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…
It's been a good year in the Energy Vanguard Blog. Counting this one, I've published 46 articles during the year. Of the previous 45 articles, I think the following might be ten most important ones. This is just my own…
I recently got a couple of questions from someone who's interested in changing out his air conditioner and furnace with a heat pump. With the Inflation Reduction Act and all the talk of electrification, the question is becoming more common. …
This past week I learned the truth about another one of many building science lies. It's the first one in my list here. Having my eyes opened to that lie made think of some of the other ones out there. …
You may recall that I wrote about my undersized mini-split heat pump a couple of years ago. It's undersized compared to both the heating and cooling loads, as you can see in the table below. I'll discuss the heating performance…
Last year I bought the Emporia Vue whole-house electricity monitoring system.* This past weekend, I finally installed it. The photo below shows my electrical panel with the monitor installed. Yes, it looks like a mess at the moment. The panel…
Ah, mini-splits. They’re all the rage in the world of high-performance HVAC. But what exactly is a mini-split heat pump? Unfortunately, the terminology around this technology is confusing because it’s used so inconsistently. Let’s start at the beginning. (Well, OK,…
It's the last day of the year, so let's wrap it up with some lists. Whether you missed some of the articles I wrote this year or are just curious about what other people were reading here, I've got three…
The two primary ways you can heat your house are by burning a fuel (e.g., fossil gas, fuel oil, wood) or using electricity. Furnaces and boilers distribute the heat from combustion to heat a house. Electric resistance heat makes sense…
The US Energy Information Agency does a Residential Energy Consumption Survey a couple times each decade and in the 2015 data, they showed that the average energy use per household member per year is 30.3 million BTU, or 8,800 kilowatt-hours. …