inside pictures

So, this IS a "green" house, right?

Beautiful stuff going on at the house today.  We stuttered a little yesterday because of the storm.  But today Teri and the kids painted Rebecca's room.  It's an absolutely gorgeous light purple.  Rebecca worked the whole day with spurts of effort from the boys.
Meanwhile, Poppy and I put together the first garage door and finished everything except the spring system.  We will finish that one and work on the second one tomorrow.

Tim and Chad (electrician and carpenter, respectively) were also here- Tim started putting in all the wall sockets and switches in.  He hung the pendant lights that we bought yesterday and started working on the ceiling fans. Chad almost finished priming/painting. One more bucket will do it.  He will finish tomorrow. 

Jason and Matt J. came and brought under-lay for the tile.  They are coming tomorrow to put the plywood in.  Tile will come in next Tuesday.

Now to the main part and the reason for the title of this post. 

First off, I have noticed that much of my last few months of posting have been pictures or what progress had been made, and not writing about our philosophy.  I suspect this to be expected due to the fact that we are GCing our own house, and have to take care of the small details.  But now that we have an enclosed shell, with the heat on I would like to reflect upon our original ideas, and how close we are coming to them. 

To be perfectly honest with you all I had been worried that all of this "stuff" would work.  By stuff I mean the passive solar aspects of the house.  It all seems like smoke and mirrors, having the sun heat our house.  It sounds good, but really? Although I was confident that the insulation and tight building specs would be helpful in keeping energy costs down, Teri and I really set out to build as close to a zero carbon footprint as possible. 

Today our concept really hit home for me.  I spent the entire day in/around the house today.  When Jim and I got to the site, it was about 10am and very cold (about 30 degrees).  I had set the house temperature at 58 degrees, but when I got into the house it was 62!  Our passive solar design truly worked!  Tim the electrician, was amazed- he called me in from the garage at one point in the afternoon and asked me to explain what was going on.  I explained about the special windows that I had put in, and that we had situated the house towards true north/south.  He was standing in the light and couldn't believe how warm it was.  During the course of the day our geothermal heat only came on twice, for about 5 minutes each time. This while four kids (not to mention seven adults) were coming in and out of the house constantly, leaving doors open to load and unload equipment.  I was thrilled.  I suspect that when we install our wood stove, our heat might not go on at all.

Today was a real morale booster.

Thanks for reading.

state of the dominion

I know that my posts have been few and far between, but commuting and work and all, it has been very hard to drag myself to do the updates.  Things are going well- 

• The siding is finished
• gutters are in
• Drywall is in, taped and mudded
• primer is going on as we speak and the ceiling painted at the same time.

Next week is vacation and I have an aggressive schedule

• I am going to hang the garage doors
• paint the kids rooms- maybe other rooms if time (living room comes to mind.)
• Jason is coming to tile

This house is tight!  very little heat is needed to keep us warm.  The energy efficiency  aspect of the house seems to be working perfectly.

 We are all wearing jackets here because the heat hasn't come on yet...  this is a picture of our great room- kitchen, dining room and living room (which also is around the corner)  See how much light is coming in?  Passive solar heating at it's best.  Even before the geothermal unit was turned on, it was several degrees warmer inside than out.

 two pictures of our fully sided house.  The landscaping is going to have to be done next spring.  Ahh well.  This project has taken longer than we expected.

 Looking up through our two story cathedral ceiling in the dining room.  So much light!

Yes, even our gutters are "green".  They end about 3.5 feet up so that we can attach rain barrels to them and we can recycle the rainwater for our gardens and lawn.

Estimated time of move?  Mid January.  WOOT!

Again thanks for reading.

A sided house

Insulation

Hello all- I'm sorry for the long intervals between posts but between teaching, building, and getting my masters, things are falling through the cracks.  :)

The plumber and electrician are in and working they both say that around the end of the week they should be finished.  That brings us to inspection then insulation.

Right now, I am torn between two different systems: a closed cell-hybrid or open cell system.

Closed-Cell                                                                                 Open-Cell



Highest insulating "R-Value" per inch (> 6.0)                          Good insulation value (R = 3.5)


Low vapor permeability (low perm)                                    Higher vapor permeability, but controlled


Air barrier                                                                                Air barrier at full wall thickness


Increases wall strength


(is a WRB – "Water Resistive Barrier")


Medium density (1.75 – 2.25 lbs./ft3)                                 Low density (0.4 – 1.2 lbs./ft3)


Absorbs sound, especially bass tones                         Best sound absorption in normal frequency ranges


                                                                                                         Economical yield

In either case, I am going to get very good insulation. In the closed cell hybrid system, 2 inches of closed cell foam is sprayed to create an air/water barrier with excellent insulating value (R-value).  Then fiberglass rolls (bats) are placed over the foam to increase the R-value. 

The open cell system simply fills the whole wall cavity with the open cell foam.  Each system has advantages and disadvantages.  They are both about the same in price and R-value.  I am not sure which system I will use. 

