Assuming this is my last article of 2012, I'll have published 135 articles by the end of this year. I generally do about 3 per week and cover a lot of ground. The subject matter ranges from in-depth explanations of…
I went to see The Hobbit recently. Of course, the center of the story is a dragon, Smaug, that invaded the ancestral home of the dwarves many moons ago and set them on a long diaspora. The story begins as…
Let's say your trusty old furnace is at the end of its life. You've got to buy a new one, so you call your HVAC company and they rush over to make sure you don't freeze during the next cold…
You'd never settle for a recirculating toilet, would you? Press the lever and everything in the bowl just swirls around and around. Never leaving, just recirculating. That's the image Professor John Straube painted for us last week in his talk…
Oh, where do I start? Professor John Straube spoke all day yesterday at Building Science Corporation's Experts' Session. His topic was mechanical systems for low-load buildings. You know that expression about how the information comes at you so fast in some…
Spray foam insulation evokes some interesting conversation among building science professionals, those in construction, environmentalists, and homeowners who have it in their homes. Many think it solves all problems, no matter how poorly it's installed. Some think it's helping to…
You know that saying, Don't judge a book by its cover? That certainly applies to what may be the best protection against carbon monoxide poisoning you can buy. The CO Experts carbon monoxide monitor doesn't have a flashy website or…
I loved the book,* A Beautiful Mind, the story of John Forbes Nash, Jr. It was fascinating to read about how he approached mathematical problems, and even more fascinating to read about his descent into paranoid schizophrenia. Nash, who later…
I've written about how bad it is to put your heating and cooling system in an unconditioned attic, especially in a cooling climate. There's one place, though, that's even worse: an attached garage, as shown above. From an efficiency standpoint,…
Perspective. It's a nice word. Fenestration may sound more sophisticated, but understanding the meaning of proper perspective will take you much further in life than all the building science in the world. With Thanksgiving upon us again, I thought I'd…