Skin Flakes in Your Air Conditioner
I never read Robert Fulghum's book, All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, but I have a clear memory of learning about one thing in the book: Most of the dust floating around our homes is actually…
The Energy Vanguard Blog
The Path to Low Pressure Drop Across a High-MERV Filter
Last August I began a series of articles on filtration and indoor air quality. You can find the list of them at the bottom of this article but let's do a quick review here: We spend a lot of our…
Two Ways to Change the Heat Pump Balance Point
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…
A Simple Way to Calculate Heat Pump Balance Point
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…
The National Home Performance Conference Is For You!
My first conference after I officially left academia and got into the world of home performance and building science was in 2004. Since then I've been to a whole lot of conferences. There are even more building science conferences I…
The 3 Types of Heat From Heat Pumps
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…
Controlling the Humidity in Your Home in Winter
I'm going to go out on a limb and make what you may think is an outrageous statement: Water is the most interesting substance in the world. Some of you may immediately respond, "Oh, yeah! What about beer?" (Or wine…
With Buildings, You NEED to Sweat the Small Stuff
"Don't sweat the small stuff," they say. You know what, though? That may be great advice for your emotional life but it's terrible advice for just about anything to do with buildings. Whether you're designing them, specifying materials, putting them…
3 Sources of Heat for High-Performance Homes
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…
The 3 Main Sources of Home Heating
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…