This is the time of year when a lot of otherwise sane people get out their crystal balls and tell us what's going to happen in the coming year. Well, I don't have a crystal ball, so instead I got…
Keeping with my end of the year theme of different lists of the articles I've written over the past year, I now give you my Drives Me Crazy list for 2011, painstakingly narrowed down to my top 5. I may…
Most of my writing here in the Energy Vanguard blog is deadly serious. I write the articles with my brow deeply furrowed, fretting over all the energy that's wasted and comfort opportunities missed because of the problems with the way…
Wow! 2011 was a great year in the Energy Vanguard Blog, and part of it was due to our writing articles that generated controversy. Here's a list of the posts that stirred people up the most. Sometimes it showed in…
Long before any dirt is moved, developers make a choice that affects the cash flow of the eventual residents of the new community they're planning. They've got a piece of land, the survey is done, and then they sit down…
Although I rarely get to listen to it these days, I love the show Science Friday with Ira Flatow on NPR. It's always interesting, and you get to learn cool new science stuff. This past Friday, they covered a topic…
Ten years ago, I spent a fair amount of time up on the roof of the SIP house I was building. Now, Martin Holladay, the famous Energy Nerd of Green Building Advisor, has an article titled Martin’s Ten Rules of…
Don't you just love to strip down to your socks and jump on the bed? As a kid, you may not get away with it, but you're a grown man or woman now, so who's to stop you? And then,…
A few days ago I ran across an article about gas fireplaces on Bob Vila's website. Naturally, I wanted to read their take on vent-free gas fireplaces (sometimes called ventless, unvented, or just plain stupid). "Vent-free technology, once considered controversial,…
I talk about homes here in the Energy Vanguard blog all the time - new ENERGY STAR homes, HVAC systems to heat and cool homes, home energy audits... Today I'm going to talk about the homeless. I talk about homes…