Vernal Equinox

March 24, 2011, at about 12:20pm, just after the vernal equinox

December 20, 2010 approximately 10:00 am on the winter solstice

September 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm at the autumnal equinox

June 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm at the summer solstice

The photo at the top rounds out a series of photos I've taken at the summer and winter solstice and the fall and spring equinox. You might recall that I got quite excited around the summer solstice last year when I found that within a few minutes of twelve noon on June 21, the only element of the decorative sun pattern on the south face of the house was the sun its self.

This discovery motivated me to document the four points of the seasonal rotation with a photo capturing the shading on the house. As expected the fall and spring equinox shading is pretty similar while the summer and winter solstice shadow contrasts greatly.

This information could come into play in the future if we ever decided we wanted to add shading over the windows in the warmer months to help keep the house cooler. I'm not sure if we'd ever get there but I guess we'll figure that out through experience.

Winter Solstice

December 20, 2010 approximately 10:00 am

September 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm

June 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm

If you've been reading this blog for a while you know that I got quite excited around the summer solstice when I found that within a few minutes of twelve noon on June 21, the only element of the decorative sun pattern on the south face of the house was the sun its self.

I've been anticipating the arrival of the winter solstice and hoping that the weather would permit a noon photo to contrast with the summer event. Tomorrow is the solstice, but the weather report is calling for clouds and snow, so I took advantage of today's clear skies to snap a few pictures of the sun on the house.

What I've noticed and am curious about is difference between the sun's shadow at the mid-summer when it was virtually centered on the gable of the south face of the house, and how now, at the winter solstice the sun is centered on the house at roughly ten in the morning. I know we in the northern hemisphere are tilted away from the sun in the winter, but I think I expected that the sun would still be centered on the house at noon, only at a lower angle. I got the angle part right, but clearly not the centered part. The photo from September shows the sun heading south already.

We'll keep our eye out in March for the next installment.

Weekend Catch-Up

This picture shows the detail that we worked out running under the roof overhang. I'm wondering if maybe we should paint it some slightly different color to call it out a little or just leave it as it is

Adam stuck around for some more work on Saturday morning and we pretty much wrapped up the west end of the house. The rest of the weekend consisted of caulking, priming, and painting in order to be able to have the staging freed up for more clapboarding tomorrow morning. Nancy and I also painted some more clapboard in order to be well stocked for the next few day's work.

Today I gave the sunburst it's final coat of paint as a honey bee warmed herself in the morning sun.

Sunburst switcheroo

Joe, putting drip-edge on the shelf detail over the door

Yesterday's version of the sunburst colors

Today's rendition

( l to r:) Hear no Evil, see no Evil, and speak no Evil

The siding at the end of today's work

Yesterday when I painted the sunburst I started with yellow and then did a band or orange up from one side and over to the other. It looked cool and every thing when it was done, but both Nancy and I thought that the yellow staring band kinda blended into the cream colored trim, so today I repainted it starting with orange. We all agree it looks much better. What do you think?

Joe and Adam have been making good progress on the west wall and are now above the windows and doors, which slow the process down. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be pretty close to done on this section of the house. Its been great having Adam here in addition to Joe.

How its working this week

Adam is back this week, and he and Joe are working together as a team to continue putting up the siding. My job has been to work around them getting all the pieces of trim and such in place so that they can work without any big stops to take care of details.

Getting the door trim in place was part of this work, and today I painted the gable end triangle of the south wall in order to free up the staging so that it will be available for Joe and Adam tomorrow. They've started on the west wall and it looks like they'll need the staging pretty quick.

The very last bit of painting I did today was to paint alternate rays of the sunburst. Joe has this groovy orange cycling shirt which I spied as a good candidate for the right orange, so I borrowed the shirt and took it down to the paint store and tried to match up the color. I think it worked out pretty nice.

The Summer Solstice

The shadow at roughly 12:10 on June 21

The shadow at 12 noon on June 21

It was with great excitement I awaited the noon hour on June 21 to observe the way the sun fell upon the house. In particular, I was anxious to see how the sun lay upon the sunburst pattern on the south gable of the house.

To my minor disappointment the sun at high noon was just slightly off from dead center on the triangle, but what made me quite happy was that at roughly 12:10 the shadow was centered on the roof, but also that the only aspect of the sunburst not in shadow was the sun shape itself. I couldn't have hoped for a better outcome. It thrills me that without aid of a calendar I could, in essence, look up at the house around this time of year and tell you when the longest day of the year has been reached.

I suspect that the reason the shadow is not centered at noon is because the house is not dead-on south. Does anybody have any perspective on that? I'd be curious to know.

Any guesses as to where the shadow will fall at the winter solstice?

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Update
I received this from my father-in-law Lou, who is a former physics and astronomy teacher:

Dave,

You should not expect the sun to match your triangle at exactly 12 noon because in the eastern time zone it is 12 noon everywhere from Boston until almost Chicago. The sun cannot be due south in Boston and Chicago at the same time. You are in the eastern part of this time zone, so I would expect the sun's peak on your house to match your triangle peak before 12 noon. My memory is that the match occurred at 12:10. This surprises me. Do you know with certainty that that side of the house faces due south? How accurate is your watch?

