Airtightness. It's one of the key components of a house that's built well. We know that it's a myth that houses need to breathe. We know it's one of the surest ways to reduce energy bills. We know it's a…
Danny Orlando, a manager in the ENERGY STAR program at the US EPA, walks the talk. He's been steadily improving the energy efficiency of his home over the past couple of decades and also monitoring his energy use data. The…
You may think there's no more boring topic than electric utilities. Power plants. Transmission lines. Engineers with flat top haircuts and pocket protectors full of pens in their white short-sleeved shirts. Well, let me say two words that might help…
Boilers for heating homes are common in some areas. Not here in Georgia, where I live, but my friends in the colder climates have them. This type of heating equipment takes a fuel like natural gas or fuel oil, burns…
Of course, everyone knows that caulking your windows and weatherstripping your doors won't help you much. Right? Well, all the cool kids do anyway, and that includes you because you're here reading this article. A lot of the standard advice…
Caulk your windows. Weatherstrip your doors. It's that time of year again. No, I don't mean the time of year when you should do those things. I mean it's the time of year when all the news stories that include…
The best green building program you've never heard of is probably Enterprise Green Communities. Everyone knows about LEED, of course. Regional programs, such as EarthCraft House and Minnesota GreenStar, also have name recognition in their areas. But unless you've been…
A zero energy building is one that produces on-site at least as much energy as it uses. As I've written here before, the US Department of Energy has been mulling over the various ways to define and calculate zero energy…
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about whether homes that produce as much energy as they use should be called net zero energy or zero net energy homes. Several readers offered up another choice: zero energy homes. I've also…
Sagging flex duct is bad for air flow. We all know it. We all talk about it. It turns out there's research data to prove it, too. Texas A&M did a study a few years ago to look at the…