All Blog Posts (709)

How Oil Pointed the Way to Home Energy Savings

Don Ames

When the oil fields began to be developed in places like North Dakota, manpower was an immediate need. Manpower was needed in remote places where the oil was hiding and having enough ready housing was a problem. The cheapest and quickest solution was manufactured housing. Pull it in, set it up, and your done.

Manufactured home communities began to sprout up over…

Guest blog by Cara Miale

March 23, 2011

As if we don’t have enough phobias already, now there is range anxiety, a malady brought on by the electric car. But it’s okay; there is a cure, or rather an app for that.

Studies indicate that many electric car drivers – and those considering joining the…

Hey, HERS raters, what if I told you that you could get the volume of a multi-pitched roof for all of your home energy…

How to Shop for a New Dishwasher



Don Ames ,  March 20, 2011



The dishwasher is one of the major appliances in a home. When a new dishwasher is needed it pays to know how to shop for a new one. There is a little more to it now that the Energy Star efficient program got involved. Things like…

Come celebrate our 25th anniversary by honoring 25 industry innovators ACi national in San Francsico March 28-April 1st.  Absolutley something for everyone!

See who is being honored and come celebrate with your friends or make new ones as you build your career!!

I have to agree with the Tea Party; the US government should not choose the light bulbs I use in my home.  And fortunately, it does not.

Yet that’s the spin being pushed by those who want to roll back federal lighting performance standards. An odd mythology is developing around the standards.

Opponents claim that the…

They say a long journey begins with a few small steps. Yesterday, I unofficially initiated the long-term energy retrofit of the Poole Ancestral Homestead by simply installing a water saving showerhead.

The new showerhead is a 1.5 gallon-per-minute, all brass, chrome finished, Victorian-styled showerhead made by Danze, which I obtained from my friends at Energy Circle...[…

With the massive brain trust of geeked out intellectual bloggers found here, I was hesitant to wet my pen and speak up, nevertheless I'm going to breakdown going Green with your PC.

The Home Computer

Your average home computer uses 200 to 400 watts, depending on its hardware, monitor and use. By comparison, your average plasma TV runs around 300 watts, but a Wii uses only 18 watt. A high-performance computer…

Building Efficiency Resources is offering Energy Star v3 training online and in 2-hour sessions that are presented outside regular working hours. This approach saves travel expenses, preserves your work day, and allows you to absorb the material in manageable segments.…

Over the past couple of years I have attended many seminars mostly on topics relating to green building and the environment. In truth, I was determined to make good use of the construction down time, in this economy, with a goal to learning as much as I could about home performance improvement. One such seminar taught me that the terms sustainable building and green construction have become more than simple buzz words, they have become policies promoted by the government. Policies which at…

I don't want to seem self-serving AND I do want folks to know about the blog that Fluke sponsors. I'm one of the prime authors (yes, The Snell Group is still 100% independent of sales!) and spend a good deal of time crafting what I think is a pretty good blog, all related to thermography and much of it related to building thermography. Michael Stuart, who created the Home Energy Pros Infrared Thermography Users group, also chimes in weekly with his "what is it?" images, all good fun and a…

It was hard to get excited about IBM’s Watson besting two humans in the TV game show Jeopardy and walking away with a $1 million prize last month. After all, thanks to the entertainment industry, we’ve seen robots and computers win in all kinds of ways, from HAL duping the smart astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey to R2D2 disabling the Death Star. What’s the big deal about racking up some trivia…

I’m just back from the RESNET national conference in Orlando and I am very excited to report that RESNET certification is now available!

What’s needed?

• You must be a RESNET Building Performance Auditor or a Rater

• You must have 3 months experience using thermal imaging and a blower door

• You must have taken a training course that complies with the standards of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT)

If you have these…

The push for energy efficiency has clearly become worldwide, creating new prospects for US green energy companies to pursue export and foreign partnerships.

One such opportunity comes from Israel, with the help of the United States-Israel Science and Technology Foundation (USISTF), a Washington-based non-profit organization.

Israel is not a country we hear much about in terms of energy opportunity. China, India, North America, South Korea, Japan – these countries tend to steal…

So are you curious about what is going to be covered in this class for Raters? This blog post was pulled from my original article done back in February. This class was taught by Allison A Bailes III of Energy Vanguard, and was tweeted live with the hash tag –…