Dana Whitfield Smart thermostats are marketed as though the intelligence is the point. They learn your schedule, they sense when you leave, they optimize. The implication is that something clever is happening inside the device that a dumb thermostat could never manage. The actual mechanism is far more boring, and understanding it is the difference between a … Read more
A professional energy audit is worth having. The blower door test alone measures something you genuinely cannot estimate by eye, and a thermal camera in trained hands finds problems hidden inside walls. But most houses have a handful of obvious, ordinary problems that account for a large share of wasted energy, and you can find … Read more
Heat pumps have gone from a regional curiosity to the default recommendation in a lot of the country, and homeowners are being asked to make a decision about technology most have never lived with. The marketing does not help much, because it leans on efficiency ratings that mean nothing to a normal person. Here is … Read more
The energy argument for LED lighting was settled a decade ago. An LED produces the same light as an old incandescent bulb for roughly a seventh of the electricity and lasts many times longer. Nobody needs convincing. What people do need is help with everything after that decision, because a house full of badly chosen … Read more
Phantom load — the electricity devices consume while apparently switched off — is one of those home energy topics that attracts wildly inconsistent claims. Some sources say it is a tenth of your bill. Others say it is negligible and you should ignore it. Both are wrong in the same way: they are talking about … Read more