Layin' down a bed of crushed stone

Double click on this detail to see exactly what we are building here.
Please note that they have laid the perforated pipe in the back "L" part of the basement (I didn’t get any pictures) and are going to install the rest today hopefully. They are right now trying to get all of the stone they are going to need for the main part of the building piled into the center of the basement so that they can return the conveyer, install the remaining perforated pipe, and rake the crushed stone out on top of it. They could not lay all the perforated pipe first because it would get in the way of the wheelborrows needed to get the stone in.



Site Structures first put down a layer of this black, water permeable, geotextile fabric that will keep the crushed stone from getting fouled by the clay below.




They rented a conveyer belt to get the crushed stone into the building. Outside, somebody pushes and shovels crushed stone from the back of a truck or trailer onto the conveyer belt. The conveyer belt then brings the stone into the basement and conveniently drops it in a strategically placed the wheelbarrow. This whole process requires a lot of yelling back and forth to not overload the wheelbarrow.


Once full, whoever is inside would carefully walk the loaded wheelbarrow across the basement planks and dump the stone in a big pile in the center of basement.

This is the last time we will ever see this mucky mess...

In about 20 minutes from now, the Site Structures crew is going to start laying down a layer of geotextile fabric and crushed stone. This is the last time we will ever see this mucky mess again!

Material Delivery For Basement Work!

I got so excited about this material delivery that I just had to stand on the foam and take a picture. Yes, I used a self timer for this picture (awkward). We received some perforated tubing for the perimeter drain, geotextile fabric to keep the crushed stone from smushing into the clay, and our below slab vapor retarder.


(The delivery guy handed me a bullet pen just like this one to sign the invoice. I almost forgot to give it back to him and he told me to give him back his bullet...)

Basement work? What?

James Petersen and Charlie Bourdages of Site Structures measuring the tops of the poured lally colum footings in order to determine the final elevations for the floor slab assembly.

Frozen Sink

Do you remember how we thermally amputated our kitchen from the main building? We never turned the water off to the kitchen sink. Umm Ya. Last night it was 9 degrees and they finally froze...

Wizard Stick

A couple of weeks ago we bought a handheld smoke generator called a "Wizard Stick" to help us detect leaks and drafts in our building enclosure. Unlike the old type of acid based smoke puffers that are toxic to breathe and corrodes wires, the Wizard Stick produces safe non-toxic thick clouds of smoke using 6 AA batteries and a little bit of theatrical smoke juice. I have had the pleasure of keeping the Wizard Stick on my desk to experiment (play) with over the last few weeks.


Example of a chemical based smoke stick: http://www.teamflexo.com/products/teltru.asp



My office has not had its radiator hooked up yet and I use the smoke to verify that if I crack a window, air is being pushed out my window and not drawn in (because of stack effect). Depending on the wind, sometimes air will be drawn into the building and sometimes if it is gusty out, air will be drawn into and pushed out of the window crack erratically. It is a fascinating thing to see.


I discovered this mysterious little hold in the corner of my office that draws in air down into it. I don't know where it goes from there...




Our chimney has a brand new damper on it and it still draws a lot of air!

There are lots of inflatable bladder products available on the market that get jammed into flue right above the fire box and inflated. That is great and all but there is still a convective loop of outside air just on the other side of that inflatable badder. James and I have been trying to brainstorm a way to insulate and air seal the chimney flue up where the chimney intersects the roof. Here is a little napkin sketch James made...

Retaining wall done

Site Structures is Back!

Site Structures is back on site. Finally some action around here! They are building a 20' long (not tall) retaining wall along the property line of our next door neighbor's driveway. The wall that was there was not doing much to hold our neighbors driveway back.

Frosty Morning

This is what the roof looked like outside of my window this morning. Cool huh?

NHSEA Presentation

The NHSEA Presentation on Saturday went well. We really tried to make the session as fun and action packed as possible. I think we did a pretty good job. There were a few moments that I had to yell over the sound of the drill but other than that, it was good. I think that we set a world record for having the most slides(244)in a presentation while also performing a live building demonstration!


(from the left: Pete Swisloski & Dan Vooris from Bruss Construction, Me)

NHESA Presentation This Saturday!

I am going to be giving a presentation this Saturday at the NHSEA Home Energy Conference in Concord with Peter Swislosky from Bruss Construction.

