Category Archives: Energy Efficiency

A look at NAHB’s “Recommended Code Amendments”

nahb

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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Posted in Energy Efficiency | Tagged | 4 Responses

Eco-Friendly & Efficient Swimming Pools

falcon-pools-uk-1

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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Duct Testing – FAQ’s

duct-testing-new-construction

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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Also posted in Air Sealing & Insulation, Common Sense Building, Infrared, Code Verification, & Energy Audits | Leave a comment

Monitoring your Electricity Usage with MyUsage and Smart Meters

myusage-summary

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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Also posted in Energy Conservation, Miscellaneous Articles, Reading Utility Meters | 1 Response

Snow is truly one of the best diagnostic indicators out there…

older-house-no-updates

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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Also posted in Infrared, Code Verification, & Energy Audits | Tagged | 5 Responses

Solar – are we putting the cart before the horse?

horse

Ahhh Solar Power – who can resist the lure of free energy for the taking which happens to also be the golden child of the Clean Tech industry, the government, and numerous other groups? I have been meaning to do an article about this issue for a while, especially after attending the Pickens Plan presentation
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Also posted in Going Green? | Tagged , | 1 Response

October is National Energy Awareness Month & a Free Monitoring Tool

energy_awarness_month_2010

Welcome to the 23rd National Energy Awareness Month, where they choose “Powering America – We’re on target” for the slogan. Seriously – their message is that we are on target, as in we are doing fine, there are no issues, so please keep doing what you are doing? I know this is an election year,
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Also posted in Energy Conservation, Miscellaneous Articles | 3 Responses

Building Green Homes: Looking back & Lessons Learned

Final_MILC

I guess I can credit some of my desire to learn about and utilize energy efficient designs, green buildings, & solar power with the area I grew up in. I can recall some of our schools field trips where we would go see new houses being built with photovoltaic panels, and eating food cooked on
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Also posted in Common Sense Building, EnergyStar, Going Green?, Universal Design | Tagged | 9 Responses

Energy Efficiency vs. Conservation – what is the real issue?

bring-it-on

I have to admit, I was originally confused by some of the attitudes or opinions given about those in the Energy Efficiency fields. I grant you that there are quite a few individuals in the green community that are five cans shy of a six pack, but the following quotes come from some of the
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Also posted in Common Sense Building, Energy Conservation, Going Green? | 14 Responses