One of the great benefits of going out into the field to do quality assurance and training for HERS raters is that I get to see what's going on in new construction. Last week I visited HERS raters in Nashville,…
On my thousand-mile quality assurance road trip last week, I visited a house that was designed to produce more energy than it uses, making it a net zero energy home. You can take any house all the way to net…
The ACI Home Energy Leadership Summit is an event sorely needed in our industry. Most of us focus almost entirely on understanding building science and figuring out the best home energy improvement measures or assessment techniques, but stepping back and…
Most of us here in the US just lost an hour this weekend because of Daylight Savings Time. This annual clock-advancing used to happen late in April but has been extended a couple of times in the past few decades.…
Reading Allison's recent article about his experience building a green home brought back memories of my own similar experience back in 1999. Like Allison's home, mine was designed to be high performance, although maybe not so green. (Get more details…
Did you make it to Austin last week for the RESNET Conference? Did you catch the presentation that I did with Peter Troast of Energy Circle? Whether you did or you didn't, now you can download the pdf version of…
What is it about Maine? Some of my favorite people in the home energy pro community live there. We just signed up our first HERS Rater from the state (Diane Milliken of Horizon Residential Energy Services). Now, some folks there…
The number of people at the 2012 RESNET Conference was about the same as last year. It's the first time in a few years that it hasn't grown over the previous year's attendance. Does that mean anything? I think so.…
The Passive House Institute of the US (PHIUS) had a real presence at the RESNET conference this week. I felt it even before I got on the plane to Austin last Saturday, as I met John Semmelhack of Think Little…
A few months back, I received the following email about payment to design the HVAC system for a new ENERGY STAR home. The author of the email is a home energy rater, and my client. The “HVAC guy” is the…