The Greened House Effect

The Friday before, Matt, one of the Stalwart Construction owners, said “Well, I guess all we have left is to install the bay windows and finish off the ridge cap on the roof, and we’re all done here.”  I was instantly depressed.

For eight weeks the house had been a daily circus, with guys hanging off the roof, scaling ladders, and making all kinds of construction-related noise.  I’d grown accustomed to having the Stalwart crew around – they’re all great guys, and they gave me the feeling that things were going to work out; that everything was going to be fine in the end.  We were going to miss Matt, Travis, Rem, Patrick, & Jeff – the help, the noise, & their company.  Heck, I realized that I was even going to miss Will’s “random singing events.”  To be fair, I wasn’t going to miss one more round of Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything for Love,” but generally, I mean.  Maybe it was just the impending loneliness talking.

Above: Matt, Travis, and I talk about the impending bay window install . . .

Below: Patrick walks across the frame . . . those are big holes in my house . . .

On a bright, crisp morning, the crew gathered for the last big task of installing the beautiful Pro Via bay windows.  I’d gone back and forth about replacing these.  I figured that they’d be pretty complicated to measure correctly, and that would pose an issue for Pro Via’s manufacturing.  Still, these bay windows were some of the worst offenders in the house – they were cracked, rotted, and leaky, and if we weren’t going to replace them now, they’d never get replaced.  So Pro Via had measured the windows themselves, and I had made scale drawings of the openings, figuring in things like the width of the interior wall, the thickness of the front brick “veneer,” and adding a little wiggle-room, just in case.

Above: The beautiful, and heavy, Pro Via bay window ready for installation . . .

Below: Hey! It fits!

I shouldn’t have worried.  With the old, rotted, bay windows in a pile on the front lawn, I quickly insulated the frame with FoamItGreen spray foam insulation, air-sealing & adding about R-20 to the support framework.  Then, with a few shims in place, the Stalwart Crew heaved-ho, and lifted the brand new, heavy Pro Via bay windows into place.  They fit perfectly, and Rem went right to work getting them plumbed & level, and making sure they were securely fastened to the house.  I came back through later and filled the gaps around the edges with plenty of spray foam, making sure we were really sealing up everything.  I dreaded having to eventually figure out the exterior trim, but I pushed that out of my mind.  That was my job, and it would probably have to wait for spring, since I had lots of other, more pressing, tasks before me.

Above: Rem & I hold on while the new bay window is slid into place . . .

Below: Nice work, everybody . . .

Not only were the new Pro Via bays a big efficiency upgrade, but they were an enormous aesthetic upgrade, too.  We’d chosen art glass from Pro Via’s Inspirations Art Glass line for the side casements on the bays.  It’s a simple design, but it complements the Inspirations Art Glass oval in the Pro Via Signet front entry door we’d chosen.  Just another little detail, expertly executed by Pro Via, that worked to help make this old house become remarkable.

Above: Patrick installs EcoStar faux-slate ridge cap

At the same time, Patrick was finishing the last few details on the EcoStar faux-slate roof.  He was very careful to make sure that the EcoStar ridge-tiles would stay put where they met the white WeatherBond TPO roof in the back.  Once Patrick left, Stalwart Construction had finished their work on the Greened House effect.

Wasting no time, the guys from Third-Sun solar arrived to begin the installation of our photovoltaic solar array.  First, they laid out the pattern for the stand-offs.  These are the vertical elements that hold the frames for the panels off the roof.  For our 4kW array, they needed to use 21 stand-offs, and this presented a minor problem.  Each of the stand-offs would use two carriage bolts to connect it through the roofing & sheathing, and into the rafter below.  This meant that each stand-off would put two small holes in my beautiful, water-tight, WeatherBond roof.  It would be my responsibility as the homeowner to have a roofer seal each stand-off against the elements, but we’d basically spent all of our home equity money getting to this point in the process.  I’d have to do this job myself.

Lucky for me, WeatherBond keeps an excellent video library on the installation of their products.  They sent me “witches hats” which were used for roof perforations of any kind – like plumbing vents.  I had plenty of TPO primer, adhesive, seam-sealer, and water-stop on hand from the roof install.  While Third-Sun installed the stand-offs, I studied the install manual & on-line videos at WeatherBond, and they had me installing the witches hats like a pro in no time.  That afternoon, after Third-Sun left, I installed all 21 witches’ hats, and we were ready for the frames and solar panels in the morning.

Above: Frames are attached to the now sealed stand-offs . . .

Below: Loading panels to the roof . . .

The panel install was quick.  First, they installed the horizontal frame pieces to the stand-offs.  Then they bolted the panels to the frames, wiring each one to the next as they went.  Our system ended up with 18 panels which had to be spaced on the frames so that they didn’t cover the bathroom skylight or the main plumbing vent.

Above: The solar panels go into place . . .

Below: Wiring the solar panels together . . .

With the panels installed, they promised that an engineer would come by in the next few weeks to install the inverter, which would be the brains of our grid-intertied system.  We’d have to wait to start harvesting electricity, but at least the panels were up where they belonged.

As the dust settled and October came to a close, I saw my “to-do” list grow considerably.  First up, I’d be on the actual exterior “curtain wall” installation on the main house, which needed to be done before the snow flew.

Come back soon for more – see me install the exterior studs, FoamItGreen spray-foam insulation, LP OSB sheathing, and house-wrap . . .