Erich Vinson is a tech from Colorado and one of the most entertaining people I interact with online. He wrote this quick tech tip on stripping back the outer jacket properly on control wires, and it happens to also be something I preach. Thanks, Erich. In the first picture (above), you can see what happens […]

To maintain combustion (burning), you need three things: fuel, heat, and oxygen. If you have all three in the proper proportion, you can maintain a continuous state of combustion. Remove one (or reduce one sufficiently), and the triangle of combustion can collapse. In a common NG gas furnace, the heat is the igniter, the fuel […]

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 […]