Three weeks ago, I wrote about an attic with spray foam insulation and the interesting humidity pattern we observed in it. We placed data loggers near the ridge and floor of the attic as well as in the living space…
There's really no end to the fun stuff you find when looking at furnace & air conditioner filters. Here are a few of my favorites for this Fall Friday. Jeffrey Sauls, our HERS QAD here at Energy Vanguard, saw this…
Breathe. It's a good thing. We need to breathe to live. Breathing consciously relaxes us. And it's a great song by Pink Floyd from the Dark Side of the Moon album. Breathe, breathe in the air Don't be afraid to…
Like many energy geeks, I track my electricity usage and costs. I've been doing it for decades. (Unlike Danny Orlando, however, I haven't stayed in the same house and watched as the home energy improvements kept lowering that usage.) One…
Spray foam insulation can solve problems that other insulation materials can't. One of those problems is moving the building enclosure from the drywall ceiling of a home to the roofline. By doing so, you bring the attic inside the building…
There's a ton of new construction and remodeling going on in Atlanta. On a lot near where I live, a developer tore down the old house and is building two new ones. This weekend, I took the opportunity to check…
I've been working on my presentation for the 10th anniversary of the North American Passive House Conference. It's on the global warming impact of insulation, a followup to my latest article about Alex Wilson's work on that subject. One of…
Air conditioner sizing rules of thumb must die. That's what I wrote in my last article. The most common rule of thumb is to use 500 square feet per ton to determine the size of air conditioner needhttps://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/more-on-air-conditioner-sizing-rules-of-thumbed. Or 400…
We design a lot of heating and air conditioning systems at Energy Vanguard. When I talk to potential clients, a lot of them tell me their contractor wants to size their air conditioner using a rule of thumb. The rule…
Remember my bathroom remodeling project? I took the liberty of gutting our outdated, decaying bathroom while my wife was out of town in April. I found some interesting air leakage pathways when I opened the walls. I fixed that. I found…