Home Energy Pros – A Unique Social Network
Anyone who's been around me for a while knows that I love numbers. (If you need to know pi to 50 digits, just give me a call.) Well, this article is number 100 in the Energy Vanguard blog. Wow! Even…
The Energy Vanguard Blog
Greening the Residential Remodel – Habitat for Humanity’s New Push
The last time I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, Icynene was not a household name, and many homeowners had never heard of a Blower Door and Duct Blaster. (Well, OK, you're right. They're not exactly household names now either, but…
And Now, for Something Completely Different…
Having written nearly 100 articles in this blog, I've covered a lot of topics related to how buildings work. Just in the past two weeks, for example, I've written about attic kneewalls, heat pump water heaters, why house wrap isn't…
Clean Energy and Conservation Voters Guide
Below is a repost of an article with advice for voters from my friend Chris Kaiser at Mapawatt. Below is a repost of an article with advice for voters from my friend Chris Kaiser at Mapawatt. If you are voting…
Halloween in Your Home – Scary Stuff You May Not Want to See
In my last article, I wrote about how I've learned so much by visiting the parts of houses that most people don't like to go into themselves. In that article, my focus was on the problems with the attic kneewall. …
Your Connection to the Blast Furnace – Attic Kneewalls
I guess you could call me a contrarian. I usually go in the opposite direction from the crowds. In 1997, for example, I spent two weeks in Portugal, where most people head for the beaches south of Lisbon. Instead, I…
Heat Pump Water Heaters: A Better Way to Heat Water with Electricity?
Last week, I was a judge in the LightHouse Awards green home competition put on by the Hilton Head Home Builders Association (HBA). Along with my fellow judges, I visited two homes in the Hilton Head area. We saw a…
5 Reasons House Wrap Is Not an Air Barrier
It took me a while to figure out that a building is basically just a structural framework with control layers. Yeah, there's also electrical, plumbing, mechanical systems, and finishes, but the heart of a building is the stuff that holds…
The Optimism of Pessimism in the Age of Peak Oil
Five years ago I read a book that freaked the hell out of me - The Long Emergency by Jim Kunstler. I was drinking a lot of peak oil kool-aid that year, but that book really got to me in…
Between In & Out – Where the Interesting Building Science Happens
Up and down. Left and right. Good and evil. Black and white. The world is full of such dichotomies. Often, however, what happens between the endpoints of a spectrum is the most interesting. As a physics graduate student, I studied…