Using the wisdom of Cool Hand Luke to explain building enclosures, mechanical systems, or indoor air quality is a long established tradition in building science. Joe Lstiburek's Cool Hand Luke Meets Attics is the pinnacle of this genre, of course,…
Yesterday I did a consultation with a homeowner in Michigan. He's got a 60 year old house with a boiler and radiant heating system that has become a burden. The pipes for hydronic distribution system just developed their seventh leak…
Dehumidifiers have one job: to turn water vapor into liquid water by moving air over a cold coil that's below the dew point. The capacity, or size, of a dehumidifier is just the rate at which it does that conversion. …
![Zehnder Energy Recovery Ventilator [Photo Credit: Albert Rooks, Small Planet Supply]](https://www.energyvanguard.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/zehnder-energy-heat-recovery-ventilator-albert-rooks.jpeg)
You know that old saying, "No good deed goes unpunished"? It applies to a lot of homes with respect to ventilation. If you simply bring outdoor air into the house, you pay for it...in more than one way. The outdoor…
Ten years ago, Georgia led the United States in adopting a new energy code. Perhaps the biggest advance was that it required all new homes to meet a threshold for airtightness (7 ACH50). Now most states require blower door tests…
So you want to have better indoor air quality at home but you aren't sure what to do. If you read my last article, you know you shouldn't buy an electronic air cleaner. Instead you should stick with the tried-and-true…
The pandemic has brought a huge amount of attention to indoor air quality, even without full acceptance of the aerosol transmission of COVID-19. Unfortunately, it has also brought a huge amount of money to companies selling questionable electronic "air cleaners." …
You may not want to think about this but every time you inhale, you're breathing in air that came out of someone else's lungs. One of my favorite ventilation quotes drives this point home. In a book titled Ventilation and…
The two kinds of people in the world are those who can extrapolate from incomplete data. Regarding how COVID-19 spreads, the data are becoming more and more complete now. And the facts and analysis all point to this deadly virus…
What happened in Texas this winter has a lot of people thinking about our dependence on electricity and what happens when the power goes out in extreme weather. Recently I wrote about Gary Nelson's house in Minneapolis that's heated by…