The Blog
Field notes on energy retrofits, indoor air quality, moisture, ventilation and the problems that appear when a house changes.
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Field notes on energy retrofits, indoor air quality, moisture, ventilation and the problems that appear when a house changes.
Click a post to read more.
Field notesA 30 kilowatt hour storage battery sitting in the basement of a home in Lauterbach, Germany, exploded on an ordinary October afternoon in 2023. The blast collapsed the…
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Field notesI spent years standing in other people's basements with a blower door and a clipboard, telling homeowners which tight little upgrades to feel good about and which ones might…
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Field notesA homeowner I consulted with had a leased solar system installed under a twenty year agreement, the kind where the company technically owns the panels sitting on your roof.…
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Field notesWildfire smoke rolled into a client's Minnesota neighborhood a while back, and they called me confused rather than panicked. Both of their HVAC systems ran continuously with…
Read MoreField notesA story made the rounds online a few years back that I still bring up on jobs, because it says more about carbon monoxide than any pamphlet I could hand a client. A renter…
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Field notesI once walked into an attic that had been sprayed with closed cell foam a few months earlier, and the first thing I noticed was the heat. In a properly insulated spray foam…
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Field notesA homeowner called me a few weeks after installing triple pane replacement windows throughout the house, convinced she had been sold a defective product. Her old, drafty…
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Field notesA homeowner called me about mold in two upstairs bathrooms. Nothing dramatic had happened, no leak, no flood, just a slow buildup that would not go away no matter how often…
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Field notesHomeowners call me expecting a pat on the back for going heavy on insulation. Then I pull back the drywall.
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Field notesA client called me two years after buying a nineteen fifties ranch that had gone through a full energy retrofit right before it sold, the kind funded through federal and…
Read MoreField notesWhen I finally finished air sealing the retrofit on this old house of mine, my spouse asked why the windows in the back bedroom kept fogging up every cold morning. There is…
Read MoreField notesA homeowner called me because water was dripping out of their ceiling in the middle of summer. That alone is not unusual. What made me pay attention was what they told me…
Read MoreField notesOur upstairs shower would drop to a dribble the second anyone flushed a toilet or ran the kitchen sink. I spend my working life running diagnostics on other people's houses,…
Read MoreField notesI walked into a house last spring with every green claim a listing can carry. Bamboo cabinets, recycled denim insulation, a paint job that cost three times what standard…
Read MoreField notesI had my attic insulated with blown cellulose and air sealed. Since that time my home has gone from around 45 to 48 percent RH to 52 to 56 percent RH, sitting at 73 to 74…
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