A House Needs to Breathe…Or Does It?
Have you ever lived in a home where you just couldn’t feel warm even though you had the heat cranked way up? How about one where you have to turn up the volume on the TV when the air conditioner…
indoor air quality
Can Your HVAC System Filter Out Coronavirus?
Yesterday I gathered with a few of my friends and colleagues from the building performance community for a virtual happy hour. During our chat, Steve Byers of Energy Logic posed the question: Compared to BC (before coronavirus), how will you…
Can You Use HVAC Filters in Coronavirus Masks?
Back in 2018 I wrote a series of articles on indoor air quality and filtration. One of those articles, The Unintended Consequences of High-MERV Filters, has seen a flurry of activity in the comments over the past three weeks. It all…
![An Image From The First U.S. Case Of COVID-19, Formerly Known As 2019-nCoV. [Image From The CDC]](https://www.energyvanguard.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/coronavirus-banner-cdc.jpg)
A Coronavirus Roundup From Energy Vanguard
Well, there's nothing like a little pandemic to completely upend our daily lives as well as our short and long-term outlooks for the future. I've spent far too much time reading about, listening to, and watching news about the novel…
Is Negative Pressure Causing a Problem in Your Home?
Ever have the smell of your fireplace inside your home? It's not uncommon. Here's a question I got from a reader named Rob last month:We always have a smoke smell from our fireplace, more on some days than others. I…
My New Project: A 1961 House With Home-Performance Angst
Let me tell you the story about a poor, young country boy who broke the law and launched me into my new project. Back in February, I was driving home from work one evening when a driver T-boned me. The…
How Often Should You Change the HVAC Filter?
One of the topics I've hammered on for years is the inadequacy of using rules of thumb for sizing air conditioners. The standard one ton of air conditioning capacity for each 400 to 600 square feet of conditioned floor area…
Skin Flakes in Your Air Conditioner
I never read Robert Fulghum's book, All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, but I have a clear memory of learning about one thing in the book: Most of the dust floating around our homes is actually…
The Path to Low Pressure Drop Across a High-MERV Filter
Last August I began a series of articles on filtration and indoor air quality. You can find the list of them at the bottom of this article but let's do a quick review here: We spend a lot of our…
Controlling the Humidity in Your Home in Winter
I'm going to go out on a limb and make what you may think is an outrageous statement: Water is the most interesting substance in the world. Some of you may immediately respond, "Oh, yeah! What about beer?" (Or wine…