Just a quick little post today to show you the new image I put together. Last year I wrote an article about a type of duct system that's just a complete mess. A lot of home energy pros call it…
Six years ago, RESNET published a major revision of the HERS Standards, called...wait for it: the 2006 National Mortgage Industry Home Energy Rating Systems Standards. One important new feature in the standards was the grading of insulation installation quality. Before…
The title of this article refers not to the two framers charging the house with a large timber but to the framing timbers already installed above the porch. Home designers, builders, and framers aren't used to thinking about the building…
Yesterday I observed an interesting discussion on Twitter. Carl Seville, the Green Building Curmudgeon, posted a link to his article suggesting that maybe we should just ban all batt insulation. Greg La Vardera, an architect who really understands the building…
Converting between temperatures on the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales is easy. I've been doing it in my head for over a decade now. Yeah, I know I'm a weirdo, using the metric system here in the US when no one…
If there's one building science topic that confuses more people in construction than any other, I think I'd say it's the purposes and properties of the various control layers. I'm talking about the materials that are meant to control the…
We want our homes to be airtight. It saves energy. It helps keep water vapor from getting into places where it can cause problems. It keeps bad air from moldy crawl spaces and contaminated garages out of the house. It…
On 1 July 2012, the ENERGY STAR new homes program moves fully (well, almost) into Version 3. Currently, the ENERGY STAR team at the US EPA is up to Revision 5 of Version 3, and some items have been delayed,…
A lot of home builders and homeowners are getting certified home energy ratings to find out how efficient their homes are. There's also a lot of buzz about HERS ratings, with builders looking at them as a tool for marketing…
Take a look at this first photo. If you've got any building science training at all, I really don't need to say anymore. Sure, I could fill you in on some of the details, but I'm betting you already know…