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…
Back in 1982, I was an undergraduate studying physics and listening to the Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. I loved my OMD album and was captivated by the song Electricity. Towards the end of the…
Certified home energy raters are going through the process of meeting RESNET's new combustion safety requirements this year, but word on the street is that many raters are procrastinating. "Only 45% of our raters have completed the requirements so far,"…
Numbers. We deal with them all the time. They come at us from all directions. We believe them. Or we don't. We throw them out and expect others to believe us. Those of us who work in the field of…
August for me is dominated by Building Science Summer Camp. It's a great event with lots of learning, great discussions, and meeting friends, old and new. I'll be writing about Dr. Chris Timusk's presentation on his OSB research later and…
Energy Vanguard's president, Dr. Allison Bailes, will teach a three-hour workshop called What You Need to Know About HVAC to Work with HVAC Pros at the Mid-Atlantic Sustainability Conference in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Aimed at architects, engineers, builders, raters, and students,…
We just completed our first combined online and in-person home energy rater training class. I've been wanting to do this for a while now because I've suspected that our attempt to buck the industry preference for a 5-day class by…
RESNET will require all HERS raters to be certified in combustion safety and work scope development. All new raters trained in 2014 will need to demonstrate those skills before they can be certified. Raters who were already certified prior to…
This week at the ACI conference in Detroit, I was part of a session called Speed Dating: Educational Training Tools. It was really fun, with groups of people going to different stations every half hour and getting the scoop on…
In 2005 I went to my first Affordable Comfort conference, now usually called the ACI national conference or just ACI. The year before I'd gone to a related conference but by 2005, my first business in this industry (ab3 energy)…