Who’ll stop the rain?  May 23, 2013

It started raining over the weekend and hasn’t really quit. All manner of rain -- torrents, downpours, thunderstorms, sprinkles, passing showers, showers that hang around.....

Things are going wrong and downhill, literally. Yesterday we observed that parts of our driveway were washing out, rivulets bringing silt from the excavations down into the road. Today, Mitch discovered that he’d cut the 6 bent-connecting girts one tenon length too short. We either have to replace the girts, or use a free tenon made out of cherry.  We chose the latter.

Today, I called to see how things were going, and I knew right away that they were going really badly. When you’ve been married to someone for 21 years,  timbre of their voice is  like the soundtrack of a Saturday morning cartoon. You don’t even have to hear the words to know what’s happening.  “What’s going on?”

“Everything’s going wrong. The sides of the hole collapsed.  It shook the house.  At first, I thought it was thunder. but after a few seconds I realized it was the sound of dirt falling.”  The sides of the excavation have caved in, pouring dirt and mud down on top of the stone and the drain pipe and radon pipe. Gerg climbed down into the hole and rescued the ladder and the tools.  It’s going to rain more tomorrow. More dirt will come down.  Nothing to do but wait and assess the damage when it stops raining. Chris said he was sorry, it’ll work out. Indigo said he was sorry too, probably too much to dig out by hand. John said if it were a traditional construction we could have poured the foundation right away and maybe avoided the problem.  He’s probably right.  We’ll regroup & re-dig next week. It's completely depressing.

I have to give two presentations over the next two days, and I’ll be away tomorrow night.  Hating to leave when things are so bad, having trouble concentrating on what I have to do. I’m thinking that it could get worse.

Hard times blowing round our cabin door.

May 26, 2013

Still raining.  More collapses of sides of the pit. At this point, it doesn't really matter because they have to dig it all out again anyway.  At night it’s so cold that it’s been snowing.  They got 4” of snow at Mitch’s in Plainfield, and it collapsed one of the two 20’ x 10’ canopies we were using for work areas for pieces of the timberframe. Flooding and devastation in NW Vermont. Requesting FEMA aid for disaster area. It's ironic that this cold, intense weather is part of the global warming trend.

Heating Up  - April 28, 2013

So...the reason I'm behind on my posts is that things have been picking up speed at a rather alarming rate here. The first load of timbers for the first floor deck and both of the round wood center posts for the timberframe were delivered to Mitchell Estrin's place last week (he's a partner in Montpelier Construction).  Gerg's been over there many days since then, planing and sanding the timbers.  He and Curtis have been using a power planer that weighs 42 pounds.  Glad it's not me.

Our son Geoff came over to our place two weeks ago and helped Greg cut down about a hundred small trees... 

Geoff stands amid the scene of destruction.

...to get ready for the Pathfinder. Which sounds like some sort of New Age prophet, but in fact is a simple gizmo that optically demonstrates, for any point you set it up, the path of the sun by time of day and time of year.  It’s a hemispherical dome; you mount certain charts under it, set it up north/south, and then you can see, by looking at and through the dome, or by taking a pic and doing it later, the path of the sun in relation to shading objects such as the horizon, trees, hills, buildings, etc.  This way, we know which parts of the house walls will get sun when....so we can plan our window placement, performance specifications, and shading.

Indigo using the Pathfinder during his first visit - right after clearing.

Here he sets it up at the proposed placement of a second story window during his second visit - after some excavation work.

The Pathfinder, with Indigo and Gerg and the horizon and trees reflected in it.

Also, John Picard and his helper, Bert, arrived last week with the BIG MACHINE. 

 

"This thing's not afraid of anything,"  he told me with a big grin.  "Is that why you have 'No Fear' stenciled on it?" "Nope, that's my other machine. This is the excavator."  It stood in our yard all week, looking like a dinosaur taking a nap. 

Bailey and I check out the excavator.

He brought over his John Deere 350B 'dozer too, and before we knew it, a whole bunch of our trees were down and buried in a pit, and we were grieving the loss while oohing about the new sunset view that just opened up.  You can't have forested land AND sunsets when you live in a valley.

Newly sculpted!

