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The National Association for State Community Services Programs (NASCSP) met in Raleigh, North Carolina, for its annual training conference. Here are some personal highlights: • Raleigh, North Carolina, is a beautiful town but hard to take in from the 6th floor of my hotel room. All I saw were trees and a clump of tall buildings downtown. That’s why the city is called “City of Oaks”. • At one session, folks ... [continue reading]
What do fortune tellers, couch potatoes, and amateur make-up artists have in common? They’re all hopelessly in the dark about the life-changing benefits of LED bulbs – until they learn to look for the ENERGY STAR. That’s the premise of three quirky, irreverent new spots promoting LED lighting from EPA’s ENERGY STAR program. LEDs are quickly gaining steam as an alternative to incandescent and CFL lighting, but 70% of light ... [continue reading]
You probably know that October is Energy Action Month, the perfect opportunity for home performance contractors to promote direct install measures and start the conversation about energy savings opportunities. What you might not realize is that October is also the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) WaterSense® program’s Shower Better month, and a great time to unite water savings and product performance with your home energy efficiency efforts. [continue reading]
One of the great inventions of our time—the modern refrigerator—will get an efficiency makeover when new national efficiency standards go into effect on September 15, reducing the energy use of most refrigerators and freezers by about 20-25%. The new standards take effect 100 years after the first modern refrigerators were mass-produced for general use. Before that time, consumers used iceboxes (literally boxes with ice) to keep their food cold, but food safety was ... [continue reading]
I was first impressed by Rob Nicely when I heard him speak these words to an audience of builders, designers, and building scientists: "We’re the warriors of sustainability...We already know everything we need to know to build sustainable buildings—the question is, Can we internalize it into our culture and incorporate that learning into our practices?" [continue reading]
Passive building principles produce fantastically energy efficient and resilient buildings – and they provide one of the best paths to net zero. Passive building is quickly gaining adoption as a mainstream design method and energy standard. [continue reading]
Registration has opened for the upcoming 2015 Race to Zero Student Design Competition. The inaugural year of this program (formerly known as the DOE Challenge Home Student Design Competition) brought together 28 university teams to compete to design cost-effective zero energy ready homes for mainstream builders. The winning teams produced market-ready, state-of-the-art zero-energy-ready design solutions for high-performance homes that are energy efficient, comfortable, and durable. Teams competed in a high-energy juried event at the National Renewable Energy ... [continue reading]
The September/October 2014 issue of Home Energy marks the magazine’s 30th year in print. To celebrate that milestone, an industry-wide call for nominations found noteworthy professionals in home performance who were 30 years of age or younger. The feature article introduces the young people who the industry can count on to lead the home performance industry for the next 30 years. [continue reading]
Condensation is a persistent and often misunderstood issue. Homeowners sometimes think their windows are defective when they discover condensation on them, but it’s actually caused by high humidity in their homes. [continue reading]
People often avoid ventilating rooms during the cold season to avoid loss of heat. But this, the German Energy Agency (dena) warns, brings a big risk with it: mold. [continue reading]
