Whether you want to build a new home or fix an old one, the way to ensure that you get the best performance is to do the building envelope right. That means installing the right amount of insulation and installing…
After reading an article by Joe Lstiburek titled Just Right and Airtight, I got to thinking about what we've been spending a lot of time on lately, and that is what we call the “New Big Holes.” Of the 350+…
One of the great benefits of going out into the field to do quality assurance and training for HERS raters is that I get to see what's going on in new construction. Last week I visited HERS raters in Nashville,…
On my thousand-mile quality assurance road trip last week, I visited a house that was designed to produce more energy than it uses, making it a net zero energy home. You can take any house all the way to net…
What is it about Maine? Some of my favorite people in the home energy pro community live there. We just signed up our first HERS Rater from the state (Diane Milliken of Horizon Residential Energy Services). Now, some folks there…
Although I rarely get to listen to it these days, I love the show Science Friday with Ira Flatow on NPR. It's always interesting, and you get to learn cool new science stuff. This past Friday, they covered a topic…
Don't you just love to strip down to your socks and jump on the bed? As a kid, you may not get away with it, but you're a grown man or woman now, so who's to stop you? And then,…
Recently I saw an episode of Extreme Home Makeover in which Ty Pennington and crew built a house for an Iraq war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Because noise was a huge trigger for the stress attacks he experienced…
Yesterday I received an email and letter from Steve Ziessler, president and CEO of Guardian Building Products. In it, he apologized for their heavy-handed approach to expressing their displeasure with seeing their fiberglass batts pictured in an article on poor…
[UPDATE: 11/8/11 I received an apology today from the president and CEO of Guardian. More about that in the follow-up post.] See that photo? It's one of the reasons that I received a nasty letter from Guardian Building Products, a manufacturer…