Drywall continues

 



We spent the weekend assembling cabinets, and now have a basement full.  The assembly was fairly intuitive, which was good since no instructions came with the cabinets.  Fortunately, I am a man, and do not rely on instructions. This never ceases to aggravate my wife. 

Only a few minor issues with the assembly that were easily resolved.  It did become obvious however that I had neglected to accommodate the angled bulkhead in the kitchen for the corner cabinet.  A little quick framing and some help from the drywall crew fixed that in short order. 

 

The drywallers are nearly finished.  They won't be done until the middle of next week, but things are looking great.  They determined that the texture of the fiberglass fabric on the paperless board in the bathrooms was too coarse to just tape the joints, so they opted to skim coat the entire surface to provide a smoother surface. 

 

The exterior trim is nearing completion.  Because the windows and doors are recessed four inches from the surface of the house, the construction of jamb extensions and sills has become a study in patience.  Window sill material historically is angled at about 15 degrees to shed water.  

I had to wait for a special order of cedar to arrive to mill to this profile.  The narrow grove shown on this upside-down piece cut about 3/8" from the front of the sill is a drip edge designed to prevent water from backing up into the building. 

 

 

We took one of our cats out to the house to begin to acclimate as we worked on the cabinets.  She made herself right at home. 

Drywall is hung

We had a light snowfall last weekend of a few inches.  Judy drove up to the house with the camera just as sections of the roof were shedding.  We have purchased a snow stop to protect the entrance and the driveway from large snow deposits. This is a continuous bar that will run across the main roof, bolting on to the standing seam of the metal roof about a foot above the eave.  However, after watching this display we are considering not installing it.  A self-cleaning roof would allow the photovoltaic panels to be more effective.  The occasional shoveling to get out of the garage is the price we would pay to have the electricity on on the winter.    

I did spend some time calculating where the snow would accumulate when I designed the sidewalk.  The first snow shedding event dumped right on the sidewalk, and the second one cleared it easily.  Guess I did not accurately calculate the coefficient of friction for snow.  

I have been working on the exterior trim.  Because the windows have four inches of foam extending beyond where the windows were mounted, we need to install a jamb extension to cover the edge of the foam.  The 2x8 cedar for the window sills arrived today which I began to mill to a custom profile.   

We received the cabinets on three pallets earlier in the week all of which will require assembly.  Judy and I will be working on them evenings and weekends and testing the strength of our marriage vows.  After 34 years, I think we can weather a couple more months of this. 

The big job completed this week was hanging the drywall.  The installers finished in only two days and were amazing to watch.  Not only is hanging drywall hard, heavy work, but the crew worked at it non-stop until they got the job done.  It was a very impressive performance.  

One feature of a LEED home is the requirement to use paperless drywall in the bathrooms.  Paperless drywall uses a fiberglass fabric face in lieu of paper on the back side to prevent mold from obtaining a purchase.  Mold requires two things to get started.  Moisture and food.  The typical drywall paper backer is a source of food for mold. 

The drywall finishers expect to be done by the end of next week.  I will continue working on the exterior trim, and we will be working on assembling the cabinets over the next several weeks.  We will prime all of the drywall before we start the trim installation. 

Drying out

The garage door was installed and came out better than I had hoped .  The quality of the door exceeded my expectations and the door operator is extremely quiet.  This picture of the garage door shown along the edge of the sumac grove in winter's mantle gives a small hint of what we hope to enjoy in the coming years.  (The sumac grove, not the garage door.  Well OK, we hope to enjoy the garage door too.)




After two long weeks of battling moisture problems in the insulation, we were rewarded with good news from the insulation manufacturers about our concerns.  GK Insulation came back today to repair some of the settling problems that showed up in the pictures from last week.  I related my concerns about the moisture conditions to the installer, and he immediately called the technical gurus at Nu-Wool Insulation (headquartered in the area) who showed up within an hour.  

We discussed my concerns about moisture and the potential for mold, and they assured me that there would not be a problem.  The cellulose insulation has borate added as an anti-fungal treatment.  I erroneously mentioned in the last post that there was also a pesticide in the insulation.  The borate will serve to prevent the formation of any mold.  Where there is no borate between the drywall and a stud, the installation of construction adhesive will be sufficient to isolate the wood from the paper backing on the drywall to prevent the potential for mold. 





