Great news, everyone! (If you read that in the voice of Professor Hubert Farnsworth, please don't let your imagination run away with you. This really is great news.) The HERS Index will part of the 2015 International Energy Conservation Code. Why…
If you're designing a ventilation system, first you have to determine how much air the house needs. You can use ASHRAE 62.2 or the new BSC-01 for that task. Then you have to decide what type of ventilation system to…
The fellow standing in the home he's having built is proud. It's his dream home in Brookline, Massachusetts after all. The Wall Street Journal last week published an article about affluent home buyers getting their own jumbo construction loans to do…
We're working on a project, so we got a set of plans to get started. It includes the attic kneewall and vaulted ceiling section you see below.This is typical of plans that architects draw, and builders build houses this way…
I love those Sankey diagrams showing the energy flows in the US. You can find two versions of them put out by different parts of the federal government. The US Energy Information Administration (US EIA) puts out one type, but…
Hi. My name is Allison, and I'm a building science zealot. I preach the gospel of building science, yet in my own life, I fall short of the perfection I exhort others to attain. Yes, I once built a green…
She lives in a small, simple house in southern Mississippi. It's only 1700 square feet. Why then, she wondered, were her summer electricity bills running more than $600? She didn't have anything that could be a big energy hog, like…
You just never know what you'll find in a hotel room. I'm a curious guy so I have to check things out, and this week I found some interesting stuff in the air conditioner of the room they gave me…
Peripeteia and anagnorisis. Not the kind of words you expect to hear from people who do 'dirty jobs.' Of course, Mike Rowe doesn't do dirty jobs for a living the same way that most of the people he covers do.…
All I was trying to do was find some football scores on Yahoo the other day when I saw it. I don't go looking for this stuff, and when I do see it, I try to ignore it. But this…