Full disclosure: as a technician, I was guilty of setting the fan to “on” at the thermostat for many years. I never really thought of any of the negative impacts that could happen. I wanted to circulate the air and keep air moving through the high-efficiency air filter that most of our houses had. Later, I […]

Proper sizing and orientation of grilles, registers, and diffusers may seem like such a simple thing, but it's an area where confusion and mistakes are commonly made. First, let's define some terms. Return  A return draws air into a return duct system with negative pressure compared to the space, usually via a fixed “grille” (also […]

I recently received a message asking for a discussion of relative humidity (RH), wet-bulb (WB), and dry-bulb (DB). Time and time again, I hear techs say that condensation occurs when “hot meets cold,” which may be true in some cases. However, that is only a shorthand way to describe it and doesn't really address what […]