One of the best things you can do to improve your home is to make it more airtight. Yeah, it's good for energy efficiency, but that shouldn't be your main motivation. It's good for indoor air quality. A good air…
With our changing climate, more people are having to deal with higher humidity for longer periods of time this summer. I'd say this has been probably the worst summer for humidity since I moved to Georgia in the summer of…
Air conditioning is a wonderful thing. Now that warm weather is returning here in the northern hemisphere, ACs are getting turned on and cranked up again. The air in a house gets warm because of the heat coming in through…
Ah, who can resist the ambiance of a crackling fire! Well, it turns out quite a few can. Whether to use a fireplace or not is a controversial topic in building science. The main problem is that a typical wood-burning…
If you travel with a hygrometer, as any seasoned traveler should, what I have to show you here is nothing new. But if instead you've never measured the relative humidity in a hotel room, I've got something interesting for you…
So you're getting a new air conditioner! Well, what size should you get? Unfortunately, too many contractors use only one input for sizing an air conditioner. Yup. To them, it's just a matter of floor area. Forget the windows, the…
The question of heat pumps in old houses is coming up a lot lately. With the great electrification upon us, heat pumps are quickly becoming the number one choice for space heating. In fact, data from the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and…
Are you afraid of heat pumps? Some people are, and it's usually related to experiences or stories of uncomfortably cold homes. I won't deny that there have been some horror stories about people suffering in brutally low indoor temperatures during…
When you first start learning building science, you may run into this thing called exfiltration. It's not a widely used word, even among those of us who work in the world of building science. We learn about it and then…
With winter beginning soon and energy prices climbing, let's talk about energy efficiency. And I'm not talking about that standard crap about caulking the windows and weatherstripping the doors. (You may recall that I've advised people NOT to caulk the…