HVAC and Insulation From a Working Tech
Dana Sorensen · July 7, 2026
My thermal camera is lit up like a heat map gone wrong — a bright orange band tracing the seam where Greg’s contractor tied his new 400-square-foot sunroom into the existing trunk line. The manometer reading confirms what the image already told me: static pressure is climbing, airflow to that room is barely a trickle, … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 7, 2026
A smoke detector isn’t just a smoke detector — and believing otherwise is a mistake that quietly puts sleeping families in danger every single night. I confirmed this again last spring while running a home performance audit in a newer suburban build — the kind of tightly insulated, well-maintained house that gives off every impression … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 7, 2026
Standing on a ladder in a Draper hallway last spring, cover off, I’m looking straight into a photoelectric chamber that’s supposed to sense fire — and this particular unit had gone off three separate times that week for reasons that had nothing to do with fire: a pot of pasta water reaching a boil, a … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 7, 2026
Why does one CO detector chirp feel like nothing at all while another sends you sprinting outside with the kids at 3 a.m.? Because the two sounds aren’t carrying the same message — and mixing them up is exactly how people end up either evacuating for nothing or ignoring something that could actually kill them. … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 6, 2026
Early in my career, I made an assumption that still bothers me when I think about it. A client’s kitchen had a CO alarm mounted right by the hallway, batteries fresh, unit tested and working — so I moved on without ever pulling out my own meter to check ambient levels near the furnace. Weeks … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 6, 2026
Scroll through enough HVAC forums and you’ll find two camps giving opposite advice. One says grab the densest, highest-MERV filter on the shelf because more filtration always wins. The other insists anything past MERV 8 will choke your furnace and should be avoided entirely. Neither absolute is correct, but if I had to pick which … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 6, 2026
The first real heat wave of the season always exposes the same weak spot in a house. The rest of the rooms cool down just fine, but one bedroom stubbornly hangs onto its heat like it’s got its own microclimate — running a full 10 degrees warmer than everywhere else, no matter where the thermostat … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 5, 2026
What a manufacturer spec sheet or code minimum never spells out is the real dollar cost of falling short. Last winter, in a home outside northern Utah, I found that out firsthand while working with a homeowner paying $380 a month just to heat his house. His attic clearly had insulation in it — visible, … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 5, 2026
Thirty-five parts per million. That’s the figure my calibrated CO meter settled on inside a home office in a suburb outside Salt Lake City last spring — and the reading came a full two hours after the vehicle responsible for it had already pulled out of the driveway. The homeowner had been waking up with … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 5, 2026
Almost every homeowner I talk to is operating on the same unspoken assumption: that a heat pump and a gas furnace are basically interchangeable, and whichever one gets crowned “better” will simply be better in every house, in every climate, full stop. That assumption falls apart the moment real winter weather shows up. I watched … Read more