The ACI National Home Performance Conference is only a month away. Even more important, the deadline to get the Early Bird rate on the registration fee is Monday, 6 April. If you work on homes, this conference is for you.…
Move over powered attic ventilator. There's a new boss in town. For decades, concerned homeowners have looked for ways to keep their attics cool: gable vents, ridge vents, turtlebacks and whirlybirds. Then they moved from passive to active and latched…
On Saturday, the Energy Vanguard Blog turned 5 years old. It's been an interesting and rewarding journey, and I'm really glad I sat down and started doing it in early March 2010. On Saturday, the Energy Vanguard Blog turned 5…
Someone got creative with their attic insulation! Yes, those are foam peanuts and restaurant to-go boxes. Bill Box, a home inspector in our energy rater class this week, found this in an attic on a recent inspection he did. I…
I've been writing some articles on ventilation for the Journal of Light Construction lately and have come across some great material. The first quote here makes the point about indoor air quality with a graphic underwear metaphor. It's from an…
Enrico Fermi was famous for many things, as you might expect of one of the smartest physicists of the 20th century. Quantum theory, statistical mechanics, and nuclear physics were his primary subjects, but what I appreciate most about him was…
Did you know that James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul," made a video about doing blower door testing to weatherize homes? Neither did most people, but he certainly did make one. Here it is. I'd love to know the story…
Net zero energy homes, which produce as much energy as they use, are all the rage in the world of green building. Environmentalists and hippies have taken that a step further and proposed net zero water and net zero food…
Today is Pi Day, named for that special number, 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288... The three dots at the end mean that I've exhausted my memory of the digits of pi, but pi doesn't care. It just goes on and on. Anyway, Pi Day…
I love bizarre stuff. I love science. When those two come together, it's almost better than ice cream. And speaking of ice, that's what I'm talking about. Wednesday morning, I filled my orange silicone ice cube tray with tap water.…