Duct leakage is a big deal. It's one of the top three energy wasters in most homes (air leakage and cable TV set-top boxes being the other two). Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that duct systems leak on…
Enrico Fermi was famous for many things, as you might expect of one of the smartest physicists of the 20th century. Quantum theory, statistical mechanics, and nuclear physics were his primary subjects, but what I appreciate most about him was…
Remember the first time you ran a blower door? OK, maybe that's not the best way to get where I'm going because most first-timers turn the pressure up like they're practicing tai chi on Jupiter. After you've done a few…
Three years ago I wrote an article titled, Don’t Let Your Attic Suck - Power Attic Ventilators Are a Bad Idea. Nearly a hundred thousand page views and 93 comments later, it's still generating lots of heat. I don't know…
I've been wrong all these years. Even 20+ years ago when I was teaching high school, I was giving out bad advice. Like so many others, I've been telling people to follow their passion. The problem is, that's like telling…
Did you know that James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul," made a video about doing blower door testing to weatherize homes? Neither did most people, but he certainly did make one. Here it is. I'd love to know the story…
This week at the ACI conference in Detroit, I was part of a session called Speed Dating: Educational Training Tools. It was really fun, with groups of people going to different stations every half hour and getting the scoop on…
A lot of people have heard advice about vapor barriers and vapor retarders. Many of them have walked away confused. A big part of the problem, I think, is that they've been told what to do—"Put it on the warm-in-winter…
In 2005 I went to my first Affordable Comfort conference, now usually called the ACI national conference or just ACI. The year before I'd gone to a related conference but by 2005, my first business in this industry (ab3 energy)…
Murmurs and hearsay about open-cell spray foam insulation have been gaining traction for a while. It rots roofs, people have told me. Not long ago, someone even told me that in Florida, roofing companies won't let their workers go up…