We are now ten short days from the winter solstice and many of us in the Northern Hemisphere have been in heating season for a while. That means there's a lot more combustion happening in homes than there was in…
Let's talk about one of my favorite subjects: air. Because of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the novel coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) that spreads it, the indoor air quality (IAQ) community—researchers, mediators, manufacturers, bloggers, groupies—is having a moment. This must be the…
Twitter is an utter hellscape in some ways, but it does have a few redeeming qualities. I've seen a lot of good information about the COVID-19 pandemic there, including ways to filter the indoor air for coronavirus and the emerging…
I hate it when I don't see ahead of time what seems obvious afterward. I've assembled a lot of things in my life, including a house and two VW engines, and I can't tell you how many times I've gotten…
People complicate things. If, say, you want to sell a motorcycle, you place an ad and interested potential buyers come check it out, maybe take it for a little ride, and then one of them buys it. But every once…
I briefly worked at a dry cleaning shop in St. Louis a long time ago. It was December, and we had a bout of super cold weather one week. The temperature dropped to 0° F at night and got up…
Ten years ago today, I published one of the most significant articles I've written here in the Energy Vanguard Blog. Titled I Don't Need No Stinkin' Building Science Summer Camp!, this article got me invited to that invitation-only event where…
Back in the summer of 2005, I got a call to figure out a moisture problem in a new house. The homeowners took me into the master suite, where the first thing to catch my eye was the towel folded…
The classic chart demonstrating the importance of keeping to the middle of the relative humidity spectrum has been shown to countless attendees of classes, conference presentations, and webinars on building science, indoor air quality, moisture problems, and health. I can't…
I've written about the load calculation and equipment selection process I went through for the new Mitsubishi* ducted mini-split heat pump in my house. Now let's take a look at the design and performance of the duct systems for the…