Are some of your bedrooms too hot or too cold? This is a common problem in new homes. Often the master bedroom will be fine, but the other rooms get too cold or too hot during the night. The culprit is not necessarily your Heating and Air Conditioning unit. The culprit is the closed door.

Your guests won’t tell you if you have a problem. They’re too polite. Your kids probably have their door open when they are small and don’t have a problem.  Your teenagers probably don’t talk to you much anyway. How can you know if there’s a problem? It’s a good idea to spend a night in each of the other bedrooms in your house, particularly the guest room, if you have one, to see how the temperature goes with the door closed for eight hours. And do this on a cold night and a hot night. You might be surprised at what you find. (more…)

    Yikes! It’s nearly 100 degrees here in North Carolina and the humidity nearly matches it. It was still over 90 degrees at dinnertime! I, for one, don’t find solar energy all that welcome this time of year. Maybe if I was generating electricity from it I would feel differently. But the solar energy I’m talking about makes me roast whenever I step out of the shade and it makes my attic a veritable furnace. But, I’ve found a building product that comes to the rescue. (more…)

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originally uploaded by edavid3001.

I was on an airplane from Los Angeles today and chatting with the fellow seated next to me about things to consider when designing and building a house. I told him that even if you were not designing a house from scratch, but simply buying a builder’s model home plan, there were avoidable mistakes you could sidestep. He nodded knowingly and said he had an example of one that he realized only too late. (more…)