The presentation is going to include a thorough slide show of construction photos, explanations and reasoning behind design choices, and a LIVE building demonstration. The building demonstration will be performed using a 7' tall wall/roof mock-up and will showcase details used for our roof overhang build out, window instillation, and wall termination at the foundation.

This presentation is going to be jam packed with a lot of information and should be a lot of fun!

For information about the conference visit:
http://www.nhsea.org/home-energy/conference-info-2010


Workshop B — 1:15-2:45
335 Maplewood Ave-History meets Energy Efficiency
Ryan Lacey of Petersen Engineering
Peter Swislosky President, Precision Building Solutions
Ryan and Pete will talk about their adventures in retrofitting a historic building in Portsmouth, NH to reduce the heating load by a projected 85%. Learn how this project showcases techniques & materials that promote both preservation and sustainability. This session will include a slideshow of construction photographs and a live building demonstration that will exhibit techniques used.
For a preview, check out Ryan’s Blog http://petersenengineering.blogspot.com/

Kitchen Wall Insulation Complete

Ron was in over the weekend and put up the 2 layers of 1-1/2" extruded polystyrene w/ staggered, taped, and foamed joint on top of the typar air barrier. He then put a layer of advantech sheathing over the foam to hold it all together and protect it. (just like we did on the exterior of the building) He removed the old door and installed an insulated exterior door because this wall is our new thermal barrier. We now officially have a 3 season kitchen. bbbbrrrrrr....

Good job Ron!

Oops... Sump Pump Hose Fell Back Into Building

You know something is bad when you hear somebody say, "hey, why does it sound like a waterfall in the basement?"

Our temporary sump pump hose that we had running out of a basement window, fell back into the basement sometime overnight or this morning. The pump was running nonstop pumping water to itself!

It was only 20 minutes ago that I opened the basement door to see this scary sight:





I put the hose back out the window. We should be good now.

Insulate wall separating the kitchen

We renovated all of the exterior of the building with exception for the kitchen. Why did we do that? The kitchen (seen below as the area hatched out on the right of the elevation) is falling apart and is literally built on cinder blocks. We did not want to put good money after bad trying to fix this section up. If anything, it needs to be completely torn down and re-built on a proper foundation. For now we are just going to leave it.


This elevation was part of our Historic District Commission submittal. The kitchen is the section of building that is hatched out on the far right.

We had the heating pipes serving the kitchen cut in an attempt to thermally amputate it from our main building. (that sounds really gross to say) The interior wall separating the kitchen from our conference room is our new thermal and air barrier. We are going to apply 3" of rigid foam to the walls just like we did to the rest of the building and we are going to replace the existing door with an insulated exterior door.

We need to connect the air barrier on the interior wall we are insulating to the air barrier on the exterior walls. Luckily, from the interior of the kitchen, a tiny piece of the exterior wall's Tyvek air barrier is visible. We are going to butt the Typar we are using inside up to the Tyvek and are going to attach them together using Great Stuff foam. Great Stuff does a great job getting into all the little nooks and crannies and does a good job adhering to whatever it touches.


This is a really scary picture. There is a lot of things going on here. Notice the vertical sliver of white? That is our exterior wall Tyvek air barrier that we are going to be attaching our interior Typar air barrier to using Great Stuff foam.


This is the Typar tacked into place. The rigid foam is going to go on top of this.


We needed to removed some floor boards in the kitchen to gain full access to the wall and sill.


View from the conference room towards the kitchen. This door is going to be removed and either put in the attic for a future project of donated somewhere.


In this photo you can see that the kitchen is literally built on cinder blocks. No wonder the floor feels like a circus fun house!


Ron sistered on a 2x6 to the exposed sill for added strength and to have something solid to build off of. He put down a bead of Great Stuff foam on the existing rough sill before sistering the new lumber to create a air tight seal. Believe it or not, the sill and the sistered pieces of lumber is part of the air barrier assembly.

Lets see if i can illustrate it using my markers...













Ok so the crayola marker sketch didn't come out too clean and "hing" of sheathing was cut of in the scan on the top right. Sorry about that. If I had the time, I would do it again with different markers.

What if we went ahead and removed every component in the drawings above except for the materials that serve as the air barrier? It would look something like this:





Air barriers need to be continuous in all directions. To ensure that the air barrier is continuous, you should be able to draw a line from the roof to the foundation highlighting the materials and connections that make up the air barrier assembly and not need to pick up the marker. Picking up the marker at any point would be what we call a hole. Holes are bad. Notice how the sill is part of the air barrier? Crazy stuff.