I had my first intro to solar class last night at the Austin Community College Round Rock Campus. It’s a great group of adult learners. Join us, won’t you? Now’s your chance to learn the basics of solar electricity. Spend Tuesday evenings this summer expanding your knowledge about one of the greatest challenges of our [...]
Hello and Happy New Year! I hope this coming year becomes everything you want it to be. 2011 was great and I’m excited about 2012. 2011 was my first full year in business. In the spring, I began teaching Weatherization as an adjunct instructor at Austin Community College. In the summer of 2011, I began [...]
I teach a weatherization class at Austin Community College. My students sit for the BPI Building Analyst exam so that they can become energy auditors. They also learn how to fix things. To gain practical experience, I take my students into homes to run tests and work through real problems. A few of [...]
I’ve been doing a lot of energy audits on apartments here in Austin due to the Energy Conservation and Disclosure’s (ECAD) requirement for every multi-family property in Austin older than 10 years old to have an energy audit. While the deadline was June 1st, 2011, there are still some properties who haven’t had the work [...]
Done right, an energy audit is the proper diagnosis of a building to make it more energy efficient. As diagnosticians, energy auditors view the whole house as a system. Doing so solves the right problem, as this video illustrates. While shot in a different climate zone than Austin, it shows how problems are connected and [...]
So many A/C ducts are leaky, especially in older buildings. It’s not a surprise. Take typical metal duct work. In older buildings, it’s usually connected by sliding two metal sleeves together and fastening with sheet metal screws. That’s it. Think that connection is air tight? Think again. The solution? Slather something called mastic around the [...]