The new landscape resembles the Moretown landfill, but I'm trying my best to visualize fruit trees and an herb garden. They say the best time to plant a tree is ten years ago, but I'm relieved that we never landscaped that part of the property, which was mostly a young, wild forest.  We did lose a bunch of our blackberry bushes.  But now we're thinking about a live roof on the cottage, planted with strawberries.  As Skip says, "If you're going to plant something and take care of it, you might as well be able to eat it."

Visitin'

Last month we had a great opportunity -- we got to visit another Passivhaus.  We met the builder, Ward Smith (Turtle Creek Builders) at the LEAP Energy Fair in Waterbury on April 13, and he generously invited us to tour their newly-constructed Passivhaus in Moretown. (Ward, by the way, won the "Vermont Builder of the Year" Award this past year.....and he wears the most amazing glasses. Round, and the latest pair is bright purple, although he is known for wearing bright red ones. Scoff not -- these things are important! If you bumped into him at the farmer's market, you'd definitely remember him.)

The enclosure for the outside portion of the mini-split.

Gerg, Indigo, Bailey (our doggy) and I met up with Ward, David Vissering, Chris and his business partner, Malcolm, at the Moretown General Store, and Ward led us up a short road to the house site. They did the usual housebuilder thing....looked at the eaves and the size of the overhang, the solar panels, and the vents....basically circled the house and examined parts of it until I started to get cold and asked if they minded if I went inside.

The guys looking around; Ward (in the light blue shirt) explaining.

Front of house with window-shading scheme.

Deep-set windows create their own window seats.

I took off my boots at the door, and the first thing I noticed was the warmth of the floor. Then the uniform warmth of the air in the room. Then I noticed the amount of light that was coming in, in spite of the fact that the window openings were about 18" deep.  Very nice.

Then, of course, I had to investigate the kitchen.  Induction cooktop by Maytag -- check. Super energy-efficient dishwasher by Fisher-Paykel -- check.

Fisher-Paykel two-drawer dishwasher uses only two gallons of water
to do a load of dishes and is so quiet you don't know it's on.  (We just got the single-drawer model and I love it!)

 High-efficiency washer and condensing dryer by Bosch -- check. 

Nice, functional kitchen

Great cabinets with lots of practical storage (Ward told me they were made by Kraftmaid).  

Fancy pull-out vertical storage frames the refrigerator,
shallow pantry shelves along adjacent wall.

The living room has a really nice view across the little valley.  Additional light comes in from the high window above the stairway, which opens via an electrical gizmo mounted on the wall.

Clerestory openable window above stairway.

The house is a bit unusual, as it was built specifically for two people with disabilities to live in with a full-time caregiver -- so there are three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and some other accommodations.

We made our way downstairs, and another astonishing sensation -- the basement floor was warm to the foot. Because the slab is so well-insulated, it felt amazingly like a heated floor. Fantastic! It was so warm in the house, in fact, that the "air conditioning" was actually on. Which is one function of the mini-split, which is a heating and cooling unit made by Mitsubishi.

Indigo examines the mini-split.

Ward is a tireless raconteur, and extremely interesting.  I could actually listen to him talk for a really long time about things I barely understand -- which is what I did.

Ward holding forth about the Zehnder HRV.

It was so much fun to be in a real Passivhaus. We've been talking so abstractly, looking at charts and diagrams, and doing so much imagining.  To see it "in the flesh" ("in the wood"?) was a thrill.  Thanks, Ward!

This is the Sunward storage tank attached to the domestic hot water tank.

Sunward pumping station

Holding tank for solar hot water.

A Visit to Fontaine Millworks

During some delicious Vermont Spring weather (snow, sleet, ice pellets....alternating with windswept rain and a tiny bit of sunshine), we made our way over to the Fontaine lumber mill in East Montpelier. Marc Fontaine is an accommodating sawyer who is completely professional and very organized.  Unlike the rag-tag lumber yards we're used to, his is immaculately kept and is obviously a smooth operation.

Marc Fontaine of Fontaine Millworks (and Bailey)

We picked out some hemlock posts for the center of the cottage: one to span the main floor and second floor, the other for the basement. We picked the ones with "character," and Marc was glad we were there to choose - he laughed and said he'd never have picked those.  Well, we like bumps and knots. If you're going to have a tree trunk in the middle of your house, it should look like a dadgum tree trunk, not some wimpy-ass smooth thing from the Emerald Forest, right?

