This weekend I got a chance to see Aqua, that oozing projection of glass and thermal bridges in downtown Chicago. I've written about it before because it's such an energy efficiency monstrosity, so of course I had to get some…
If you work in the fields of home building, home improvement, or HVAC and want to do the best work you can, you know that you've got to keep learning. Not only is there a tremendous amount to know, but…
The 9th annual North American Passive House Conference will be in San Francisco, California on 10-14 September 2014. Confused? Maybe you heard that the North American Passive House Conference will be in Portland, Maine on 22-23 September. What's going on…
Not long ago, Erik Henson an energy auditor with HD Engineering and Design in the Kansas City area, posted the photo below on LinkedIn. As you can see, frost has formed on the walls and ceiling inside the house. It's…
Is housewrap a vapor barrier? What's the purpose of building paper? Who'll stop the rain? I've covered this topic in various forms before, but the confusion about what the different building materials do is so widespread that I have to…
Are you ready to take the next step in being a building enclosure control freak? You already know about the 4 types of control layers, so let's go further now and look at the one that controls liquid water. But…
I get asked from time to time if a gas furnace dries out the air in a home and makes a humidifier necessary. I've written about humidifiers and psychrometrics before, but it's still worthwhile making this point explicitly. Even some…
They say you can't fix stupid. They're wrong. When it comes to ice dams, we know how to fix what is the most common cause.† If you know a little building science, you can look at the photo below and…
We're a few days into 2014 now. A lot of homes got built last year, and a lot got renovated, too. Quite a few homes got home energy ratings, and even more had blower door tests. Spray foam attics and…
I spoke at Serenbe,† a beautiful green community southwest of Atlanta, this weekend and got a chance to visit a net zero energy home while there. Built by Luis Imery, one of the home energy raters we're a HERS provider…