Last week I went down to Orlando for the Southeast Building Conference. I was originally slated to speak on the topic of Energy Efficient Mortgages (EEMs), but I was accidentally left out of the program and instead ended up on…
I've been spending a lot of time at the drafting table lately. In fact, I've worked up about half a dozen floor plans in the past week alone. I'm gearing up to release a series of pre-packaged construction-ready plans for…
I was in a crawl space in Atlanta yesterday putting a new home energy rater through his field test and found that this home has a dehumidifier down below. Not surprisingly, it ran continuously the whole time I was there. …
Energy Vanguard Energy Ratings (EVER) has been a RESNET accredited Home Energy Rating Provider since April 2009. In that time, more than 3 dozen raters have signed up with us to get their certification. Currently, we have 21 certified home…
Every once in a while I like to post some of my favorite pictures of atrocities I've seen in houses, for example the duct stump in the Little Shop of Duct Design Horrors. Today, the subject is HVAC filters, specifically…
Most houses in this part of the world are 'stick-built.' That is, they're framed with 2x4s - sticks. This term came from the timber framers who were used to building with massive posts and beams. When smaller lumber became available…
Today we're running a guest post by Chris Kaiser of Mapawatt.com. I met Chris recently because we're both blogging from the great city of Atlanta, and our blogs complement each other well. Here at Energy Vanguard, we focus mainly on…
Yesterday I wrote about whether or not HERS rater training is a scam. In the forum where I saw a rater venting about his experience, there were pages and pages of comments, and another complaint that emerged in the thread…
I did a search the other day on the term “HERS rater test scam” because I got to thinking about a forum I’d run across a while back. Someone who took the HERS rater class was ranting about RESNET and…
I like to go to Waffle House. Over the past few years, it seems, I've gone so often that I even order my breakfast in their special code: "Triple scramble wheat plate," which translates to three scrambled eggs, whole wheat…