Exterior Foam Started!

Finally, the exterior foam work has begun. Rigid closed cell foil faced foam (called Iko Enerfoil) arrived the 1st week of April and Scott's crew has moved quickly to begin the process of attaching the foam to the house.

Virtually all the shingles have been stripped and 2 layers of foam have been installed, with the seams taped and each layer staggered to ensure a more effective air barrier.

Remaining is some of the detailed air sealing work that will need to fill in all the gaps by the windows, doors, at the bottom and top of the foam. Scott Sorensen (contractor) and Olaf Vollertsent (architect) have had many conversations about where to spray foam, how to seal the foam at the corners, what screws to use to attach the foam and then the strapping, etc. etc. Complicated stuff but necessary.

More to follow on some of those details, but the photos here show some of the early foam work.

Construction Continues

Construction has moved quickly so that by late March/early April,, virtually all of the exterior framing and construction has been completed.

The top front dormer was completely demolished and then rebuilt with a new roof and entirely new framing and sheathing (see photos).

It's starting to look like it's supposed to, and even thought our exterior footprint is only slightly larger than our original house, it seems much larger both inside and out.

Scott and his crew work incredibly quickly, rebuilding the dormer in just a week. The site is kept incredibly clean at the end of each day and the work seems solid. We're especially pleased with some of the attention to details that have replicated the period roof and eaves.

The windows on the top dormer are especially large, primarily because of code issues and required opening height for emergency egress.

Our almost 4 year old son continues to call this our green house, and although I'd like to believe he understands what we are doing, I think it's just because the sheating is green. :)

Material Recycling Report

Thought we'd post the results of our first Construction material recycling report from E.L. Harvey. For January and February the results are:

7.97 tons of materials generated

1.20 tons of concrete diverted

5.58 tons of wood diverted

6.77 tons of material diverted

85% recycling rate

Although we are astounded at the amount of material being generated from this relatively modest project, we are excited by the efforts and reporting of E.L. Harvey, which, apparently, is one of the premier C&D recycling companies in the area. And it's great to know the results, which seems to be a unique feature from this company. And, it costs no more than normal C&D management companies. We plan to get more information about where the materials being diverted actually go.

Totally forgot to mention that a week before work began, we had a blower door test conducted by Byggmeister (http://www.byggmeister.com/), a local newton green remodeling company, as well as a HERS rating analysis. For those who know about these things, the results were:

1. 2400 CFM at 50 pascals

2. A HERS rating of 111

I'm told that the 2400 CFM is a moderate leakage rate, not horrible but not great, and that the 111 score is better than many older New England homes, which often get scores of 130 or above. A home built to the current code would receive a score of 100. We'll say it here: our goal is to get our CFM down to 1,000 and our HERS score to 60. Not sure if we'll get there but we'll see.

We still have not yet begun the super insulation part of the project, but the house is starting to take shape inside and out. The addition is framed, using a Zip sheathing from Huber, which resists the elements better than traditional plywood sheathing and is slightly cheaper!

We plan to soon remove all the insulation from the attic (which has multiple layers of mixed types) but the weather has made things move a bit more slowly.

Several key decisions have been made, such as triple pane low-e glass fiberglass windows from Fibertec (http://www.fibertec.com/) and we're actually converting to an all electric house, including the water heater and range. This is not necessarily our first choice, but there are several reasons, some of which are more compelling than others:

1. A house that is so tight is much safer without any combustion inside the house

2. The price of electricity can only go as high as the cost of solar, while who knows what will happen with gas prices.

3. We reduce our utility billing and payment effort to just one per month.

4. We eliminate the minimum charges associated with just having gas service.

5. Since our HVAC system, which will be the highest cost energy user in the house, will be electric, it made sense to go all electric.

6. Our water usage is pretty minimal (was about 10-14 therms per month) so even with electric the cost shouldn't be that high.

We will see if we made the right decision, but one option is to buy green electricity until we install renewables so as to reduce our carbon footprint.

We're also using E.L. Harvy to recycling our C&D waste and expect our first report from them in mid-March.

