What is a Heat Pump? Heat pumps are all the rage in Maine’s efficiency community in recent years. Efficiency Maine, the organization that, you guessed it, runs energy efficiency programs in Maine, has issued more rebates and loans for heat pumps than all other qualifying measures combined. But what exactly is a heat pump and …
The most popular post on this site is,’Should I Insulate My Basement Ceiling‘. Yay, 1st spot on Google searches! The number of reader comments is also a pretty good measure and I get a number of emails. There are tons of questions and some dissenting opinions. My view is that the easiest, most consistent approach …
Or at least as Allison Bailes posted earlier this year, it is not a constant. Green Building Advisor once published my post on thermal bridging. The audience there is an extraordinarily knowledgeable one which leads to some spirited discussions. Following the thermal bridging article, there was some jockeying over whether R-value is an objective …
Crawlspaces are like the Loch Ness monster; talked about, rarely seen and potentially a bit scary. The crawlspace is that empty, barely accessible pit under the house filled with swampy water, cobwebs and spiders the size of dinner plates (that was the Google result for ‘spiders the size of dinner plates…enjoy). At least that’s what …
阅读更多Problems with Crawlspaces – Venting and other Underhouse Ills
Mold and moisture issues are a pretty common motivation for homeowners to give us a ring. There’s condensation on the windows, water dripping into the window box. One homeowner described how if they opened their front door during the winter, the glass panes on the storm door would fog up within 10 or 12 seconds. …
当我和我的妻子买了我们目前的房子时，一个上诉是它在很大程度上没有绝缘。考虑到某种绝缘和没有绝缘的选择，请每次给我空白的板岩。我们在9月和超级繁忙的审核季节开始和打开包装之间搬迁，任何所需的项目都会暂时爆炸。…
Spray foam is a great tool for insulating and weatherizing. It can be applied to horizontal and vertical surfaces, can be the air barrier and vapor and thermal control layers once cured (at least for closed cell foam) and provides some of the highest R-values per inch available. It slices! It dices! It makes …
虽然一些建筑人员认为能源审核并不是必需的，但我承认有偏见。这就是我要做的。但这提出了一个有趣的问题：如何在房屋上进行工作并确保没有审计的空气质量，温暖，舒适和水分控制？最低规定将…
Blizzard Nemo clobbered Maine and most of the eastern seaboard this past February. Snow blanketed the entire coast, piling especially high in the Appalachian foothills. We slogged through a three foot dump in Portland. 50 MPH gusts whipped snow every way, sculpting enormous snow drifts in almost alien landscapes. That’s what our family woke up …
That image above is of a recessed light in a house built in 1994. The blower door was 5750 CFM50, which unless one were testing the Astrodome, is quite high. The outside temperature was around 10F and you can see that inside the can is 27F. Bad bad bad. I ran into a string …
密封combustion systems are apt to become more central to efficient building as the new energy codes introduce air tightness standards. This implicitly means that you’ll need to pay attention to your heating system safety. And conveniently those codes also lay out explicit guidelines for combustion systems. Building and energy codes often get adopted …
阅读更多Sealed Combustion Heating and the Appliance Hot Tub Party