335 Maplewood Ave Renovation: Response to a sill question:

A Brief History

The project entails repairing the building at 335 Maplewood Ave in a manner that meets both preservation and sustainability goals. The building is the new location for Petersen Engineering, a firm that has been located in Portsmouth since 1992, and specializes in sustainable building engineering. We intend for this project to showcase techniques & materials that promote both preservation and sustainability and intend to share all aspects of the project locally and regionally through open houses, presentations, industry tradeshows, case studies and publications. We foresee this project being a valuable educational tool to demonstrate that preservation goals need not be compromised by sustainability goals. We have teamed with Bruss Construction who we know from past collaborations has exceptional experience and expertise on projects with the dual goal of preservation and sustainability.

The project received approval by the Historic District Commission on January 6, 2010 with construction scheduled to begin early February 2010.

The projected peak heat loss reduction is 85%.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Response to a sill question:

Q: What if you used some type of recycled/salvaged material like strips of car tires or crushed soda cans as your sill? Would that work?

A: Umm...no.

Sills in post & beam construction are load bearing. This means that load of the walls & floors above actually resting on the sill.

Random analogy:
Remember the game Jenga? I do! Imagine that you are playing Jenga on a uneven surface like an old warped picnic table. You setup the game the best you can on the table, you even needed to shim a few of the blocks with some playing cards because the table is so bad. Think about it like this: the old warped picnic table is like the rubble foundation, it is inconsistent, not straight & not level. The tower of Jenga pieces is like the building, it is heavy & it needs to be level. The bottom course of the Jenga pieces is like the sill. The sill needs to carry the load of the pieces above, provide a level surface for everything above to be built upon and bridge the imperfections of the table below all at the same time. Get it?

I tried. :)

If the sill was made of strips of car tires, the finished first floor would be like a fun house at the carnival.