Sometimes, you may have to replace a fancy thermostat with a simple one. It may be because the customer got fed up with all the options, or maybe the basic stat is the only thing on your truck. No matter the reason, you need to make sure the new thermostat can do the old one's […]

Fenestration is a fancy architectural term that means “openings in the outside of the building.” You will see this word a lot when you read ACCA manual J or when you are doing a manual J load calculation. Fenestration loads include heat losses and gain through windows, doors, skylights, etc., and they can make up […]

When I teach electrical basics, we do this exercise where we sit down and connect a 10-watt bulb to a power supply and through a switch. It's a SUPER SIMPLE circuit—the kind you might have learned about in a high school science class. But then I grab another 10-watt bulb and tell them to connect […]