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.

Today's Window

This morning I tried out a different style of window trim. I like this a lot better then yesterday's approach. Nance liked it better too.

Tomorrow I'll go with the same style, but thin up the boards a bit. What is there now is 5 1/2" inches wide. I'll try 4 1/2" and see how that feels.

Joe came back and was hard at work today. Him being here helps me to stay focused and its great to have two of us making headway. Welcome back Joe!

Site Plan

(Click on the image to embiggen it)

Today (and yesterday) I worked on our site plans. The big bugaboo all along has been what to do with the cars. We hoped that removing the garage would make it a little clearer, but its still a question.

I've been spending time playing with different configurations and today, with Nancy making some key suggestions we think we landed on a reasonable solution. We'll have to shift the little shed a bit, but we should be able to fit the cars next to it and keep them from being the center feature when you either come down the driveway or look out of the house.

We also thought about where we'll store our firewood such that it is accesable and near where a delivery truck can dump it. What is not really solved is where to store bikes so that they are handy, sheltered and otherwise secure. Hmm....

Joe

Thinking through the next move

Joe's period tent from Tentsmiths in New Hampshire

A picture of Joe from 1793

Joe and I geared up for a 100 mile ride

Hooper extraordinaire

For the last 5 months, Joe Sykes has been here day-in and day-out helping us build our place. If you've been following our progress on the blog, almost every post either shows or mentions him. He and I wrapped up the last of the major framing work a week or so ago and with this ends the arrangement we've had up till now. I thought this would be a good point to both acknowledge our appreciation for Joe's help, but also to give a slightly more in depth picture of this unique guy.

We met Joe through contra dancing, and if you have contra danced anywhere in New England over the last decade or two, you've probably met him too. He is an avid and excellent dancer and it is not unlike him to drive great distances to dance all weekend and then be back first thing Monday morning ready to roll. There isn't much that slows him down except for maybe a plate of poutine somewhere north of the border in the middle of a long bike journey.

In anticipation of the house project, I knew I was going to need someone to work with and I'd be mulling it over a bit when, one day in March, Joe called up and said he had a "crazy idea" which was his offer to come down to the valley, set up his tent and help me out. I took to the idea right away and we kept in touch leading up to the start of the project. As planned, Joe set up his very cool old-school canvas tent (old school as in Early American) and started staying here Monday morning through Friday afternoon. From the get-go we fell into a friendly raport and had fun throughout, even when it was cold, or wet, or steep, or heavy, or complicated. Joe never complained, never shirked, and was always ready to go, sometime more then I was, and I appreciated this throughout. Joe built a number of houses with his dad, and has spent most of his career in the building industry.

Beyond being a crack carpenter and contra dancer, Joe does English Country dancing, Cajun dancing, Morris dancing, plays some nice fiddle, share's my enthusiasm for bikes and long long rides, takes part in revolutionary war reenactments, and last but not least makes, sells, and goofs around with hula hoops. These are works of art.

Its nice to work with someone with whom you share so much in common, be it bikes, contra dancing, music, or building. We could easily spend a day listening to either one of our I-pods on shuffle and be quite happy. I find the music or radio choice really sets the mood on a work site and there was no big tug-of-war in this department.

One anecdote about Joe. One day a visitor was here and sailing came up in the discussion. Someone asked Joe if he'd had much to do with boats and he said "No, not really". The conversation moved on and that was it. Sometime later in another discussion I heard Joe saying something like "My dad and I rebuilt the Peterson 28 and sailed it on the lake until my dad sold it to some folks on Martha's Vineyard, so I trailered it down, launched it, rigged it and then sailed it across the Sound, helped the new owners commission it and did a short cruise with them". What? I thought he hadn't had anything to do with sailing. That's Joe. Getting to know him has been fun because there is always some funny and unexpected aspect of his life that you'd never guess was there that comes out and can't believe he'd hardly mentioned it.

So, I'm working on my own for a while, but have no fear, Joe will be back in a month or two for the next round.

Pex, and a pressure test

The various loops of pex tubing all return to a central location where they are then fed into a manifold. The manifold is an impressive cast brass unit that mounts on the wall. What happens after the manifold is something I'll be able to report on once I get there. For now, it all just hangs out.

After hooking up the pex loops in sequence, I then attached a small valve and pressure dial. This allows me to pressurize the tubing system to check for leaks before the concrete is poured when the pex will no longer be accessible. The fitting on the valve receives a bike pump air connection, so, in honor of all things bicycle I decided it was only fitting to pump up the system by bike pump. Roughly 480 strokes later (whew!) the system was up to the required 60 psi. Seeing as it was dark and late and it all looked good, I went to bed and made a note to come back and check it in the morning.

Lo and behold this morning I checked it and it was down to maybe 5 pounds of pressure. Darn. Knowing that the most likely candidate was a leaky connection on the manifold, so I got some soapy water and daubed the various connections and sure enough found a leak. I recconected that fitting and the system has held steady at 60 psi since this morning. I must admit, I used an air compressor to fill the system the second time around.

Slow and Steady

The last couple of weeks have had lots of ups and downs. After arriving at a settled plan, we dove in once more, revamped, simplified and came out the other end with the next iteration. Feeling a little worn down from the process and not trusting the last bit of work I'd done, I put down my drafting tools on a Friday afternoon and decided that I needed to forget about the house for a bit. I spent the next day and a half building bee equipment, cleaning bike parts, and puting Nancy's bike back together. I needed a little distance. It took a while, but I DID forget about the house and it was good to have done so. On Sunday night when we came back to plan our next moves we looked at the plans and we were both struck with a sense of "Hey... that's it... its good." Further refinements have transpired, but at this point we're around the last corner design-wise and it feels very good.

On the other hand, the septic issues have been rough. Our ideal siting for the house is not feasable given the resulting location of the system and the soils underneath. That pushes the house back up into the site a bit more then we'd like. Its not perfect, but I think we both feel like we can go with it. More to come this week.

Also, we're clear now that a slab-on-grade will not work here, so guess what? We're gonna have a basement. That's great from an extra space point of view, but increases costs. On the whole, I'm actually pretty glad about it. We can now do a root cellar, we'll have semi-c0nditioned work space in the winter... nice stuff.

What, you may ask, is happening in the picture above. Well, after cleaning my bike chain, I cooked it in a mixture of parafin and some of our beeswax. The connection? You know; getting away from the house project and all. Thinking about something else for a little bit.