Every appliance on the market comes with claims: stronger suction, cleaner air, quieter cycles, lower bills. Independent product testers exist to check those claims, running vacuums, air purifiers, washers, and smart devices through standardized trials so buyers can compare real performance instead of marketing language. Testing changes how a purchase decision should be made. A […]
Few building decisions look simpler on paper than picking a roof color, yet the reflective roofing debate keeps coming back. Cool roofs, surfaces with high solar reflectance and high thermal emittance, appear in ASHRAE 90.1, the International Energy Conservation Code, California’s Title 24, and LEED, and the concept even earned a bill in the U.S.
Your fuel bill is a measurement instrument. The total at the bottom becomes useful the moment you divide it by how cold the weather was. That ratio, fuel burned per degree of cold, is the miles-per-gallon of home heating, and tracking it for a season or two tells you more about your house than most
An attached garage usually sits outside the heated envelope of the house, so its temperature swings with the weather. In winter, an uninsulated steel door behaves like a giant radiator, drawing heat out of the rooms next to it and pushing energy bills higher. Insulation slows that heat transfer through the door panels, and the
A timber frame home near Ithaca, New York, sits on an 11-acre parcel where hardwood forest meets hay fields, and its 2,000 square feet of living space are organized around efficiency as much as beauty. The structure uses traditional wood-in-wood peg joinery, exposed Douglas fir beams, and generous windows that let the owners watch the
Heating, cooling, and water heating consume most of the energy used in a typical American home, and the products chosen at design time determine most of that bill. Energy-efficient building products have moved from a premium option to a baseline expectation: better windows, tighter ducts, and high-efficiency mechanical systems now pay back through lower utility
A 7,000-square-foot timber home near Ann Arbor, Michigan, runs a full year of heating, cooling, and hot water for about $750. The house earned the national Energy Star five-plus rating, became the first home certified as green built in Washtenaw County, and placed in the top seven of nearly 400 entries for a National Association
Designing a home for one person is hard enough. Designing one for two adults, three children, and six pets is a different ballgame, and the house that wins that game earns every square foot. The 2,700-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath timber home near Mancos, Colorado that inspired this article fits its family because every system was chosen
New homes hold a big advantage over existing homes when it comes to energy efficiency: none of the old materials or hidden problems get in the way when you build from scratch. The decisions that matter, from the window schedule to the water heater, all happen before the foundation is poured. If you are still
Traditional incandescent bulbs are gone from mainstream shelves, and the phase-out started with federal legislation on January 1, 2012. The 100-watt bulb went first, with one additional major wattage disappearing each year through 2014. Shoppers who grew up choosing between 40, 60, and 100 watts now face halogen, compact fluorescent, and LED options that differ
