Maybe you're a homeowner investigating how to make your home more comfortable. Maybe you're contractor (HVAC, insulation, remodeling...) looking to grow. Or maybe you're an artist looking for the latest trends in performance art. However you got here, I'll see…
My friend Perry had lived in a nearly hundred year old house for six or seven years when we encapsulated his crawl space in 2005. It was a typical old country house. Originally built on piers, someone had filled in…
Let's say you've bought a lot in a new development and are having a tract home built. You want the home to be as energy efficient, comfortable, and green as possible. Your builder offers only a few options, like high-efficiency…
I know it's not air conditioning season, but this story is too good to wait until summer rolls around. My friends at E3 Innovate in Nashville — you may remember them for finding the home ventilated with dead possum odors —…
Who among us doesn't love spending time in crawl spaces and attics? I've certainly done my time there. A lot of my friends hang out there, too. I found out in an email from the Building Performance Institute (BPI), however,…
Remember those two furnaces I showed you photos of last week? You know, the ones that had ducts placed—or taped, in one case—right in front of them to bring them combustion air. I told you it wasn't a good way…
When I was building a home in 2001, I came across a gazillion little things that I needed guidance on. I'd never built anything larger than a bookcase, so new home construction was quite a big step. I bought books,…
Asbestos was a popular material for most of the twentieth century, mainly because of its ability to insulate and act as a fire retardant. In fact, it's still used heavily in some parts of the world, such as India and…
A line in the sand has some significance for Texas, the state where I was born. Colonel William Travis used his sword to draw such a line in the waning days of the Battle of the Alamo. As General Santa Anna…
When I started Energy Vanguard in 2008, I didn't know how it would evolve and had thought early on that I may get back into home performance contracting. I did a couple of jobs, the last one being a crawl…