We lost a day on the outside to poor weather, so we have about one more day of installing the foam sheathing and the fiberglass lath.  I have been installing the trim around the windows and doors.  To prepare for that, I have been installing a "nailer" which is a rip of plywood that is screwed over the foam and lath.  This holds the lath in place, provides a depth gauge for the cement plaster, and provides a place to fasten the wood trim.



The electricians were able to finish up the basement and garage.  We now have the permanent lighting in the basement with all of the outlets and mechanical equipment disconnects installed.  We have more utility in the garage with lighting and additional outlets for our work area.   

 

The plumbing is finished.  I ordered a water meter so that we can monitor our consumption.  The best piece of plumbing equipment is our water treatment equipment.  We think we have found a viable alternative to salt based water softeners.  We have had a couple of our brighter friends review the scientific credentials and bless the premise.  The Nuvo filter changes the PH in the water by adding citric acid which kelates the metallic compounds so that they will not bind to any other metallic object.  This protects our pipes, mechanical equipment, showerheads, aerators, dishwashers, etc. from accumulating those nasty accretions that undermine their effectiveness.  





There is no taste from the treatment, all minerals just pass through the system (including ours), there is no salt getting flushed into our drainfield and thus back into our aquifer, and there is no energy input for the backflushing required in a water softener.  The annual cost of the chemical is about the same as the cost of salt with out the energy cost.  If it works for us, our "friends" who have the intellectual capacity to determine that it should work, will try it out in their own homes.   Annual reports forthcoming.

Snow launching off the roof is rather spectacular.  A few inches accumulation needs a couple of good hours of sunshine to lubricate the metal roof enough to start an avalanche.  We have ordered snow guards which we will not install until next summer after the solar panels have been installed.  When the snow does hit the ground it compacts into a solid mass, and requires a good deal of effort to extract. 

The internet installers are coming to test the signal strength tomorrow.  If it works out, we will get the antenna installed.  The drywallers have commitments until Tuesday or Wednesday next week, but will make short work of the installation once they get started.  The exterior trim will continue with the receipt of the window sill material. 

Superb Blower Door Test

 

It was a quiet week at the Sumac Grove.  For the most part we watched the insulation dry.  We brought in two large commercial dehumidifying units which have been operating for nearly a week now.  The relative humidity (RH) has gone down from 74% to about 34%, but the insulation is still quite damp.  We will run the equipment through the weekend and see how it is doing.  We have been using a hygrometer with a long probe which measures the RH deep in the insulation.  We are still getting readings in the 70 to 80% range in some areas.  We won't begin drywall until we are satisfied that the moisture levels are low enough.  

Michael Holcomb of the Alliance for Environmental Sustainability came out to perform and inspection of the site before we install the drywall.  This inspection is a prerequisite in LEED for Homes.  While he was there we ran the blower door test to measure the air volume that can be attributed to air leaks in the building envelope.  

The blower door is a canvas frame with an exhaust fan built into it that is fit firmly into a door opening.  All openings in the home are closed as they would be in normal operations.  The exhaust fan is hooked up to a computer.  There is a small flexible hose that goes through the canvas frame that samples the air pressure outside the building, and another one inside to measure the air pressure on the inside of the building.  The fan is turned on to create a negative pressure in the building.  The pressure differential between the two measurements is measured by the computer and calculated against what it knows the volume of air generated by the fan speed to be.  This is an image of a typical blower door testing apparatus.


The new air infiltration guidelines for energy efficient homes that Energy Star has just published established a benchmark of 3 Air Changes per Hour (3 ACH).  Passive House requires a maximum leakage rate of 0.6 ACH.  Michael measured 0.26ACH, less than half of the Passive House requirements.  He has never seen a measurement so low, and we were thrilled to know that all of the design elements we incorporated and the work we invested to obtain the airtight design were vindicated.  



Last week the drywallers installed the drywall in the basement, the garage, and the ceiling of the house.  Judy and I spent the weekend blowing in cellulose insulation over the garage ceiling.  Though we probably will not use it very often, the garage is insulated well enough that a small 1,500 watt electric heater will make it possible to work on projects in the winter.  The garage was designed to include a workshop at one end, and space can be expanded by removing the cars.  The Clopay overhead garage door is insulated with 2" of foam with insulated glass for daylighting and is scheduled to be installed tomorrow.  

As we waited for the insulation to dry we finished up a few details.  The last of the blocking for the barrier free design requirements has been installed.  We put reinforcing members in to accommodate the future installation of grab bars.  We have almost finished up with the exterior insulation and lath.  They were just finishing up this gable this morning, and should finish the east gable next week.