Category: Maintenance

Windows and the biological thermostat

10 October, 2008 (09:55) | Configuration, Housing, Maintenance, Weather, Windows | No comments

What’s the best way to manage a home’s indoor climate?

 

 
As I type this blog post, our house’s fan is running behind me, circulating air – and directly in front of me is a lovely bank of fifteen-light windows through which I can see our back garden.
 
Why don’t I just turn off the fan and […]

The risk of complicated structures

2 September, 2008 (10:30) | Architecture, Configuration, Construction, Engineering, Humor, Maintenance | No comments

A while back, I posted in Dreamers versus Plumbers about the comprehensive failure of the climate-control system at Harvard’s Otto Hall.  The building is being demolished only seventeen years after its completion, because the ultra-sophisticated humidity-management system was too space-age for its own good. 
 

“Missed it by that much.”
 
As I wrote in that post:
 
Architects should […]

Dreamers versus plumbers

15 August, 2008 (08:24) | Architecture, Configuration, Engineering, Humor, Maintenance | No comments

“Imagine, one day we’ll write blog posts on devices like this”
“What’s a blog, honey?”
 
Long ago (1977), when I was just beginning to learn the business, our company was doing a repositioning and workout of a troubled affordable property in North Cambridge (as it happened, less than half a mile from my grotty rent-controlled apartment), which […]