I've just returned home from Long Beach, California, where I've spent the past five days attending the ASHRAE conference, which focuses on heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration. One of the things I heard there was this statement: 95% of…
Let's face it. The state of home building isn't good. Yes, we have building science and energy codes and green building programs out the wazoo. We have cool new products and home energy raters and even Joe Lstiburek. Despite all…
To this point in our little series on duct design, we've been calculating intermediate quantitites: available static pressure, total effective length, and friction rate. Today we use all that to find out how big the ducts need to be. We're…
In case you didn't see the announcement out of Florida, two big well-known names have entered the market for home energy ratings and energy code compliance. Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and Intertek are working with the Florida Home Builders Association (FHBA)…
When I go into homes being built before the drywall goes up, one thing I always look for is how well they did with the ceiling joists in the attached garage. I've written about it numerous times here in this…
So the United States has announced it's withdrawing from the Paris Accord, the international agreement with nonbinding measures to mitigate the effects of climate change. Now everyone's up in arms, speaking in exasperated tones about the travesty of this decision.…
Today's installment in the duct design series is a simple one. It's just a straightforward calculation that gives us the design friction rate from the two quantities I discussed in my last two articles. In part 2, I told you…
The Pembina Institute published a report on Passive House last year. Titled Accelerating Market Transformation for High-Performance Building Enclosures, the report looks at the challenge of climate change, what Passive House has to offer, the market for high-performance buildings, and…
Today we move another step down the road of duct design. I started the series with a look at the basic physics of air moving through ducts. The short version is that friction and turbulence in ducts results in pressure…
In part 1 of this duct design series, I discussed the basic physics of moving air in ducts. Now we're going to take that and use it to figure out how to make all the parts work together properly. First…