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…
People complicate things. If, say, you want to sell a motorcycle, you place an ad and interested potential buyers come check it out, maybe take it for a little ride, and then one of them buys it. But every once…
Last year my wife and I bought a 1961 ranch-style house, and I've been having a lot of fun fixing it up. I wrote about the problem with the spray foam in the attic not covering the top plates and…
Let me tell you the story about a poor, young country boy who broke the law and launched me into my new project. Back in February, I was driving home from work one evening when a driver T-boned me. The…
So we've looked at a simple way to estimate the heat pump balance point. If you also read the comments of that article, you should be aware that there's more to the actual balance point than what I wrote in…
As the outdoor temperature drops on a cold day, a home's heating load increases. At the same time, decreasing temperature means less heat in the air for a heat pump to pump indoors. And at one special temperature, the capacity…
Since more people are using heat pumps these days, even in cold climates, let's spell out the three different types of heat that conventional heat pumps provide. Why not! We've just recently covered the three main sources of home heating…
Earlier this week I wrote about the three main sources of heat in homes. At the end of the article I threw in a fourth one, solar energy, but then I dismissed it as something that people tried in the…
It's wintertime in the Northern hemisphere and that means we're heating our homes. The new year started off a bit on the warm side, with the temperature at nearly 70° F (21° C) here in the Atlanta area. In terms…
When you get into the world of building science, it's inevitable that you'll hear about the study that proved fiberglass insulation loses half its R-value because of convection within the insulation. Or it could be you're a homeowner who's been…