About a year ago, I had lunch with someone who was in the process of refinancing his 50 year old home. He was doing the refi merely to lower his interest rate and monthly payments, but he missed out on…
Building Envelope as a Balloon At some point in your life, you may have seen or done the needle through the balloon trick. It's where a large needle pierces one end of a balloon and is pushed through to the…
Green Building Advisor, one of my favorite sources of good info on building science and green building, ran my Flat or Lumpy article as a guest blog yesterday. (They also gave the Energy Vanguard blog a nice review!) With the…
We got a couple inches of snow here in Atlanta over the holidays. That always offers a great look at heat loss through the ceiling, so I love to get outside and take pictures. After the snow has been on…
[This post was written by former EV employee Chris Laumer-Giddens.] I live in a high-rise condominium in Midtown Atlanta. In an earlier post about this energy hog of a building, I focused on the huge heat loss conditions that exist, the…
Allison Arthur Bailes III, PhD, died on the morning of 4 January 2011. His wife found him slumped over the keyboard of his computer, where he collapsed after working on yet another blog article. Apparently the pressure to write, which…
As it turns out, I did not make it to the annual Possum Drop to ring in the new year. The photo below is one I took last year. I also did not publish any blog articles last week, the…
Martin Holladay, the famous Energy Nerd from Green Building Advisor and one of my favorite building science geeks, outdid himself this year with his building science variations of famous Christmas carols. Our friends at Energy Circle, who are much more…
I like the Sun! It's what got me interested in building science, actually. Growing up in the '70s, I heard a lot of talk about the environment, our energy problems, and solar energy. I didn't really do much with that…
It's been cold out lately, so I've been talking about heat. When I talk to people about how heat pumps can keep your home warm in winter, they usually get a look of bewilderment on their faces. How is that…