"ASHRAE 62 is the only national consensus standard document there is. Follow 62.2. Resistance is futile." So said Dr. Max Sherman last summer in a presentation for the Building America Technical Update meeting. (Download pdf official report here.) That statement…
I've seen a lot of nasty crawl spaces. I've squirmed through their squalor and squeezed through their narrow confines. Possums, snakes, spiders, and camel crickets have kept me company in the dank, musty underworlds that so many people live above.…
In my last article, I explained some of the basic science of phase changes, referencing the Wicked Witch of the West and the phase change she underwent when Dorothy threw water in her face in The Wizard of Oz. (I've…
Which takes more heat — melting a pound of feathers or raising the temperature of a pound of feathers from the melting to the boiling point? OK, let me rephrase that. If the Wicked Witch of the West melts at…
Many of the problems that people experience with cooling their homes are pretty straightforward — simple to fix and often simple to prevent. Of course, there are also bigger problems, like bad insulation, air barriers, and duct installations, but today my…
When I wrote about the net zero energy home that Amy Musser and Matt Vande built, I was really impressed that they were willing to share the mistakes they'd made and what they would do differently if they could go…
Of course, there are more than 3 reasons that your 3 ton air conditioner isn't really 3 tons, starting with the fact that it's not 3 tons in weight. That unit refers to cooling capacity and goes back to the…
Neville poked his head up through the scuttle hole into the attic and surveyed the situation. Troy immediately heard a scream erupt and had to get out of the way as Neville quickly jumped down off the ladder. Neville poked…
If you were a really strange person, or even a normal person who maybe just has some really odd ideas, and you wanted to breathe the gaseous emissions from a dead, rotten decaying possum, while in your home, how would…
Acronyms and initials (let's call that AI,† for short, not to be confused with the other AI, which stands for artificial intelligence, or AIA, which stands for American Institute of Architects) are part of the jargon of every field. Our…