Measuring our post.

We ducked into the main building to fill out some paperwork.  Nice and warm....and we were invited to step into the kiln where the lumber is dried.  Whew!  My glasses instantly fogged up, and it was impossible to snap a picture because the camera lens did the same.  We were in there about 30 seconds, and when we came out there were beads of moisture decorating my hair. The kiln heats the wood to a temp of 160 degrees F. to begin; it's then slowly reduced over subsequent days as the humidity drops. This process breaks down the cell walls in the wood, so that they can't take up moisture later as much as they would otherwise.  This was of particular interest to us, since we'll be enclosing hemlock posts inside the insulation envelope.  We were warned that the boards which would be in contact with the webbing that holds the cellulose could become damp after a heavy driving rain and then might absorb moisture which would then get sealed inside the walls.  We don't want any of that.  At the beginning of the drying process Marc controls the heat carefully so that he "sets the pitch" in the knots so that it can't ooze out of the knots later and discolor whatever finish we apply.

After our visit, we loaded Bailey into the car and headed up to Burlington.  It was a slippery, slushy ride, with over an inch of icy pellets on the roads, including I-89.  Folks have been taking off their snow tires in anticipation of real spring, so I was more worried about them sliding into us than the other way around.  I felt especially sorry for the people inching down French Hill, the long hill approaching Burlington.  Downhill is always harder in these conditions.

PassivHaus Alliance and Efficiency Vermont

As the only member of the group who doesn't drive a truck, Gerg was elected to drive the others to the PassivHaus Alliance monthly meeting this morning. So he spent about a half hour hunting for our Suby's rear seat. He thought it might be in the basement, or the woodshed, or perhaps on top of the RV, but it wasn't. Turns out he had put it in an old car about halfway down the drive. After removing some quantities of dog hair, he bolted it into the back of the wagon (after dark, unfortunately) and was ready to go.

They met at the Middlesex park'n'ride.  Malcolm and Indigo rode with Greg, and Chris followed them there. The meeting was held at the Efficiency Vermont offices on Lakeside Ave. in Burlington, an area of town that reminds me of SoHo back in the old days....artists' lofts in old warehouses, some grungy eateries, an industrial feel.

Gerg was introduced to Peter Schneider, Enrique, Sandra Head-buried-in-her-computer ( I promise I'll get her name later), Jeff Gephart and Chris West.  After the meeting, they moved to Peter's work area, where he met Matt Sargent, who will be assigned to consult on our certifications through Efficiency VT and to advise us on the details of our plans and assemblies.  They spent another hour and a half talking about assembly details, construction principles, and certification requirements. Many tips were offered, among them: Gerg got the name of a builder who uses the Siga line of tapes and membranes for sealing buildings (we've been looking solely at FourSevenFive so far); he also found out about a device, manufactured in Illinois, that will replace both the HRV and the minisplit! -- for not much more than the price of purchasing each device individually. More on this later. And they talked about the ability of dense-packed cellulose to handle moisture when used inside the insulation envelope of the walls and roof, about intelligent vapor membranes (sounds to me like great material for a sci-fi graphic novel), and a vent providing a rain plane in the roof.

Efficiency Vermont (EV) will be installing a real-time monitoring system in the cottage.  It will be available online for live monitoring of the cottage's parameters. EV will cover the cost of the equipment, plus a two-year internet subscription. Fabulous!

After Gerg got home, Chris came over and they continued their meeting of the previous day for another hour and a half or so.  After that, shortly after 5:00, John Picard, our excavator, came over to review the list of requirements, specs, the design of the sub-foundation and drains, etc.  He and Gerg walked the land (here's an earlier pic w/ Chris, John, me, and Bailey, our Great Pyrenees).
\\,
The cottage site is emerging from the snow that was like this:

then melted down to this (exactly where the cottage goes)


and which is now down to this:


They talked about landscaping, too.  Sorry I missed that part. By the time I got home, John was already in his truck, accusing Gerg of having hid the really big rocks on him earlier in the season, and ready to head home to his creamed chipped beef. Gerg has known Johnny since the old days...maybe 35 years. He built our driveway, plowed it for twenty years until we bought a snowthrower (which he also disparaged), dragged my Honda out of the field after it slid off the road the first year I lived here ("Those rice buckets don't hold the road much, do they? Why don't you get yourself a Chevy?"). He dug the cellar for our current house, repaired the foundation after the original house burned down, and brought his excavator over to bury our 220-pound St. Bernard when he died suddenly of heat stroke one summer (pic below is his father, Snowshoe, who was smaller).
Things are heating up!  Glad we went away for three days!

