Today started off by driving up to Poultney, VT to meet with a couple who was building their own home. They heard about Alan’s business last fall at one of his monthly presentations at the bookstore in my town. His presentations deal with all sorts of topics, mainly focusing in home renovations and building practices. The couple had emailed Alan and asked if he would come out and talk to them about different building options in their new home. We weren’t sure on the drive up what stage they were in the building process, whether they hadn’t started (preferred) or we well on their way to completion. When we got there most of the framework had been done on the house. No windows yet, but pretty well closed off from the elements. Unfortunately at this stage there are only some many decisions that still have to be made. When you start fresh on a project you can incorporate sustainability into every part of the building.
The couple had some questions prepared for Alan regarding insulation, heating system, etc. Alan also had information to offer them such as Efficiency Vermont, a company that works with home builders to maximize rebates. He also gave them a copy of the Vermont Energy Code, Vermont’s only residential building code, and surprisingly very few builders to this day follow it… hmm. We walked around the house and talked a good bit about the best insulating options. Closed cell foam vs open cell foam, or fiberglass. We explained thermal bridging and the importance of putting insulation in between your siding and studs.
Quick thermal bridging lesson – wood is not an insulator, maybe has an R value of 5. So even if you insulate between your studs in your wall, the cold air outside will cool down the plywood on the outside of your house, then the coldness travels through your studs and then cools down the sheetrock on the inside wall. There are some ways of avoiding this from happening. If you put ridged foam or blue board on the outside of your house, on top of the plywood and behind the siding, even just 1/2 inch thick it creates a barrier where the coldness will not be transferred through.
The other option is building a staggered stud wall.
The way this works is you still have a 6-8 inch thick wall but you use 2×4′s and alternate which wall they are flush with. Its a very, very cool idea because not only is thermal bridging taken care of (besides the top and bottom boards) you can then have continuous insulation. If you see in the picture above the insulation never stops. This also makes running electric wires a whole lot easier, no drilling! This is also more cost effective than building with 2×6′s or 2×8′s and you get just as thick of wall!
Another option is called the Larsen Truss Design. I won’t go into too much detail but this is a resource saving and cost effective way to have very thick walls for super insulating. Check out this link… http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/articles/larsentruss.htm and learn more!
So after we talked about insulation and walked around the house we discussed the heating system. They decided to go with a Geo-Thermal system and use radiant flooring. There is one problem with this… for radiant flooring to work properly the water temp needs to get up to around 140 degrees, and a geo-thermal system works best at around 100-110 degrees. So even after the geo-thermal system pumps out water it needs to be heated again. Alan offered a different type of radiant flooring called Warm Board, which is basically radiant flooring built into the plywood pre-floor, instead of tubes running in between the floor joist below.
We spent a couple of hours talking with this couple about what their options were and gave them plenty of possibilities, a full range of associated costs. We’ll see how much they end up doing.
From there we drove back to town and then headed up to the Bromley condo with building plans. Now that the demo has been done the builder needs to know where new walls are going and what else needs to be done. By the time we got back it was already past lunch!
After lunch Alan’s wife, Nancy showed me the passive solar studio they built a few years ago.
The studio is a place where Nancy can make her shoes, all year round (so long as the sun shines in the winter!). Alan built is so the summer sun never shines directly into the building but during the winter the low sun warms the building all day. This was the first sunny day in a few weeks and you can see in the picture its above 60 degrees in the building! The studio is built of completely recycled materials. The windows were rejected by a builder and destined for the dump, but they found a home in the studio. The walk way are old boards from a printing factory. Alan and Nancy did all the work themselves, working weekends and late nights to get it finished. The building is set up so the rain water is collected off the roof and stored for use in their garden. The studio has 2 rooms, one smaller one where she glues her shoes. This rooms is sealed off and has a small exhaust fan. It also has a sink and eventually will have running water. Their idea is that if/when they move this could be converted into a small bedroom/bath! Its a gorgeous studio and very well thought through! If only the rest of the human race built with such thought as these two! Its a shame how much stuff we throw out that could be used again and again. We are just too lazy to do anything about it! Fortunately some people are.
