Hood Hook Up

The completed project. We're liking the effect of the lowered hood

Long on our list of things to do to complete the house is hooking up our kitchen vent hood. I've dragged my feet on doing this for a couple of reasons: First, I always picture the vent duct as a big hole in our house where all sorts of energy loss will occur. Secondly, not having the hood hooked up has not seemed to cause much trouble in terms of either air quality or residual cooking build-up.

The opening through the wall

I mentioned this during a presentation I recently made to the Super Insulation class at Yestermorrow Design/Build School.  It was suggested by John, one of the instructors, that I really should complete this project because it has notable effects on home air quality. Just because I'm not aware of it doesn't mean its not there.

This shows the hood before I lowered it. The duct connections are partially in place

The hood with the ducting complete and the hood lowered

Feeling nudged in a way I needed to be, I spent the next day completing the hook up. This was straightforward since I'd installed the main parts during the construction of the house. The remaining work was completing the duct connection from the wall to the hood itself. Taking this on became an opportunity to lower the hood about ten inches to better capture the cooking smoke, steam, and particulate. When we first were putting the kitchen together I was concerned that the hood would look awkward suspended down in front of the window, so I hung it at the level of the top casing and it has sat there since, acting primarily as a light source for cooking.

The duct vent on the outside of the house. Its neatly tucked away, so you really need to look for it to see it. 

Time will tell if its going to create residue on the outside of the house

To our satisfaction, lowering the hood has had the nice effect of making things cozier in the cooking area. It creates a lowered ceiling and doesn't detract from the overall feel or the view out the window.

The hood is still a little higher than it should be, so I will work on it some more sometime soon, but for the moment I am glad to have the whole thing operating. We've been using it whenever we cook and I find myself suddenly sensitive to the potential harm of particulates in the air.

Incidentally, the hood came equipped with incandescent bulbs and this has always bugged me. I've wondered if I could replace the bulbs with fluorescents but never got around to checking. To my satisfaction I found it was super easy. I was a little uncertain because the bulbs have candelabra screw bases and I'd never had reason to see if they make fluorescents with them. They do, so it's no big deal. The switch is made.

The hood light with new fluorescent on the left and the stock lamp on the right 

Nance and I also discussed creating a housing to enclose the duct work, so we may make that happen too. I don't mind the metal tube look, but I think I'd enjoy a wooden enclosure as well.

Numbers

I recently gave a presentation to the Super Insulation class at Yestermorrow Design/Build School about building and living in our house. This presented a convenient opportunity for me to take stock of the building process, consider our experience living in the house so far, and to put together some performance numbers. We've been in the house just under two years and have established a track record for firewood consumption and are starting to get some reliable numbers on our propane and electric costs.

When our home was completed Efficiency Vermont (the state energy conservation organization) tested and evaluated our house for energy performance and determined a HERS number, which was presented as a part of their evaluation. HERS stands for Home Energy Rating System and is the standard methodology for comparing performance across buildings and regions. Many factors go into the rating system, including air-tightness, window performance, efficiency of the appliances, lighting and heating systems, as well as design specs like insulation R-Values and so on. The rating is adjusted for climatic conditions in a given location.

This is a generic chart showing the HERS rating scale. The "This Home 65" has nothing to do with our home.

In the above chart, 100 equals the energy use of a new home built to conventional standards in 2006. This is used as a base line by which to evaluate the spectrum of performance across buildings.  A rating of zero means the house requires no energy at all, while a rating over 100 means the house is sub-par in relation to current norms.

Our home earned a HERS rating of 38, which is a "5 star +" in the star rating shown below.  The scale somewhat curiously goes from 1-5 stars and then has a + category.  (Maybe they needed to add a new category as more efficient homes are being built -- I don't know.)

The HERS rating laid out estimated energy use predictions for our home as follows (calculated in 2011):  

             26.6 MMBtu heat  $990

             10.1 MMBtu hot water  $375

             17.9 MMBtu lights & appliances  $704

             HERS estimated annual energy cost:   $2,188

Based on our actual usage, these are our costs:

           $100-$150/yr firewood

           $750 propane hot water/cooking

           $768 electric

           Our actual annual energy cost:   $1,668

In the nearly two years we've been living in the house, we have only heated by wood. There is the radiant system in place should we ever choose to use it, but for now we like heating by wood; it's easy and feels good.

Although we know from experience that our heating expenses are tiny, it is useful to see them laid out together with the other home energy requirements. We plumbed the house in preparation for installing a solar hot water system, and seeing these numbers is a good motivator for costing out the completion of that project. It would feel good to bring the hot water energy numbers down. 

Second Coat

Before...

... and after

Over the last couple of months I've been slowly working away at giving the house a second and final coat of paint (technically stain, but seems like paint in practical terms) and I'm rounding the corner literally and figuratively on the project.

