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…
You know how sometimes people ask, "Where were the adults?" In the field of building science, I've got a new question: Where were the control freaks? It's not nearly as well known as it should be, but buildings need to…
"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." The Danish physicist Niels Bohr first said this, and it's true. Of course, we all like to try anyway, and I've done so myself with my articles on peak oil and the…
Twelve years ago, I discovered the Solar Decathlon. I was a new physics professor at a small university in Georgia, and I'd received a packet from the US Department of Energy describing the competition. It was set to have its…
![Coal-fired Power Plant [by Stanze, From Flickr.com]](https://www.energyvanguard.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/coal-fired-power-plant.jpg)
When does saving one of anything ever result in actually saving three or four? When we're talking about electricity, of course. The reason is simple: Most of our electricity comes from the burning of fuels like coal and natural gas.…
A home with an attached garage is usually a home in which people breathe more carbon monoxide (CO). Of course, having an open carport or detached garage is better for air quality (and a feature that usually gets points for…
Halloween can be a lot of fun. Well, let me soften that a bit - Halloween can be fun if you don't stuck doing an energy audit of a haunted house, as I did one year. If you're in the…
When I wrote about the debate over the terms 'building envelope' vs. 'building enclosure' a couple of weeks ago, I favored the former but overall felt agnostic on whether we should choose one over the other. I didn't think I'd…