Offering good advice, whether you want it or not.
I will first confess that I have not done a lot of hard research on this topic. I simply don’t have the time. The question has come up so often that I thought I would just brain-dump what I do know. Think of this article as “How I would design my own house”. Not necessarily […]
In 2007 I started a company called Sierra Building Science (SBS). It was primarily a training organization which at one point had a training center in historic Old Sacramento that could handle up to 30 students. It eventually moved to a warehouse where we also manufactured Duc-Blocs and Flow-Boxes for testing duct leakage and airflow. […]
In conjunction with DIYLoadCalcs.com, we have started a brand new Facebook group called “Fix My HVAC” to provide a place where homeowners can ask questions in a safe, no pressure environment. I invited some of my industry professional friends to join as advisors and the first 50 or so members are already a who’s who of […]
What is DIYLoadCalcs.com? DIYLoadCalcs.com is a brand-new website that helps homeowners calculate the heating and cooling loads on their own homes. New technology and software have made this possible just in the last few years. Previously, to do a load calculation on an existing home an expert had to visit the house and create an […]
Hi Everyone, The wonderful folks at the Sonoma County office of Energy and Sustainability asked me to do a 1 hour webinar on how heat pumps work. The target audience is homeowners, so it needed to be pretty basic. I think it turned out pretty well. There was a great turnout and it generated a […]
NOTE: These classes are done. A very similar class was recorded and posted on our YouTube Channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IrMBbjEgjE&list=PL_287eMrjGiH1w1YTsWbAj83lxrhcUioC Hi Everyone, Just wanted to pass this along. I’ll be teaching a couple classes in the next couple of weeks. The great folks at Southern California Edison’s (SCE’s) Energy Education Center in Tulare, CA are…
Disclaimer: The vast majority of my HVAC design experience is for new construction, production homes, in hot-dry climates (CA and NV). I’ve estimated that I designed at least a couple thousand plans, each plan built many times in multiple orientations. I never had any significant comfort complaints result from my designs. We always used Manual […]
Which is better for distributing heated air to a house, ceiling registers or floor registers? This seems like an easy question. Hot air rises so blowing the air up would improve the flow. This makes sense on the surface, but let’s look deeper. First of all, let me make it clear that if the system […]
Friction rate is is that number that you use on a duct calculator (aka, duct slide rule, ductulator, etc.) to figure out what size duct you need for a certain airflow. It is one of the most complicated concepts to understand in the ACCA Manual D duct design methodology. It is even harder to explain […]
My friends just moved into a new (to them) home and invited us to the housewarming party. I made the faux pas of critiquing their HVAC system. This embarrasses the heck out of my wife and happens far too often. It’s very hard not to say something when you know so much about how these […]