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.....