7 Good IAQ Practices for the Holidays
Here we are in the midst of another holiday season. You may already find yourself in a house full of relatives and friends, wondering what you might be able to do at the last minute to improve your indoor air…
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Mechanical Room Duct Obstructions
Recently I wrote about how bad it is when architects give HVAC designers a little closet to put the mechanical equipment and ductwork in. Make it a mechanical room, I said. But here's the thing. Size isn't the only thing…
Heat Pump Basics
Whether you're thinking of getting a heat pump or you already have one, knowing these heat pump basics can help you get the right heat pump and operate it properly. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) here in the US has…
Are We Decarbonizing Yet?
The latest US energy consumption chart from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) is out. That's it above. (Click here to download a high resolution version.) As always, it's full of interesting data. You can learn a lot about how…
10 Ways Your House Is Haunted
Imagine the house of your dreams. It's beautiful and laid out efficiently. You're always comfortable. It promotes health and happiness. The operating costs are low. You don't have to spend much to maintain it. You don't get a lot of…
The Plug-in Heat Pump Water Heater Is Here!
The 120-volt plug-in heat pump water heater is here! The effort to bring these things to market began in 2018, and now they're available to buy. This technology has some significant advantages over the standard 240-volt heat pump water heater. …
![Pulling Air From The Crawl Space To Cool The House Is A Really Stupid Thing To Do With Air [Photo Courtesy Of E3 Innovate In Nashville, TN]](https://www.energyvanguard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/cool-air-intake-crawl-space-e3-innovate.jpg)
7 Stupid Things You Can Do With Air
The Talking Heads said it best: "Air can hurt you, too." And it does it in so many ways. It can hurt your pocketbook. It can make you uncomfortable. It can make you sweat. It can make you sick. And,…
![Understanding Wet Bulb Temperature Is Easy When You Know How It's Measured [Photo By Marco Van Der Haar, CC BY 2.0 Deed
]](https://www.energyvanguard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/understanding-wet-bulb-temperature-psychrometrics-lake.jpg)
Understanding Wet Bulb Temperature
That gorgeous photo of a Massachusetts lake above illustrates some interesting psychrometrics. Those little bits of mist are tiny water droplets full of molecules that not long before had been part of the lake. In the air between those misty…
![A Kitchen Range Hood Sucks Air Out Of A House. Do You Need A Range Hood Makeup Air System To Go With It? [photo By LG, CC2.0]](https://www.energyvanguard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/kitchen-range-hood-full-cropped.jpg)
Range Hood Makeup Air: The Basics
Kitchen ventilation is critical to having good indoor air quality in your home. Cooking, as the research shows, produces a lot of indoor air pollutants. The best way to deal with that is to have an exhaust ventilation system that…
How Do Suction Cups Work?
Have you ever thought about how suction cups work? It's got to be suction, right? Or is it? As it turns out, all we need is some basic physics to explain suction cups. And of course there's a connection between…