I guess you could call me a contrarian. I usually go in the opposite direction from the crowds. In 1997, for example, I spent two weeks in Portugal, where most people head for the beaches south of Lisbon. Instead, I…
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…
It took me a while to figure out that a building is basically just a structural framework with control layers. Yeah, there's also electrical, plumbing, mechanical systems, and finishes, but the heart of a building is the stuff that holds…
Up and down. Left and right. Good and evil. Black and white. The world is full of such dichotomies. Often, however, what happens between the endpoints of a spectrum is the most interesting. As a physics graduate student, I studied…
One of the most common questions I get when I describe homes with insulated rooflines is, "What does that do to the shingles?" Some roofing companies have made a lot of noise about this topic, saying that if the shingles…
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.…
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 -…
Here's Why That's the Wrong Question! If you're investing in energy efficiency improvements for your existing home or buying a new high performance home, calculating the simple payback for your investment is at best incomplete and at worst, completely irrelevant.…
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…
I visited a new house earlier this year that had a basement wall that looked fine* at first glance. At left you see this wall, with its 2"x4" framing and fiberglass batt insulation. That wall you're looking at, though, has…