Big Day

The blower-door testing apparatus in place in the west door

Bill running the test

The readings

Sheetrock being lifted by the boom truck into the second floor

The first afternoon's work by the sheetrock crew

Lee and Lou hard at work painting clapboards

The wooden drip-edge detail

Today was exciting on a number of fronts.

The sheetrock crew arrived and got to work, making quick work of getting the first sheets up after spending a few hours loading. Its clear they are good at what they do and its feeling like the right decision to have hired this job out. They'll be back tomorrow and Saturday and expect to have all the 'rock up in about three days.

Even more notable was the results of our blower-door test performed by Bill Hulstrunk. Everything was buttoned up that I could think of and Bill gave the house a go.

The results were excellent. In fact Bill said that this was the tightest house he has ever seen and says he's tested thousands of houses. Its hard to rate the performance other than the numbers: from what I understand, an average house about the size of our house would come in at approximately 2000 cfm at 50 pascals. Ours hit 240 cfm at 50 pascals. For the record, his machine couldn't actually measure as low as the number that the machine was trying to register, alternating between "lo" and various numbers in the neighborhood of 230-240. This is as good as could have ever hoped and I feel deeply satisfied to have reached this milestone.

Toiling away out of the limelight, and trying to stay in the shade of the house were Lee and Lou, Nancy's parents, who are up visiting us and doing some great work painting clapboards. Way to go Lee and Lou!

In other news, Joe and I installed the wooden drip edge yesterday. This is a piece of molding that sits on top of the water table. Its a detail that matches the molding at the top of the window frames and ties the whole look of the exterior neatly.

We're ready

The insulation in our local supplier's warehouse pending delivery tomorrow

Cleaned up

We cleared everything out in order to store the insulation shown in the top photo inside the house once its delivered

Joe finished off the last of the baffles in the roof over the 2nd floor guest room

After what seems like such a long time we are finally ready to insulate.

On Tuesday morning, Bill Hulstrunk is going to come and perform a blower door test on the house to check for air leaks. From what I've read, air leakage can cause anywhere from 30 percent to 50 percent of the heat loss in some homes.

The blower door test is a proceedure where you negativly pressurize the house and measures the rate of airflow required to maintain the building at a certain pressure. We'll be able to quantify the area of leakage. Vent ducts and other intentional openings are all closed so the house is otherwise sealed.

Typically a blower door test is done after insulating has occurred, but I want to know what leaks are present before we insulate while we can still get at them. Whatever the result, the cellulose insulation will be working for us as an air barrier in the walls, so its a sure thing that our numbers will go up. I would expect most leakage would be around the windows and doors, so we'll be checking for that.

Joe finished up the baffles in the long roof rafter bays and I spent the better part of Friday sealing every imaginable air passage around the windows and doors. I've been half-joking with folks that I'll pay $10 bucks to anyone who can find a hole anywhere in the house.

The first batch of insulation will delivered tomorrow.