In a recent email sent to NAHB members, I couldn’t help but click on the piece entitled; “NAHB’s Recommended Code Amendments Can Save Home Buyers and Home Builders Big Bucks”. Why that sounds so great, a deal where everyone wins… sweet. So is this really a win-win, win-lose, or plain lose-lose? Well let’s take a closer look at these
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It never ceases to amaze me at the lengths people will go; to escape blame, place it elsewhere, or shirk a more serious / pressing issue. In this case, many are blaming a downgraded hurricane named Sandy & climate change for a complete & utter breakdown with the infrastructure. In essence, “You know if it
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While there are many benefits to renting over owning, one of the cons is that you have no choice over how the place is cooled, heated or which appliances are used. In many cases the owner or management company will choose the less expensive equipment that fits the bill with no regard to what the
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This week we have an interesting guest post by Thomas Jones who describes himself as “a keen renovator and DIY enthusiast”. After spending years traveling the UK working other construction jobs, he is now working in the family owned business at FalconPools. For the last few years they have been specializing in Bio-Design or natural
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Recently a group of us started an interesting conversation on Deep Energy Retrofits (DER) & Historical Homes that spanned Twitter, blogs, and a whole host of other social media platforms with a ton of useful links. While the terms holy war, invaders, and boxing match came out of it, so did some great questions &
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Well seeing I started a small mess on Twitter… Earlier this week, I caught some of the conversation between the players listed below, regarding DER or Deep Energy Retrofits and “Historic” homes. After piecing together as much as I could, I mentioned that maybe we should all cover our takes on it via our respective
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Every technology comes to pass eventually from common use – we don’t move freight with steam engines any more, we don’t ride around our streets in covered wagons, and while we might have nostalgia for those technologies no one would consider returning to them today. So it is with light, we might be losing Edison’s
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In layman’s terms, what is a duct test? A duct test is simply hooking up a specialized fan & checking to see how “leaky” your duct’s are. (More below the picture) How does one perform a duct test / what should I expect to see? Using a calibrated fan & connector as shown above, we
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While catching up on my reading I came across an interesting piece in the Alabama Living magazine & that was that Cullman Electric Cooperative was now allowing one to view their daily electricity usage online. They have joined up with MyUsage.com that provides this service for 41 different utilities, located in 13 different states (3
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Oh the weather outside is so frightful… While the weather might have made a mess of things, one of the good things it does is allow one to quickly look at their house to spot some hidden issues. As you may recall from science class, the second law of thermodynamics, states that heat moves to
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