Anatomy of an Intus window

Yo, Canada!

This past week we took a side trip as part of our journey through PassivHausworld. We ran up to Magog, a small town in one of Canada's Eastern Townships, to spend a few days at O Bois Dormant, a great B & B getaway with amazing breakfasts.  It was our last chance to get away for a couple of days before things become too intense with the building project. It was totally relaxing and just what I needed. Gerg, on the other hand, spent almost all his time working on PassivHaus research and muttering about how much he still had to learn and how May 1 was almost here (our building start date) and how he wished he had started all this preparation a year ago (although we didn't find out about his parents' move until the first week in January).

It's amazing how much we both have learned since starting this project. Ah, if only we had known all this when we designed and built our current house. Presumably we wouldn't have used those crappy windows, or as many of them. We would have used more insulation, although we already have a super-tight, heavily insulated house. But without the PHPP, how was one to judge?  We had great intentions about being as energy-efficient as we could, and we thought our walls and ceiling were "over-insulated"!  Who knew??  We've also learned about induction cooktops (bought a small Max Burton single burner one to try it out), mini-splits, condensing clothes dryers, trellis window shades, and other performance-enhancing gadgets from reading the great blogs of other PassivHaus builders...and it's great to be privy to the thoughts and experiences of fellow travelers on this path. More about those, with links, later.

PHPP and WUFI

Thursday, March 28, 2013

PassivHaus Planning Package (PHPP) and WUFI (Wärme und Feuchte instationär) are not my favorite acronyms, but they are pretty silly when made into verbs ("Let's WUFI this"  or "I'll be WUFI-ing for the next hour or two"). It all seems to be goofily appropriate and sensible, though, when speaking with Indigo.

Indigo Ruth-Davis, our PHPP consultant, is certified by the Passivhaus Institute U.S. (The course was presented at Yestermorrow Build and Design School in Waitsfield, Vermont.)  He is a somewhat shy person, a builder and gifted musician who plays the cello like a dream, I'm told, and alternately arrives by large white truck or motorcycle. Tonight he and his partner, Peg, who is a lovely woman with amazing long wavy hair, arrived for a dinner/work session at 6:30.

I work at the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services, in the next town "over," and despite my proximity to my workplace (about 8 miles), I rarely get home before 6 p.m., for a variety of reasons, including enthusiasm for my job and poor planning. On this particular day, I had driven to Burlington on extremely short notice to meet with some attorneys who were participating in a cultural/legal exchange with Vermont Legal Aid. They were from the Ukraine and were interested in learning about what Vermont is doing to combat the problem of human trafficking in our state.(I'm the chair of the Vermont Human Trafficking Task Force.) We meet at a cafe on Main Street for about an hour, where we conversed with the assistance of a former U.N. interpreter whom they had brought with them.This was fun, fascinating, and also surprisingly tiring -- so by the time I got home, after getting stuck in the first major highway construction project of the season (there's a joke in Vermont about having six seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Mud Season, and Construction), I was pretty whupped. But Peg and I had an instantly easy rapport, and we gabbed as I cooked and Gerg and Indigo put their heads together over spreadsheets and scratch paper downstairs.

So.. they talked about the window schedule (which is construction lingo for a list of windows and their sizes), window placement, and the impact on the PHPP.  They talked about the foundation, insulation, radon, air and vapor barriers.  And what was the result? 

We're at 3.55 -- we need to stay at 4.75 or under -- thus, we have some important decisions left to make, but we're doing really well. Hanging questions: How to heat it?  How to ventilate it?  (This is harder to do on a small house than a bigger house, by the way.)