Thanks for reading.

subcontractors

I have to say that up to this point I feel pretty lucky.  As you all know, I have been the general contractor (GC) for this project.  Usually owners hire a GC to find (or do) all the subcontracting work.  The GC has a budget, which had been mutually worked out by the owner and GC, and it's up to them to keep everything together.  I am learning so much, so quickly about building that frequently it makes my head spin.  Luckily, I have family that has helped me in the design and budget phase, (Thanks Tom), family in the construction business (thanks Tim, Russ, Jason, Dave, Steve) that have not only helped in building this house, but have given great advice and gave me questions to ask when I knew nothing.  :)  I am currently looking for bids on vinyl siding- 

I read that for all contract work, (not just siding) I should be looking for 3 or 4 bids to get a feel for the cost. I also surf the web to get retail pricing on materials, although I know that siding isn't JUST siding, it has a lot of extra costs, like under insulation, nails, soffits, etc...  I also like to find out reasonable pricing for labor.  There are many places you can get this kind of information. http://www.siding4u.com/vinyl-siding-cost-calculator.php   for example was a place to get rough estimates on cost of a siding job.

So, I had a budget in place for siding, and went looking.  In the past week I received four bids.  All of them were from (seemingly) repatable companies.

The prices ranged from 8000.00 to 40,000.00 dollars! 

Admittedly the one from Sears, (yeah I know) which was the 40k bid had bunches of incentives, which dropped the price down to 28,000- WITH an additional 750 gift card.... but really?  Almost a four time spread? 

I guess the bottom line is that you need to do your homework, have an idea of what a job should cost and get multipule bids.  It's a jungle out there.


Thanks for reading

Sam

forging ahead

Things seem to finally be swinging our way- The lumber came in under budget, as did the shingles. Our decision to drastically reduce our front porch, from one that stretches the whole length of the house to the one that you can see in the pictures below, help trim some money.  We also made some cuts in the fixtures.  We are really trying to get back to our budget.  You can see Steven White starting to shingle our roof, and the windows and doors are all in.  Ben and I took some interior shots. You can really see the duct work for the geothermal system.

Thanks for reading.

solar documentation

We received a large packet today regarding our solar panels-  We will be generating about 62% of our electricity via the panels, and here are some of the statistics from it:

Environmental Impact Analysis


25-year Carbon Dioxide Reduction 155,214 Pounds

25-year Sulfur Dioxide Reduction 658 Pounds

25-year Nitrogen Oxides Reduction 260 Pounds

Avoided Fossil and Nuclear Fuel Use:

Equivalent to planting 724 trees or avoiding 169,782 miles of driving

picture out my second floor window

framing almost finished

As the title suggests, the framing is almost done.  Teri and I are so excited about this part of the project.  It has been a real pleasure to work with Jim Engel.  He constantly worked with us; giving ideas about different things we can do with our space.  It's beautiful inside and out.  Tim Pallas, our electrician and part-time GC, told us that from this point on, we can expect things to stay on budget, and we will know before hand about any "extras".  I am still worried though because we burned thru alot more then we thought for the clearing and excavating of the property.  Ah, well, who needs a kitchen anyways.  :)  Honestly, we are going to be breathing fumes by the time we get near the end.  Landscaping, interior molding, and extras are going to have to wait I think.

I will post up some pictures of the outside soon.  The porches are finished, and are absolutely stunning.  We changed the front porch from one that stretches the whole length of the house to one that is a more modest 14 feet- enough to get into the house, and also to be able to put a couple of chairs or planters on.  The side porch is the length of the width of the house, 24 feet.  We decided to use a wood composite product for the decking.  It is durable and won't need painting or staining for the life of the deck. (About 20 years.)

The second floor has some changes also.  Because of the reorientation of the garage to the house we had to move where the garage stairs to the bonus room was placed.  That gave us some extra space upstairs, and we used it to make a separate laundry room.  The upstairs main bath is HUGE- and gives a great view of the lake.  We will be able to put in (eventually) some custom linen closets and be able to actually store our towels and such.  YEA!

This past week has also been very busy meeting with subcontractors.  I met with a cabinet maker who took measurements of the kitchen and will be plugging in the numbers into a software program to give us a 3-d view of our cabinets.  Cool.

I had a walkthrough with the geothermal guys, they are going to lay the ducts within the next two weeks, and will be drilling the well at about the same time.

The solar panel installer came to measure our roof, and get a read on the amount of sunlight we will get.  He says that the monthly cost of the lease will be a bit higher than the electricity we will produce, but I'm pretty sure that I still want to do it for a few reasons:

1. The price of electricity keeps increasing.  It has double in the last decade, about 10% a year, but the lease price is guaranteed for 15 years, so right now it costs a little more per month, but if the price keeps rising, I will be locked in at the lower price, and could save a lot of money in the long run.
2. At the end of the lease I will own the panels and infrastructure (panels, wires and such) which might not be great because of the advancing technology of the panels, but the panels are rated for 40years.
3. It is the "green" way to go, and even if it is a few dollars more right now, I know that the energy that I am using comes from a renewable source.

Tomorrow the windows are going in and the shingling of the roof will begin.  Next week- electrician, plumber and HVAC.  Things are really cranking along.

things are going!!!

walls!

The framers are coming! The framers are coming!