by Paul Kando
Comfortable houses are energy efficient houses. After all, our physical comfort depends on (1) whether we are absorbing or losing heat, (2) whether moving air blows toward or away from us, (3) whether we are absorbing or losing moisture, and (4) whether our surroundings are healthy and ...
Posted Friday, March 6, 2015
by Paul Kando
When people look for "a list of options" instead of an optimal, system-level energy solution for their houses, it betrays a perspective of buildings as collections of optional parts. If one proposed, as the most economical option, the purchase of your next automobile from NAPA Auto Parts ...
Posted Tuesday, July 22, 2014
by Paul Kando
How can I convince you? Please think of your house as a system before you do anything to it! In just one week I heard from half a dozen home owners who did something perfectly reasonable to their house only to regret it because what they did ...
Posted Monday, June 2, 2014
by Paul Kando
After space heating, the next largest energy user in a house is water heating. It is a year round need poorly addressed in all too many Maine houses. Among the most popular options, a propane fired tank water heater ($800 - $1,300 to install) is currently the ...
Posted Tuesday, May 13, 2014
by Paul Kando
Passivhaus practice essentially treats the existing house as if it were the inner core of a new Passivhaus – “wrapping it” from the outside in a superinsulated, airtight “comforter”. The first step is system optimization: how best to thermally isolate the heated envelope from unheated spaces. Therefore, unheated ...
Posted Tuesday, May 6, 2014
by Paul Kando
As thermodynamic systems, my cat and I are marvels of engineering. We produce our own heat, sense warmth and cold, can close our pores to prevent moisture loss, shed moisture to keep cool, and more. The cat fluffs up or flattens its fur to vary its thermal ...
Posted Tuesday, April 29, 2014
by Paul Kando
Could my cat know better how the laws of thermodynamics I wrote about last week apply to keeping warm in winter than the men who built my once-leaky old house? Mid-morning, in the sun-room, he curls into a ball, fur fluffed. An hour later, he stretches out ...
Posted Tuesday, April 22, 2014
by Paul Kando
A comfortable, well functioning house, new or old, begins with a basic understanding of how the physical world works; in this case how heat, air and moisture interact in a heated building. A house is a physical system, subject to the laws of thermodynamics. If we ignore ...
Posted Wednesday, April 16, 2014
by Paul Kando
I first learned about Passivhaus in 1988 while working in Sweden – two years before the first such building was built in Germany – and have been following the development of this remarkable building system ever since. Passivhaus, or passive house (PH), refers to a strict voluntary standard for ...
Posted Tuesday, April 8, 2014
by Paul Kando
Buyer beware!
He plans to build a house, says the caller, and the estimates he got for heating systems are expensive and confusing. Could I help him pick a heating system? How could I without knowing anything about the heat load of his house? The house doesn ...
Posted Tuesday, April 1, 2014
by Paul Kando
Solar energy arrives from the sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation, about 1,300 watts of energy per square meter of surface outside Earth's atmosphere, and about 1,000 watts per square meter at Earth's surface, at noon on a cloudless day. The difference ...
Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2014
by Paul Kando
Ballen, Denmark, is one of 18 small villages on Samsø, an island of 4,000 residents. The new Energy Academy with its 11 new jobs is located here, doubling as a meeting house and visitor center for those who com e here from the world over to ...
Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2014
by Paul Kando
In our high school it was a custom to ask teachers “one last question” at the end of the last class before graduation. Here are two answers that still serve me well: “The most important thing to remember about science is that we can be wrong. A ...
Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2014
by Paul Kando
Heating water for our household needs is the largest single year-round energy user in most houses. There are many ways to do it. Old standbys include tanks of water heated either by gas or electricity, an internal “on-demand” heat exchange-coil in the heating system’s oil-fired boiler ...
Posted Tuesday, March 4, 2014
by Paul Kando
The series of recent winter storms that dropped up to two feet of snow on the Eastern Seaboard, brings to mind the 1988 testimony by NASA’s Jim Hansen that first alerted Congress to human-caused climate change. Over the quarter century elapsed since, both houses of Congress ...
Posted Tuesday, February 25, 2014
by Paul Kando
Last week we followed the example of a midcoast family as they improved the energy efficiency of their home, relying not on grants or other incentives, but on their own dogged determination. They spent no money, except what they would have spent on energy anyway. Nor did ...
Posted Tuesday, February 18, 2014
by Paul Kando
The house is old. The owners live paycheck to paycheck and spend a painful $4,610 on energy this year, or $384 per month. They say they don’t have money left for an energy audit, let alone fixing up the homestead so it takes less fuel ...
Posted Tuesday, February 11, 2014
by Paul Kando
The blower door test conducted by a professional energy auditor makes all leaks in the heated envelope blow inward. Unlike outbound leaks we generally don’t feel, this incoming air-flow can be easily detected. And the amount of air blowing out through the fan is equal to ...
Posted Tuesday, February 4, 2014
by Paul KandoFrom time to time energy audit clients call to complain that, in spite of clear instructions, their insulation contractor insists on insulating part of the basement walls rather than the basement ceiling. One brash fellow even told a lady: “We don’t do that Ma'am”. Huh ...
Posted Monday, January 27, 2014
by Paul Kando
”… The sides of the ship are lined with tarred felt, then comes a space with cork padding, next a deal paneling, then a thick layer of felt, next air-tight linoleum, and last of all an inner paneling. The ceiling of the saloon and cabins . . . give a total ...
Posted Tuesday, December 17, 2013
