In my last post, I told you about the plumbing work I did to begin the retrofit of my hot water distribution system. I'm bypassing the original too-long, too-big copper pipes with shorter, smaller runs of PEX tubing. My goal…
Did you know that some plumbers stuff a wad of white bread (sans crust) into a pipe before they solder it? That's one of the things I learned during my weekend plumbing adventure. More about that later, though. The purpose…
I love the US energy flow charts published by the Lawrence Livermore National Lab each year. The chart for 2021 came out in April, and you can see it in its full glory above. (Right click to download the full…
This past week I learned the truth about another one of many building science lies. It's the first one in my list here. Having my eyes opened to that lie made think of some of the other ones out there. …
You may recall that I wrote about my undersized mini-split heat pump a couple of years ago. It's undersized compared to both the heating and cooling loads, as you can see in the table below. I'll discuss the heating performance…
In our HVAC design work, we get sent projects where the client sometimes wants the impossible. They've read enough to know they want the mechanical systems in conditioned space, so they put a tiny little closet somewhere in the house…
Last year I bought the Emporia Vue whole-house electricity monitoring system.* This past weekend, I finally installed it. The photo below shows my electrical panel with the monitor installed. Yes, it looks like a mess at the moment. The panel…
It's time to revisit one of my favorite topics: air conditioner sizing. Many contractors use rules of thumb to decide what size cooling equipment to install. Usually, the rule is based on the amount of conditioned floor area, and contractors…
The humidity is returning for the summer here in the southeastern US. And as you may know, I don't use relative humidity to gauge how humid the outdoor air is. Why? For starters, the humidity can get up to 100%…
Gary Klein, a guru of efficient hot water delivery, has been pushing for change in hot water distribution systems for a long time. In recent years, he and his colleagues have developed a great tool for quantifying the efficiency of…