The central vs dedicated return vent debate has a clear winner. But first, let me explain the terminology. A forced-air heating and cooling system has supply ducts that blow conditioned air into the rooms of your house. That's the part…
Ah, mini-splits. They’re all the rage in the world of high-performance HVAC. But what exactly is a mini-split heat pump? Unfortunately, the terminology around this technology is confusing because it’s used so inconsistently. Let’s start at the beginning. (Well, OK,…
Which roof penetrations cause water damage? They all do, of course. But some are more likely to leak than others. The photo above shows the back of my house. We got a tiny bit of snow on Sunday, and some…
Roof overhangs and moisture problems in the walls of a house ought to be related, right? After all, most of the water that lands on a house hits the roof first. From there, rainwater runs to the bottom edge of…
The DIY box fan air cleaner known as the Corsi-Rosenthal Box (or the Comparetto Cube, in a slight variation) has really taken off in the fight against COVID. I wrote about it here in September 2020, with instructions on how…
It's the last day of the year, so let's wrap it up with some lists. Whether you missed some of the articles I wrote this year or are just curious about what other people were reading here, I've got three…
Here we are at the end of another year. It's been a weird one! I certainly won't go into all the weirdness of 2021, but let me give you the Energy Vanguard wrap-up, divided into five categories. Four of them…
That photo above is the bottom side an air conditioner in a crawl space on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Those droplets tell us something important: A property of the air in that crawl space aligned with a property of…
Yesterday I visited a home being built by a national production home building company. As you can tell from the title of this article, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that building enclosures have improved,…
Lloyd Alter, architect and prolific blogger at Treehugger, has a new book. Titled Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle,* the book is an exploration of what it takes to live within a pretty strict carbon budget. That means tracking the carbon…