It is a mystery worth solving.

Lou

My reply:

I'm sure my watch was accurate, at least within a minute or so. I suspect the issue is that the house is probably not on in alignment with the north-south axis. It'd be interesting to find out how far off it it is. When I did the foundation layout I referenced south with a hand-held compass that gave me a general sense of the line. While doing the layout I was also trying to take into account the axis of our garden which is very close to south, so I probably tweaked the line a bit to make it a compromise between the two factors.

Watershed

Today felt like a bit of a turning point.

I completed some long running plumbing projects, pressure tested the hot water supply lines (they're good), and re-arranged some electrical stuff while Joe continues to make great project on all the pre-insulation blocking work.

I also had a little fun with the water supply configuration. I needed to make another block to keep the upper horizontal copper manifold held off the plywood. Why not make the blocks fish? Of course I got totally excited at the idea and had to do it, and I'm glad I did. I live for that sort of thing.

I also went outside at 12:00pm to see where the sun landed. Unfortunately just as it hit noon the clouds came over. It wasn't for about 10 minutes until it cleared again. In any case, it seems --to my sublime pleasure-- that the sun pretty much lines up with the point of the triangle at noon. What varies is the angle of the sun in an up or down manner depending on the proximity of the solstice or equinox. I couldn't be more pleased about this. Its like an homage to the sun, a recognition of that which is so much greater then everything else we know. It also will stand as a testament to that greatness long after you or I will cease to be, provided the house remains as it is.

On a more earthly note, we have hired a plumbing contractor to install the boiler which will provide the radiant hot water and domestic (drinking and washing) hot water supply. They will also install the pressure tank. This is starting tomorrow morning, so I expect that we will have the availability of running hot and cold water within a week. We've been waiting a long, long time for this.

Stairs and Electric

I noticed, after taking this photo, that it was roughly 10 minutes after noon. I then wondered if at noon on the equinox if the shadow might line up directly with the sunburst triangle. That would be really satisfying. I did my best to align the axis of the house on south.

Felton installing the conduit connecting the panel to the conduit running to the meter

Stairs in progress

My mighty assistant helping me muscle the stair set into place.
The stairs will finish at a small landing at the bottom which Nance is standing on

I've been building the stairs from the first floor to the basement and they are almost complete. I'll finish that project tomorrow. I'm not sure why I waited this long to do this project--perhaps because it is sort of fun and a bit of a reward for having the plumbing and electric in place. It'll sure be nice to go up and down stairs rather then the ladder.

Meanwhile, Felton has been at work installing our electrical panel and connecting to the conduit running out to the meter near the pole. With luck, we'll have power running into the panel tomorrow. Once that's done, well make a few of the outlets in the house live so we can run things from the outlets rather then the jumble of extension cords and power strips we currently have in place.

C'est bon

Yesterday, after some delay while affixing the sunburst and surrounding clapboard, we stood up the second gable wall. It was a dramatic moment as the scope of the house really has begun to take form. Event though the rest of the roof still needs to be built, you can now envision the form. As soon as the wall was up we launched into building the kneewall and worked until dusk when it was nearly completed.

Since the first gable wall went up we've been grappling with the height of the house. Having lived in the yurt for many years and only having the low garage to compare to, the house seems quite tall. At first I was nonchalant about this, but after the second wall went up yesterday, something gave and my confidence broke. We spent much of last evening, and some time in the wee hours, anguishing over it and imagining what our course might be. By morning I had devised a means to lift and cut the two gable walls in order to lower the whole second floor kneewall height. I also decided it would be useful to call Harrison"Snapp" Snapp of Weather Hill Company, who lives nearby and is a friendly guy, to get some experienced perspective. Weather Hill's stock-in-trade is doing historical building well, so I knew he'd be able to see it as both a builder and someone who is tuned into proportion and detail. As luck would have it, he and his wife Valerie were headed out of town for vacation but were able to stop by and look things over with us. Snapp was able to reassure us that we're doing fine and that the proportions work. Beyond that, they were able to suggest ways that we might treat the siding such that the large area of clapboard along the upper west wall might come down a bit, or appear slightly lower, with a freize board.

I now need to do some work to see what will look good before we start on the siding.

Sunburst

Although I never drew it in the plans, I've been toying around with the idea of doing some sort of sunburst or decorative element in the triangle of the south gable. Looking at the wall yesterday I decided to go ahead with a triangular frame with a sunburst pattern inside.

This morning I launched right into it and a few hours later it came together. It'll be interesting to see it once the wall is standing, but from looking at it on the flat I think it came out really well. Once this little project was complete we installed a bunch of clapboard siding up through the gable so we won't have to do it from the ground once the wall is raised, which will happen tomorrow morning.

The circular piece of wood is from an unused bee hive part I made from northern Vermont cedar, and the "upside-down necktie" piece at the center of the sunburst if from an old wooden dresser that Nancy and I took apart last spring. I saved the nice pieces of wood and this once was a suitable width and thickness, so we just went for it. Its fun to think that a piece of wood that lived for many many decades in a old wooden dresser is now living a new life as the keystone to a sunburst on a house built in 2009.