Technical

My experience with a DIY mini-split heat pump

Katy Hollbacher interviews Laken Allen

Today I'm interviewing my colleague Laken Allen. She's a homeowner in Victor, Idaho with husband Sam, 1-yr old Auggie, and dogs Wilson and Dory. Before their baby arrived, she and Sam decided to purchase the MRCOOL "DIY" multi-zone mini-split heat pump system and install it in their home. Read on to learn more about their experiences and lessons learned!

Category: 

BuildingGenius: Making sustainable housing a no-brainer

Beyond Efficiency is highly motivated to solve the nation’s housing crisis and planet’s climate crisis through our technical work, but the traditional building consulting model isn’t going to cut it. To scale our impact far beyond what we’re able to accomplish as a small team working on one-off building projects, we’re excited to announce our new technology- and community-based initiative, BuildingGenius.

How I electrified my Northern Michigan home

A few years ago, I had the opportunity and privilege to design and build a high performance all-electric home in northwest lower Michigan. Read on to learn about the electric equipment, our experiences to date, and some data on hot water, minisplit, and overall energy use.

Category: 

What You Can Do to Optimize Indoor Air Quality

Image credit: Douglas Zimmerman, SFGATE

Category: 

Residential Energy Feedback

Image credit: Sense, a home energy monitoring system.

Category: 

Optimizing Solar PV Systems

Have you ever wondered how solar panels capture energy from the sun to produce electricity? Or perhaps you want to learn how to get the most power output of your own PV array? Read on to learn how solar panels produce electricity, or if you are simply interested in learning how to optimize your solar system skip down to that section.

Category: 

Heat Pumps for Space Heating in Cold Climates: Costs + Performance

I’ve lived in frigid climates that have four distinct seasons my whole life. These places, like my hometown of Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, and my college town of Bozeman, Montana, have winter daily average temperatures in the range of 10-30 degrees F, and are certainly what you would call “heating dominated climates.” Air conditioning is often not needed at all. These cold climates deserve special considerations when selecting modern heating systems.

Category: 

COVID-19 HVAC System Recommendations

Image: Beyond Efficiency schematic mechanical design for new office building with direct outside air system (DOAS)

Category: 

Ensuring Central HPWH System Success

Central heat pump water heating (HPWH) systems are the cutting edge in all-electric multifamily buildings in California. These systems promise to significantly lower carbon emissions of buildings while reducing energy costs and providing the same satisfactory hot water delivery performance as gas systems. Accordingly, the California Energy Commission (CEC) has partnered with consultant Ecotope to create Title 24 prescriptive and performance compliance options enabling further market penetration. The groundwork is set for this to become a mainstream technology!

Category: 

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Technical