Remember my bathroom remodeling project? I took the liberty of gutting our outdated, decaying bathroom while my wife was out of town in April. I found some interesting air leakage pathways when I opened the walls. I fixed that. I found…
I get asked a lot of questions about spray foam. Do I need an ignition barrier? Should I use open cell or closed cell spray foam? Will open cell spray foam really rot my roof? But the question I get…
I've seen some crazy things done to homes. It's usually someone's attempt to make things better. Sometimes that someone is a homeowner or other occupant. Sometimes it's a contractor. But it always seems to be a solution to a problem…
There's this thing called passive house. It's a terrible name. Almost everyone agrees on that. Look at how its adherents are driven to a frenzy and you'll see that the name doesn't really fit. The houses themselves aren't passive either,…
Last month I attended the conference of the North American Passive House Network in New York City. They had a really nice trade show, and I got to spend some time talking to the vendors. It's always nice to see…
Ah, ventilation. One of the easier topics in building science. Everyone agrees: We need airtight houses. Airtight houses need mechanical ventilation. Build tight. Ventilate right. No problem! We're all on board. There's nothing to disagree about. Right? Ah, ventilation. One…
I've got a record of 14 blower door tests on my condo. Many of them were during home energy rater classes, as we'd bring them here for the confirmed rating they needed to complete. The early ones were horrible! But…
Passive house has a reputation for requiring ungodly amounts of insulation. It grew out of the superinsulation movement after all. If you're familiar with any passive house projects, you may be thinking about double-stud walls that are a foot thick…
Every day, I get updates on various energy data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Earlier this week I got one showing the graph below, indicating that energy intensity for the whole world is going down. That's a good…
Just because I haven't written about the jockeying over ventilation rates and strategies with the ASHRAE 62.2 committee doesn't mean nothing's going on. If you've been following the battle over this issue, you know that Joe Lstiburek, PhD, PE, got…