this technology is confusing because it’s used so inconsistently. Let’s start at the beginning. (Well, OK,…
It's the last day of the year, so let's wrap it up with some lists. Whether you missed some of the articles I wrote this year or are just curious about what other people were reading here, I've got three…
The two primary ways you can heat your house are by burning a fuel (e.g., fossil gas, fuel oil, wood) or using electricity. Furnaces and boilers distribute the heat from combustion to heat a house. Electric resistance heat makes sense…
The US Energy Information Agency does a Residential Energy Consumption Survey a couple times each decade and in the 2015 data, they showed that the average energy use per household member per year is 30.3 million BTU, or 8,800 kilowatt-hours. …
Sometimes companies that make products stretch the truth, embellish features, or rely on their potential customers' ignorance of how things work. Shocking, I know. The world of electric heating has such companies. But if you're looking for a device that…
In case you hadn't heard, we had an inauguration for a new President of the United States this week. And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders made one of the biggest sartorial splashes. Photographer Brendan Smialowski got a photo of Bernie sitting in a…