We will have 8" of EPS under the foundation.  We will have 16" of EPS around the foundation.  We will have a 12 mil. air and radon barrier wrapping the whole foundation.  We will have 16" dense-packed cellulose in the walls and 22" in the roof.  The roof will be essentially flat, to hold the snow (for further insulation).  It will be a rubber roof, fully adhered EPDM. This is what we have on our current house, and it is marvelous -- the only noticeable drawback being that it is hellishly hot on your feet when you venture out on it in the summertime. 

So...the differences between our house and the "conventional" Passivhaus that you, our readers, know? First of all, we are going to have curtain walls. That means that the outside walls are completely separate from the timberframe.  They are not constrained by the posts or braces.  This mimics the construction of our current house.  What this means, in real life, is that you don't have to run any electrical wiring or heating elements through the walls -- they can be concealed in the space between the posts and the inside sheathing of the wall.  Ours, by the way, are all tongue-and-V-groove cedar, from Goodridge Lumber in Albany, VT.  (Goodridge is another story for another time)

The second major difference is that the roof, which is almost flat, will hold the snow.  This provides additional insulation, and we don't have to worry about snow sliding off, or shoveling it, or where we plant shrubs or flowers that could get clobbered.

The third major difference is the timberframe itself.  I love the elegant simplicity of the timberframe, its flexibility, the way its "bones" are visible, like the skeleton of a big animal. You don't need any interior walls -- and if you want to take out the ones you do have, or move them, it's simple, because they're not supporting anything. 

Most folks think timberframes are expensive, but they don't have to be. The assumption is that you're essentially building two houses...the frame itself, and the walls, which are sufficient to support the house.  What we did here was build the timberframe and then hung walls outside of it, which would NOT support the house, but act as a moisture/weather/air/temperature barrier. So, in effect, we have built only one house. The timberframe appears to "float" within the walls -- it's spaced 2" inside them -- which also provides a space to hide electrical cords and such.  It's a beautiful design element which allows you to view the frame itself from many angles, some of which would normally be obscured by the wall.

In this pic of our guest bedroom, you can see wall "floating" outside
the posts and knee braces  and rafters of the timberframe.

The cottage will have a little more structure in its curtain walls than our current house, because we're moving from EPS foam to dense-packed cellulose -- which is not rigid and doesn't support itself. Therefore, we'll have to build a little more structure into the wall.

What's up next?  We're running away to Canada for three days, to the little town of Magog just across the border, for a last-ditch vacation before the actual construction starts. Next Monday, Chris and Indigo will be here to discuss various certifications and the PHPP.

David Vissering is a modern jack-of-all trades. His genius spans the trades of electrician, plumber, carpenter, inventor and scientist. (He’s also a very funny raconteur and an avid rollerblader.) His propensity for creative problem-solving compliments my husband Greg’s (or Gerg's, as he's known online) quirky technobrain. Thus, a partnership is born.

David is one of the two principal partners of Creative Carpentry, a local construction company based in our home town of Middlesex. His partner, Myron Dorfman, and Myron's wife Shauna are friends of ours.

David came to our house last Sunday, March 24, for an HVAC plumbing and electrical meeting.  We talked about how to get the grey- and blackwater drains across the center beam of the basement and to the “skywalk” that heads outside, through the top of the foundation wall and into the chase to the main house, along with the rest of the plumbing and electrical and communications lines (telephone, internet, networking. alarm bells, dish TV, etc.). I should explain that the “skywalk” is the term we’ve been using for the enclosed bridge-like thingy that will connect the cottage with our house. The idea is that Greg’s parents, who are elderly, won’t have to go outside or navigate any stairs in order to get into our house. It will exit their cottage at the kitchen and connect them directly, and horizontally, with our outside porch....and then to the main floor of our house -- no stairs, no ramps, no thresholds, no weather.

David (left) & Gerg (right) contemplate the 3-model in free "Sweet Home 3-D"

We also started to discuss the intricacies of the spiral staircase, which we’re trying to pack into a corner...stay tuned.

Today our lead contractor, Chris Miksic, came over at 3:00 to discuss house plans with Greg.  Chris is a dear friend who has seen us through many times, both hard and joyous.  He built us a beautiful deck, which we christened with a party at the end of the summer in 1999. That December, our house burned to the ground.  We still have pictures of the deck, the party, ourselves sunning on the deck. After the last bit of work was done, just before he started packing up his tools, he said to me,  “So -- you happy?”  And I cried, “Oh, yes!” and gave him a big hug.

