Air Conditioning Instruction

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Latent Heat, Sensible Heat, and Cooling Loads

How does latent heat differ from sensible heat, and how does it affect the design... More

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How to Read a Manual-J Report

We all have heard of the importance of doing heat load calculations before... More

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My Low Pressure-Drop, MERV-13 Filters

With indoor air quality on everyone's minds these days, installing better filters... More

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Commissioning a Ventilation System

Commissioning is not a word we hear much in residential construction, but it's a... More

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Panned Bays

Is it OK to use a joist bay for a return-air plenum in an HVAC system? More

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Solving for Comfort With a 'Smart' Thermostat

Tracking temperature, humidity, set point, and equipment runtime can uncover the... More

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Rookie Builder Mistakes - Part 2 - HVAC

Let’s start with some obvious mistakes that aren’t even visible to most builders... More

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HVAC Systems

A 20 minute version of my HVAC presentation to the AIA Austin Chapter in August 2013. More

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What's That Smell?

If there are bad odors in the HVAC system of a newly-built home, they are likely... More

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Q&A: Closing a House for the Winter

I have customers who wants me to build a log home that will be used seasonally, for about two months of the summer and another two months in the winter. During the rest of the year they want to leave the house closed up and unheated. We're at the edge of the Rocky Mountain Front Range in eastern British Columbia, and winter temperatures often fall to 20F. I've discouraged the clients from installing a hydronic heating system because of the difficulty of draining it twice a year (draining the domestic water will be headache enough), but what other potential problems should I be thinking about? I'm concerned that the radical swings in temperature could damage interior finishes More

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