The Greened House Effect

I worked through that first weekend, making sure that things would be ready to roll on Monday morning when the crews came back.  Retrofitting the arched dormers took time, and I had to make lots of little decisions as issues reared their ugly little heads.  The weather was cooperating, though, with hot, dry days and clear nights.

Monday morning things picked up where they left off.  Ben Stolzfus’ concrete guys got right to work, pouring the slab for the garage/office addition.  By the end of the day we had a new driveway as well.

Stalwart Construction finished up their work on the rear dormer shed roof modification, which meant my work, adding the insulation, was up next.  They moved on to the front roof retrofit while I insulated the rear roof.  The front roof is a steep, 12/12 pitch, so everyone working up there used harnesses and ropes.  The approach up there was to apply 2”x3” external studs to the existing roof using countersunk 4” screws.  We applied the new framework right over the shingles.  This would mean that the applied Foam It Green spray foam insulation would bond directly to the old shingles, saving a big load which would have normally headed to the landfill.  Our approach, after then re-sheathing with LP TechShield OSB, would add 2” – 2 ½” of closed-cell foam insulation to the entire front roof face.  This adds R-14 to R-17 to the existing R-30 to R-40 already in place, which makes for a very well insulated, air-tight roof – just what we’re after in our Deep Energy Retrofit project.

Patrick retrofits the front roof . . .

While the Stalwart guys attacked the front roof, I got acquainted with the Foam It Green spray foam insulation on the rear roof.  I’d installed R-19 fiberglass insulation, paper side down, into each of the 9 ½” deep SolidStart I-joist rafter wells.  Then I laid a craft-paper barrier on top of the pink fiberglass, after which I sprayed in about 3” of Foam It Green spray foam insulation.  This gives our new shed roof about an R-40 rating, and since it’s essentially covering the old roof structure up there, which already had R-19 in place, we’re looking at a near R-60 in that part of the roof.

I was originally a little anxious about using do-it-yourself spray foam kits, since I’d never done anything like that before.  As a company, Foam It Green has excellent resources for showing anyone how to apply their products, including videos on their web-site, www.foamitgreen.com.  Their customer support lines are available 24/7, too, if you need it.  They were able to help me plan my project and the amount of foam I would need, and I got tons of very expert advice on technical issues from one of their reps, Janelle.  She was able to answer my questions about how much foam to use and where to use it, advocating a “not too much” approach that told me they were more interested in making sure we used the foam in an efficient way.  In the end, I followed their instructions and found that the kits are very simple to use, and I got the hang of spraying a fairly even coat in the first few minutes (look for a foaming video and a blog discussion of best practices in using spray-foam insulation coming soon!).

Above: Travis completes the external stud installation on the front roof

Below: I fill the voids between the studs with Foam It Green spray-foam insulation

The Stalwart crew finished installing the curtain-wall roof studs about the time I finished with the foaming of the rear roof.  I just moved my foaming set-up to sit on the ridge, put on my climbing harness and rope, and “Foamed-It-Green” on the front of the house, too.  Before the TechShield sheathing went up, lots of people stopped to tell me that the spray-foam looked a bit like snow or cotton-candy up on the roof, giving the house either a “Christmas in September” or a “Hansel & Gretel” appearance.  I was looking forward to the energy savings we would be enjoying for many years to come.

Above: Will measures for the TechShield sheathing install

Below: The "radiant barrier" side goes down . . .

The Stalwart crew is close on my heels with sheathing the front roof . . .

Travis lent me his flush-cut hand saw to knock back the few places where I’d applied a little too much foam.  The flush-cut saw was the perfect tool for this job, and I ran out that afternoon and bought one for myself.  This job made sure that, as they sheathed the front roof, that none of the foam would protrude too far and interfere with the sheathing installation.

Above: Finishing up the TechShield OSB sheathing of the front roof

Below: You can see the new retrofit foam on top, and also some foam I used to seal the rafter tails and sill on the old construction -- this was a major leak which was brought to our attention during our HERS rating. Thanks, Foam It Green -- leak plugged!

As the week closed, Stalwart moved on to the addition framing.  We were glad to see the old, rotted garage go, since there had been a good chance of it collapsing ever since we bought the house eight years ago.  We were only adding about 350 sq ft to our house, but we had shoehorned four people and two businesses into 990 sq ft, so the new space would be welcomed.  Our decision to add the square footage didn’t come lightly – Sherri and I have always been “small home” people, believing that smaller homes are more energy efficient, less expensive to maintain, and easier to clean.  Long before Sarah Susanka published her “Not So Big House” series, Sherri and I believed in Sarah’s concepts of using space wisely first, before considering “bump-outs” or, finally, small additions.  Our home simply could not provide the workshop and office space we needed, and we felt like we could justify a small addition and still be well below the average American new-home size of 2500 sq ft.

So, small addition it is.  The lower section will become our workshop – not exactly a luxury for two people who make part of their living with their hands.  I’m enough of a carpenter to need space to work (and sometimes a workshop “set” for how-to videos), and Sherri had been creating her unique wine-bottle art in the backyard.  This meant that she could really only produce her art when the weather was good, which meant that she typically couldn’t work most of the winter.  This would mean a warm, dry, secure place to work and keep our tools.

The upper section will become our office, which will house our small-but-growing production company, little blue house productions.  We’d be up-grading from a 10’ x 10’ box with two desks, two file cabinets, and multiple shelves and racks.  It will be wired for sound and video, and have a separate electrical circuit for our computers, sound, and video gear.  The space will be large enough to have our desks and workstations and also include an area where clients can sit and watch versions of our latest projects on a wall-hung HDTV.  Once the kids leave home, it might even double as a “mother-in-law” apartment. 

That's me on the left, trying to help the Stalwart guys with the "big wall"

It was gratifying to see the walls come up that week.  We’d so carefully designed the space to make sure we only pushed out one wall of the original footprint by 6 feet, and we could now get a feel for how our new space would work.  When it’s done, we’ll also enjoy a super-insulated, airtight structure where there used to be a very leaky sieve.

Brian from Third Sun Solar gets a tour . . .

The work was happening fast, with big changes every day.  Sherri was scrambling to make sure she was getting plenty of HD video and still pics of all the action, which frequently was happening all at once.  She was learning what the production industry term, “run-and-gun” really meant.  At one point, Brian from Third-Sun Solar stopped by to finalize plans for our photovoltaic solar system, and I had to come down off the roof to meet with him.  While it seemed like the solar install was a long way away, I knew it would creep up on us.

Me?  I worked through the weekend again, reminding myself that, in a couple of months, most of the hard work would be done and we’d be on to things like siding and trim.  With the weather staying on our side, I had little to complain about, except the normal aches and pains of physical activity.  I was looking forward to seeing the addition framing finished up so we could get a roof on before any bad weather hit, and I knew our time was limited on that front.

We’ve only just begun our Deep Energy Retrofit, with much more to come.  Want to see how we transform our 1940s kit home from energy hog to miser?  Want to see us bring the exterior into the 21^st century while keeping its Cape Cod charm?  Want to see what happens along the way?  There’s a lot in store, so stay tuned!