In September I decided to start at the porch and then work around the back of the house, figuring that I'd cover the cooler parts of the house while it was still warm and then be painting the sunnier sides as the fall progresses. This has turned out to be a wise tactic as we are now in late November and all that's left is part of the south-facing wall.

Progress has been in fits and starts. Hurricane Irene was the first unexpected event that redirected much of our time and attention to helping others over the course of a couple of weeks. Then came teaching an intense two-week course at Yestermorrow, followed last but not least, by a brief stay in the hospital resulting from a cat bite.

Nonetheless, I've been making progress as time and weather have allowed and in this respect, I think we've been quite lucky. The stain requires 40 degrees or above for application, so I've been able to work with very few exceptions right up through the fall.

Our original plan --which we are working to complete-- was to have all the clapboard primed by the factory, then apply a first coat of primer before the clapboard was installed, and then finishing up with a final coat when the siding was in place. Although the house has generally looked finished for a good while now, much of the rafter tails hadn't even been primed, much less painted, and all the nail holes and clapboard butt-joints were rough.

It feels good to know that we're seeing this part of the project through to insure the quality and durability of the siding.

Light Fixtures

My first pass at making a light. If you click on the photo a time or two it'll embiggen enough for you to see the twisted wire, which I'm particularly fond of

Various lighting parts

The plywood parts for our cabinetry all cut up and ready for assembly

Yesterday I received a bunch of lighting and electrical parts in the mail. I plan to start experimenting with various light fixture ideas and I'm really excited about it. The materials themselves are beautiful -- lots of brass, copper, porcelain, nickle plate, clear and colored glass, and vintage fabric covered double twist wire. Great stuff.

In order to qualify for certain Efficiency Vermont rebates you need to have a minimum of 10 pin-based fixtures hard-wired into your house, so we need to determine which will be pin based and which will not. Happily, I can build most lights as pin-based sockets, but some will not work because of size constraints.

Today I experimented with one of the insulators. The first task was to drill a hole through the top of the 3/8" thick glass. This took a while but was no problem, although I was a little paranoid about the glass powder produced. Seems like a potential hazard. Maybe having a vacuum on hand and running it often? Maybe make a vacuum-table work surface? In any event, once I had the hole drilled it was quick work to wire in the little light base, mount it in the light and wire a plug to the other end. I pretty much thought of everything I might need except --you guessed it-- a light bulb. I was able to find one that sorta fit from our old chandelier just to get a feel for it, but it takes away from the effect, so it'll be nice to get a more appropriately fitting bulb. Other then that, it was a piece of cake. I'm pretty excited to make more.

I spent most of the day cutting up the plywood for our cabinetry. Unless I made any mistakes in my plan, I should have everything I need to build the cabinet boxes with what I cut today. After this it's back to hard wood for the frame, doors, and drawers.

I'll be taking a working vacation next week because I'm teaching a class at Yestermorrow called "Less is More". The class is a design course centered on small homes and living spaces. So, my work on the house will be minimal-to-none, but Joe and Felton will still be here making progress.

Super-Insulation Symposium

Last night Joe and I rode bikes down to Yestermorrow Design Build School to attend a "Super-Insulation Symposium", held as a part of the Wednesday evening lecture series.

There was a panel of speakers who all gave brief presentations about their experience with super-insulated houses. I noted at some point that I went with a hair of apprehension that I might hear some bit of information that would up-end some critical aspect of the project or otherwise cause me to doubt some part of the house design. I'm glad to say that on the whole the information presented was a ringing endorsement of the choices we've made, and in fact I felt really proud and grateful that we have the opportunity to be doing this project in the manner that we are.

Among the panelists were Alex Wilson, of BuildingGreen, who moderated; Andy Shapiro; Robert Riversong, a builder and designer who I worked with two years ago building Larsen Truss-style super insulated house; John Ungar-Murphy of Cell-Tec insulation; Peter Schneider of Vermont Energy Investment Corp; and Bill Maclay of Maclay Architects and Planners. On hand as well was Bill Hulstrunk of National Fiber, a cellulose manufacturer, who has been generous in helping me along the way with questions and advice.

We spend lots of time toiling away on this house project and a lot of thought, planning and consideration has gone into making it as high-performing in terms of energy-use as possible. It was great to get away from our project to see and hear from others who are working very much in the same vein. It reminded me that we are really doing something unique and, I think, important.

Of particular interest was the concept of a thermal solar storage unit as a heat resevoir for over-capacity solar hot water energy. The basic idea is that you have this delivery van sized extra-super insulated cube buried in the ground which becomes a thermal mass heat "battery" that gets charged any time the sun is out and the solar hot water collectors are active. I'm not doing a great job describing it, but the idea is potentially significant step in the quest for creating affordable zero-energy buildings. If this pans out, I could see this being something we'd give serious consideration to down the road.

Here's a kooky video about the TSS concept.