Friday, August 30, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Building Update #2 - Blasting!
Our blasting permit was approved Monday and blasting started yesterday. The site has gone through incredible changes already. The first two pictures are of the garage site taken from the same place before and after blasting.
Before...
After...
Here are some more pictures from around the site today:
Before...
Here are some more pictures from around the site today:
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Technical Post #1
For those interested in the technical side of our project, here is a little background:
Passive House / PassivHaus is is the world's leading standard in energy efficient building construction. In order to get a house (or commercial, government, or industrial building) certified by the International Passive House Association, the building must meet three rigorous standards: a maximum energy use per square foot for heating and cooling, a maximum primary energy use per square foot for the house and its occupants, and it must be airtight (no more than 0.6 air changes per hour when pressurized to 50 Pascals - or 0.6 ACH50).
Our house is designed to meet these criteria, and we have employed some less common building methods to do so. First, our foundation will be a 8-inch thick concrete slab without a stem wall or thickened edges, and it will be completely encased in foam insulation. Our walls will be almost 18 inches thick, with mineral wool inside our 2x6 load bearing wall, and cellulose in our 12 inch wide outer wall, formed with manufactured wood trusses. We will have approximately 3 feet of cellulose in our attic. Our windows and doors will be very high quality triple-pane windows with "warm edges" (low heat conducting spacers) between our panes of glass.
Because our house will be essentially airtight (don't worry, we can open the windows), we will be constantly ventilating it at very low air flows, less than 100 cubic feet per minute (CFM). The constant ventilation will replace our entire house volume of air every three hours or so, and maintain a very high indoor air quality. Our heat recovery ventilator (HRV) will heat the incoming air with the outgoing air, so we will lose very little heat in the winter when we bring in the fresh air.
When all is said and done, we should be able to heat the house with the equivalent of a hair dryer! If this interests you, we will continue to post short technical blogs on the different aspects of the house construction as we go along.
Passive House / PassivHaus is is the world's leading standard in energy efficient building construction. In order to get a house (or commercial, government, or industrial building) certified by the International Passive House Association, the building must meet three rigorous standards: a maximum energy use per square foot for heating and cooling, a maximum primary energy use per square foot for the house and its occupants, and it must be airtight (no more than 0.6 air changes per hour when pressurized to 50 Pascals - or 0.6 ACH50).
Our house is designed to meet these criteria, and we have employed some less common building methods to do so. First, our foundation will be a 8-inch thick concrete slab without a stem wall or thickened edges, and it will be completely encased in foam insulation. Our walls will be almost 18 inches thick, with mineral wool inside our 2x6 load bearing wall, and cellulose in our 12 inch wide outer wall, formed with manufactured wood trusses. We will have approximately 3 feet of cellulose in our attic. Our windows and doors will be very high quality triple-pane windows with "warm edges" (low heat conducting spacers) between our panes of glass.
Because our house will be essentially airtight (don't worry, we can open the windows), we will be constantly ventilating it at very low air flows, less than 100 cubic feet per minute (CFM). The constant ventilation will replace our entire house volume of air every three hours or so, and maintain a very high indoor air quality. Our heat recovery ventilator (HRV) will heat the incoming air with the outgoing air, so we will lose very little heat in the winter when we bring in the fresh air.
When all is said and done, we should be able to heat the house with the equivalent of a hair dryer! If this interests you, we will continue to post short technical blogs on the different aspects of the house construction as we go along.
Building Update #1
Building Permit in hand, issues with our water service resolved, we broke ground this past Monday, August 12th! As of Friday, all the trees have been cleared, the driveway and utilities marked out with paint, and the four corners of the house and garage foundations have been marked with stakes.
Blasting is the next stop. We are waiting on our blasting permit, but we need to blast almost 400 feet of our 500 feet of driveway, and the foundations for the house and garage.
Our house site looking south. That hunk of rock in the left side of the picture will have to get blasted away to make a level foundation.
Baxter on a Sunday afternoon site visit. We're amazed he stayed awake...
The heavy equipment, taken before excavation began.
The garage site. You can barely make out the four orange-topped stakes at the four corners. It will be bigger than the house!
Looking down at Ocean Ave from the house site.
Blasting is the next stop. We are waiting on our blasting permit, but we need to blast almost 400 feet of our 500 feet of driveway, and the foundations for the house and garage.
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