I've been involved with ENERGY STAR homes since 2004, when it was still in Version 1 of the program. It wasn't called that at the time, though. It was just ENERGY STAR. At that time, a home needed only one…
Anyone who's been around me for a while knows that I love numbers. (If you need to know pi to 50 digits, just give me a call.) Well, this article is number 100 in the Energy Vanguard blog. Wow! Even…
Last week, I was a judge in the LightHouse Awards green home competition put on by the Hilton Head Home Builders Association (HBA). Along with my fellow judges, I visited two homes in the Hilton Head area. We saw a…
When my wife and I moved from Tampa to Atlanta in 2008, we decided to try high rise living. We were living in a 1916 bungalow, which we loved dearly, and looked forward to something fresh and new. Something that would…
Geothermal heat pumps. Tankless water heaters. Spray foam insulation. Because of all the hype around 'green' products, it's easy to focus on the details and miss the big picture. Geothermal heat pumps. Tankless water heaters. Spray foam insulation. Because of…
I realize that the deck is stacked against me, but I'll make another plea for HVAC contractors to stop putting crappy ducts on high efficiency heating and cooling equipment. Last week I looked at this issue with my in-laws' house.…
In the past two years, I've helped my parents-in-law make dramatic improvements in their home. Two years ago, I tackled their building envelope, encapsulating the crawl spaces, sealing the air leaks, isolating the mechanical room, and adding insulation. One year…
I love to ask people here in Atlanta and other parts of the Southeast if they think it costs them more to heat their home or to cool their home. The answer I get is almost always the same -…
The most interesting topic we covered in my first semester of college physics was fluid dynamics. I found it fascinating, especially Bernoulli's principle. It wasn't until I left academia and entered the field of building science, however, that I really…
In 2003, I finished building a high performance home and moved into it. Shortly thereafter, I enrolled in a HERS rater class and got myself certified as a home energy rater. So, with all that experience plus my background in…