Naked People Need Building Science
Don't you just love to strip down to your socks and jump on the bed? As a kid, you may not get away with it, but you're a grown man or woman now, so who's to stop you? And then,…
insulation
10 Reasons to Buy a Home Energy Audit on Cyber Monday
For about the same price as you'd pay for an iPad, you can buy a home energy audit to give to a loved one this holiday season. Yes, the iPad is sexier. Yes, the iPad is more fun. Yes, everyone…
Guardian Building Products Makes the Right Move
Yesterday I received an email and letter from Steve Ziessler, president and CEO of Guardian Building Products. In it, he apologized for their heavy-handed approach to expressing their displeasure with seeing their fiberglass batts pictured in an article on poor…
Why Is Guardian Building Products Threatening Energy Vanguard?
[UPDATE: 11/8/11 I received an apology today from the president and CEO of Guardian. More about that in the follow-up post.] See that photo? It's one of the reasons that I received a nasty letter from Guardian Building Products, a manufacturer…
A Visual Guide to Why Fiberglass Batt Insulation Underperforms
Heating and cooling your home sucks more money out of your bank account than any other type of energy consumption (unless you live in a high performance home, in which case the proportions are different but the total is smaller).…
Batts, Blown, or Sprayed – What’s the Best Attic Insulation?
I get asked a lot of questions about windows, air conditioning, and other energy efficiency topics: What size HVAC system should I install? Is it true you can seal a house up too tight? Can I use a CFL bulb…
Radiant Barriers Don’t Work with Spray Foam Insulation on Them
I'm teaching a HERS rater class this week, and on Monday we went out to look at a couple of houses and do a Blower Door test. The second house we visited was under construction, and the builder had used…
There’s Radiation in Your Home! – And Building Science Can Help
As you sit comfortably in your home, you’re being bombarded by radiation from all sides. There’s nothing you can do to stop it either. Don’t worry, though—without it, you’d be dead because your house would be at a temperature of…
Oooh, Shiny Stuff! – Radiant Barrier Fundamentals
In the guest post I wrote for Bob Borson in his blog Life of an Architect, I gave an overview of the types of attic insulation. I didn't discuss radiant barriers in the article, but it's a hot topic, so…
Air Barrier Sleuthing – Building Envelope Lessons for DET Verifiers
The first bit of sleuthing you may need to do here is to figure out what the heck a DET verifier is. Well, we have a new energy code here in Georgia, and the requirement that all new homes (and…