air-conditioning / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Extreme summer temperatures pose a very real health risk to the most vulnerable members of society.  There are some tips to help keep a home cool during a heat wave, but faced with long spells of very high temperatures, that becomes increasingly difficult to do as heat is stored in the thermal mass of our homes, making...

How to cool a home without AC While it's true that no matter where you live, be it urban, suburban or rural, the hottest days and nights of summer may have you dreaming of cooler climates. However, those living in dense urban areas will feel it the most, where ambient temperatures can be 5 to 9 degrees Celcius higher. ...

Urban heat island effect and how to mitigate it Have you ever noticed how much hotter it feels in the city on a sweltering summer day compared to the surrounding countryside? This phenomenon is known as the urban heat island effect, and it has significant impacts on human health, energy consumption, and the environment...

Geothermal heating systems for homes Domestic Geothermal heating systems can be a great way to heat a home, replace a furnace, and are labeled as money savers. Question is, are they worth the hype? Here's a quick view first of how they operate. Starting at depths of between 6 and 10 metres, the temperature of the earth...

The Ecohome Demo House has a vapor permeable exterior air barrier, and with an ACH rate of .69 it is  several times more airtight than the average new home. Air leakage can be responsible for up to 1/3 of the total heat loss of a home and cause significant moisture damage in walls, as one small hole can be responsible ...

Are heat pumps really more efficient? When it comes to residential heating and cooling systems, few types of heating systems are as energy efficient as heat pumps. But what exactly are heat pumps and how do they work? In short, a heat pump is simply an electrically powered device that is capable of transferring heat fr...

How important is an air barrier in a home? Approximately 100 times more water vapor is carried into our walls by air leakage than is carried by vapor diffusion. That makes air barriers 100 times more important than vapour barriers, so why is no one talking about them? We don't talk about air barriers because we are too...

We cannot overstate the importance of airtightness in homes and attic rooms. A proper air barrier reduces heat loss in winter, overheating in summer, and prevents moisture build up in walls which can lead to mould and rot. We recently had a chance to try out a product that at first sounds too good to be true, but one t...

Homes built in the last 40 years in Canada are relatively airtight. Before that we generally relied on leaky uninsulated walls to provide fresh air and prevent mold and mildew, and they did that very well. Cost and comfort had us adding insulation, but not necessarily sealing our walls. The folly of this was quickly re...

Air tightness in houses - all about balancing air pressure in the home We go on incessantly here about the importance of air barriers in home construction to reduce air leakage, but no matter how hard you worked to make a house airtight, if the pressure isn't balanced you will be sucking air in or forcing it out and, d...

What is radiant cooling? Radiant cooling is an alternative to typical forced air home air conditioning systems. Radiant home air conditioning involves reducing the temperature of floors, ceilings, or walls so they absorb heat from the air, rather than cooling the air itself as with normal A/C systems. By cooling surfac...