home building

NFPA video in which wildfire researcher Jack Cohen explains that embers (firebrands), not the flame front, are the main cause of homes igniting in wildfires. He shows how landscaping and removing debris around the home reduce risk.

Technology Connections explains how heat pumps work as reversed air conditioners and why they can deliver several times the heat of resistive heating per unit of energy. It also tackles common myths such as poor cold-weather performance.

CGP Grey argues that your brain treats a whole home as one room during lockdown, blurring work, rest and leisure. He recommends creating separate spaces and routines for different activities to stay balanced.

PolyMatter explains China's housing bubble and why around 50 million homes sit empty. It covers cultural and economic reasons behind the overbuilding and the government's bind.

Ben Felix explains how to decide between renting and buying a home, weighing financial and non-financial factors. He argues that renting is often as good or better than owning, both financially and for well-being.

A Vox Borders explainer on Hong Kong's housing crisis, the least affordable market in the world, and the tiny cage homes and subdivided flats people squeeze into. It looks at why prices keep climbing and how land policy contributes.

Technology Connections explains that US household power is split-phase, with two 120V legs that combine to 240V for large appliances. It covers the breaker panel and how the system works.

Technology Connections explains how a home can act as a thermal battery by pre-cooling or pre-heating when electricity is cheap or abundant. He shows how this shifts load off-peak and eases strain on the grid.

A Just Have a Think video on the proposed 16 billion pound Xlinks project to build solar, wind and battery capacity in southern Morocco. It would send around 3.6GW to the UK by subsea HVDC cable as near-baseload power.

A mini-documentary by a Canadian living in Japan explaining how an average family can afford a new detached house in Tokyo. It covers how houses are treated as depreciating assets and how Japanese zoning and building practices keep prices low.

A Technology Connections video on how ground-source (geothermal) heat pumps work and why they hold efficiency in winter. It also covers related heat pump information, and the description notes air-source heat pumps have since improved.

Technology Connections' long closing video in his heat pump series, arguing that adopting heat pumps is well within reach. It explains how they work and what it takes to start using them.

Technology Connections explains why humidity matters and compares the main types of humidifiers, including evaporative and ultrasonic designs. It covers how and why you would add moisture to indoor air.

A two-minute explanation of what a rocket mass heater is, starting from how a conventional wood stove works and why creosote and chimney fires occur. It shows how burning hot and storing the heat in thermal mass makes for an efficient heater.

Technology Connections explains what forced-air furnaces are, how they work and why they need electricity. He covers combustion, airflow and the parts of a modern furnace.

Technology Connections looks at why awnings disappeared from houses and how effective they are at cutting solar heat gain and cooling costs. It argues they are a simple, forgotten cooling technology.

Technology Connections explains how an ordinary tank water heater works, including twin-element designs, and why it is cleverer than it looks.

Ben Felix explains how to compare renting and buying a home by looking at unrecoverable costs, and distills it into the 5% rule of thumb. It is framed for a Canadian audience but broadly applicable.

Not Just Bikes explains why cars rarely crash into buildings in the Netherlands, attributing it to street design that forgives mistakes and to systematic crash investigation. It contrasts this with North American acceptance of such crashes.

Ben Felix argues that common beliefs about renting versus buying are wrong: homes are not great investments, mortgages are not a wealth hack, and ownership does not reliably bring happiness.

Mathologer explains epicycles and complex Fourier series, inspired by an animation of Homer Simpson drawn with epicycles. It covers the shape of the Moon's orbit around the Sun and how to make your own epicycle drawings.

A short Nature video on the discovery that our home supercluster is Laniakea, redefined by mapping the flow of galaxies rather than their density. It names the structure with a Hawaiian word meaning 'immeasurable heaven'.

Practical Engineering explains what a black start is: restarting a power grid after total collapse. It shows why most plants need outside power to start and why rebuilding a synchronized grid is delicate and high-stakes.

Tom Scott features Kurtis Baute inside a sealed homemade biodome as carbon dioxide builds up, showing how stale air with elevated CO2 affects cognitive function. Sources include studies on CO2 and cognitive scores.

Bill Hammack of engineerguy explains how medieval engineers designed stone cathedrals using rules of thumb, with no science, mathematics or literacy. He uses it to define the engineering method.

A Kurzgesagt animation walking through how a Mars base could be built and why it would be punishing, covering radiation, temperature extremes, toxic dust and the need for shielding.

A Wendover Productions explainer on how China built the world's largest high-speed rail network so quickly and why its rail strategy differs from America's. It covers politics, social benefits and the economics of unprofitable lines.

Musician and audio engineer Benn Jordan tries Dolby Atmos as a consumer, covering the theory of immersive audio, its business model, and home theater and headphone listening. He concludes it often falls short of the pitch.

Technology Connections' hour-long guide to electric vehicles, covering costs, trade-offs and especially how little home charging power most drivers need.

A short Globe and Mail animated explainer on why renting can leave you as well off as buying a home. It walks through a rent-versus-buy comparison using Toronto numbers and the opportunity cost of a down payment. The video notes it dates from 2015 and the housing market has changed since.

Wendover Productions explains why American towns, retail and buildings increasingly look alike, covering zoning pressures, corporate standardization and cheap construction types like 5-over-1 buildings.

About Here explains how North American building codes requiring two staircases make small multi-story apartment buildings hard to build, and contrasts this with places that allow single-stair designs.

SalC1 explains how the seed behind the Minecraft title screen panorama was found, using community effort and the Minecraft@Home project. It covers the search through Beta 1.7.3 world seeds.

Tom Scott investigates moire-effect beacons, called Inogon leading marks, a Swedish invention from the 1980s that shows different patterns depending on the viewer's position. He visits one used to mark an undersea cable and tracks down its history.

Technology Connections explains why heat pumps matter right now, covering their efficiency, how they hold up in cold weather and the energy savings over burning fuel. It follows his earlier explainer on how they work.

Practical Engineering's explanation of the February 2021 Texas winter storm and the resulting power grid outage. It lays out the facts about ERCOT, the grid's isolation, and how generation across fuel types failed in the cold.

Practical Engineering explains why connecting solar and other inverter-based generation to the grid is hard. It covers grid stability, load balancing and the behind-the-scenes engineering challenges of renewables.

Technology Connections explains why electric kettles are uncommon in the US, centering on 120V circuits limiting power. He tests ways of boiling water on gas, electric ranges and kettles.

Practical Engineering explains pumped storage hydropower, which makes up most grid-scale electricity storage. It covers how it works and why it fits only certain geographies.

Technology Connections explains that the so-called EV charger in an electric car's charging cable or wall unit is really an EVSE, a smart switch that safely delivers AC power. The actual charger is inside the car. The video covers the safety signaling and mechanisms involved.