Several windows have been framed - note the extra inches on the window frame in preparation for the 4 inches of insulation on the exterior. In talking to our contractor, this is clearly a new approach to window framing but doesn't really seem all that complicated and provides the structural strength needed for the heavier triple pane windows.

We expect the exterior insulation to start once the front, 2nd floor dormer has been rebuilt. Will post more pictures then.

So we've moved out of our house temporarily to let the work begin in earnest, but we'll be back to the house on a regular basis to track the progress of the work.

Just yesterday we held an HVAC summit at the house to discuss the options for installing a new heating system to replace our current oil/steam system that is truly on its last legs. Our architect Olaf Vollertsen, energy consultant Marc Rosenbaum, HVAC sub-contractor Chris Conti, and our contractor Scott Sorensen all agreed on an all electric house with air source heat pumps for heating (and cooling if necessary), and an electric hot water heater (possible an air heat pump as well). Although electricity is commonly thought of as a more expensive energy source, Marc Rosenbaum continues to calculate that our costs will be more or less the same as with gas, based on it seems, the efficiency of current technologies and the cost it would take to retrofit existing systems.

The other major consideration we had to deal with, and perhaps the deciding factor, is whether or not to keep gas appliances in the house when it will be so tight. Marc told us that we would have to buy a new direct vent hot water heater to eliminate any CO leakage into the house, which would have cost just as much or more than a stainless steel electric heater. In the end, it seems worth it to eliminate all on-site compustion of fossil fuels. We'll also have to change from a gas stove and dryer but those don't seem all that difficult.

Our hope is to soon be able to install a PV system on the house to help reduce the grid electricity used significantly. Unfortunately our house has an east-west orientation, but we think we might be able to get a 1-2 kW system somewhere on the roof, providing us with perhaps 50-75% of our annual load, but this will have to wait.

We now wait for the HVAC sub-contractor to come back with a proposal for the entire system, including how to minimally duct for fresh air and heat, and what types of equipment we should consider. The current proposal is to probably duct to each of the 3 bedrooms on the 2nd floor and to the office and main space on the first floor. Less than ducting to every single room but more than we had originally thought. I think this is for comfort sake and seems to make sense.

So much progress has been made on our plans, although some key pieces still need to get figured out, particularly regarding the deep energy reduction/super insulation portion of our work. Our hope is that all this work will truly lead to a healthy home that has caused as little damage to the environmental as possible and that uses minimal energy.

Following a initial summit that included our architect (Olaf Vollertsen-www.vollertsenarchitecture.com), general contractor (Scott Sorensen-www.sesorensen.com) and energy consultant (Marc Rosenbaum-www.energysmiths.com) to detail a number of specific items, we have tentatively agreed that our super insulation project will include several key components:
1. Insulating the basement walls with closed cell spray foam insulation and sealing all the air leaks
2. Insulating the basement floor with one layer of rigid insulation
3. Insulating and sealing the attic with spray foam and blowing cellulose throughout for an approximate R60 roof
4. Adding 4 inches (2 - 2 inch layers) to the outside of the house on tip of which will be placed our new siding, which we had to replace anyway.
5. Installing new windows throughout.



Our big dilemma at the moment is what type of window to use. We started with Pella designer series which is a triple pane wood window because we wanted to keep the architectural integrity of our house which has beautiful wood trim around all our windows. The Pella's have a U value of around .30 give or take. But we've recently seen some fiberglass windows that are also triple pane, have the option of an oak interior and have a U value around .21 for double hung and even lower for casements (.18).

However, we need to feel certain that these windows perform well and are trying to find example of projects. The one company we're looking at is Fibertec (http://www.fibertec.com/) a Canadian company that does not have a lot of projects in the area. We hope to meet with them at Build Boston/Green Build next week but time is running out and we need to make a decision. We're also looking at Accurate Dorwin and Thermotec, although we don't think the latter makes a double hung window, which is something that we want to keep for the look of the house.

Once the envelope is secure, our hope is to heat the entire house without any ducts or piping, using a single point heater such as a Rinnai gas heater placed strategically on the first floor.

This all seems a bit mysterious for non engineers like us so we hope our energy experts know what they're talking about.