Chris was in charge of the crew that worked on the construction of our new house after the timberframe was erected.  I won’t say “finishing,” because we didn’t have the money to finish it.  Twelve years later, it’s still unfinished. But it’s coming along.  It was a long and complicated process, mostly because we didn’t have enough money to do it all at once, so it had to be done in chunks, with lots of interruptions. I can’t imagine anyone but Chris having enough patience to see it through.

View of the central post of our house (the "V-post") and our masonry stove from the rear.  

Due to lack of funds, our house looked like this for a long time...lots of light coming in, as we had plastic walls for two years.

Today, we finished the specs for the excavation, landscaping, driveway, and backfilling. We talked about the foundation insulation supplier and the foams available for insulating the foundation...and their densities.  We went over the assembly of the foundation, including the insulating foam that encapsulates it, the radon/vapor barrier, and the foundation itself. We still have details to work out to safely wrap and seal the foundation with plastic.

There are many green options in concrete, sealants, construction adhesives -- for example, including fly ash in the concrete helps to offset its carbon footprint.  There are low-VOC sealants, glues and adhesives. We’ll be using these, and using cellulose instead of foams wherever we can. This is the first building any of us knows of that will be using only cellulose for the outside walls & roof insulation, without using any plywood, OSB or foam to cover it.

Montpelier Construction plans on investing a few thousand dollars in new equipment for this project. Chris is asking an industry expert about dense-packing cellulose in 16” by 3’ wide by 18’ tall cavities, which are super-huge. He’ll be consulting with a technical expert from Foursevenfive.com about special smart membranes for air barriers for the building envelope. We’re also going to be talking to Efficiency Vermont about our air and vapor barriers. And we’re trying to avoid thermal bridging in the window mounting, so lots of conversation about the window mounting detail.

It was a four hour meeting. I listened. I got tired of rearranging my studio (I'm a jewelry designer/maker) and settled down to lay out some necklaces. The light had started to wane by the time he left. I lose track of the time, now that it’s staying light until 7:00. It’s a pleasant feeling.

Last Friday, March 15, we had a meeting with most of our Timberframe Team, which will consist of Mitchell, Skip, Jesse (who wasn’t here) and Greg. Back in 2000, Skip invited us to see the beautiful post-and-beam home that he and his partner, Llzabeth, had built in Worcester. I was still mourning the loss of our previous home to the fire that completely destroyed it in 1999, and I felt both wistful and jealous at the sight of this lovely thing. I was also inspired, determined to recreate what we had lost -- only better. More about their amazing masonry stove later.

Mitchell was a member of the Matt Sargent’s timberframe team that built our current house. He did mortise-and-tenon work and was part of the crew that actually erected the timberframe. He's gone on to build his own post-and-beam home, which we haven't seen yet. He and Skip know each other from way back.

I cobbled together some lemon poppyseed muffins with lemon glaze, and some of that great new discovery, Greek yogurt butter. Yum-o!

Solid plans came out of that meeting, and Skip offered some great ideas.  One was (since the house is so small, only 24 x 24) to use 24-foot 8" x 10" top plates and 24-foot 8" x 8" beams, thus eliminating the need for scarf joints -- which we have in our current house and are very labor-intensive to build.

Me painting the floor of our bedroom in our current house.  (It's a loft with no walls.)

Skip also came up with ways to improve the joist and rafter joinery to make it stronger and simpler. He and Mitchell decided to use a crosshair laser level to mark up the mortises on the two round wood posts (which are essentially tree trunks).

Feeling optimistic about the progress!

This afternoon marked a major milestone in our PassivHaus project.  We mounted our "Notice of Zoning Permit" poster on part of an old drawer and fastened it to a tree that wouldn't get hurt, next to our road.  Now our fellow Middlesex residents have fifteen days to file a objection to our zoning request with the Selectboard.  We're on our way!

Me and Bailey down by the road.

Note:  Although this is our first post, the design process began during the first week of January, 2013.  Some future posts may take the form of flashbacks.....