Vented crawl spaces are often nasty, dirty buffer spaces that can flood your home with a variety of indoor air pollutants. A lot of it starts with moisture, of course. Water comes up from the ground beneath the crawl space,…
You'd think that after more than 12 years and a thousand-plus articles, I'd have mentioned all the major building science terms by now. Yet, here we are. I just did a search of all the articles in this blog and…
Tis the season for pumpkin spice. It began with pumpkin pie and then later spread to fancy coffee drinks. Starbucks introduced the pumpkin spice latte in 2003 and turned it into a trend. Now everyone knows it even by its…
Since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, indoor air quality has become a subject of great concern. IAQ and infectious disease scientists discovered early on that COVID is airborne. That means removing virus-laden particles from the air or deactivating…
The Westford Symposium on Building Science (known mostly as Building Science Summer Camp) came back to life this year after a two-year pandemic-prompted hiatus. Three of the presentations on the first day focused on health, indoor air quality, and infection…
We've normalized the abnormal in our homes in so many ways that most people have no idea what kind of performance they should expect. If you've never lived in a house with a good building enclosure and HVAC systems, for…
An attached garage is the source of a lot of indoor air pollutants for a great many homes. That's because we store gasoline, pesticides, paints, and other toxic materials there, and we exhaust the fumes of automobiles there as well. …
For those of us who live in warm or hot climates, this question about roof temperature is confusing. A lot of people talk about cold roofs and hot roofs, and unfortunately, it's not just about the time of year, current…
The past 2.5 years of the COVID pandemic have put a big spotlight on indoor air quality and the spread of infectious disease. I've been writing about various aspects of indoor air quality since I started this blog in 2010,…
What?! Building enclosures and mechanical systems are both important in homes. The building enclosure is where the control layers are, those parts of the building that control the flows of heat, air, and moisture. The mechanical systems provide heating, cooling,…