windows.

Our passive house windows were shipped from Munster Joinery in Ireland and we expect their arrival to the US by the end of the week.  From there, its Customs, then delivery to Roanoke.  Seems like a big trip for just a house full of windows, eh?  There's actually three homes worth of windows included in this shipment; ours, a passive house in Stuart, and a passive house church in Blacksburg.

[Wrapped.]

[Packed.]

[Loaded.]

[And shipped.]

blower door test. dirty thieves.

After the first round of blower door tests, our passive house yielded 0.26 air changes per hour (ACH) at 50 pascals (Pa).  What's that mean - well, that means that our house is tight; very little air leakage.  The passive house standard requires 0.6 ACH @ 50 Pa.  With that said, the doors and windows haven't been installed yet but the results shouldn't vary too much following their installation.

[Wesley setting up the blower door for the first test.]

[Jim taping the panel seams and remaining holes.]

[Running the first round of tests.]

 

With all the good news from the results of the blower door tests, we got some bad news on this past Monday.  I got a call when the roofers showed up to install the shingles and they were short an entire pallet.  After reviewing pictures and speaking with the suppliers, we determined someone stole a whole pallet of shingles.

I met a sheriff's deputy on the mountain that evening and we walked the property to determine what happened.  We discovered the thieves drove into the property, loaded up the shingles then drove away.  Fortunately, rain hadn't washed away the tire tracks so the deputy was able to capture a mold as evidence.

[Setting up the form for the mold.]

[Waiting for the mold to set.]

[And then there was evidence.]

Tire tracks aren't enough to bust a crook, but pictures are.  Our game camera caught the thieves in action.

['68-72 Ford F100 2WD]

[Two white males jacking what doesn't belong to them.]

And we even got the news to cover it!  The hole event was more of a pain in the a$$ than anything.  We've barricaded the property and we've got security fence on its way to help secure the fence for the remainder of the build.  

geothermal. power. shingles.

After meeting with Jim on the mountain yesterday afternoon, I learned that there's gonna be some noticeable changes taking place this week.  It sounds like the house is just about ready for permanent electrical service.  They'll be trenching for the conduit to run from the pole to the back of the house with a track hoe at some point this week.  While they have the machine on the site, they'll also be digging for the geothermal install.

[Geothermal grid to be installed in the back yard.]

The shingles were delivered yesterday and we should have a finished roof by the end of the week.

[Tar paper installed and exterior walls sealed.]

[Spaces to be filled with 5 3/4" dense foam nail base.]

Jim and Aaron told me that they're running into a problem with sealing the interior seams.  From what I can make of it, the OSB on the second floor sealing won't "accept" the tape they intended on using.  As a result, Structures had to order new tape from Germany.  Until these seams are taped, air tightness testing is suspended.  They are expecting to complete seam sealing as soon as the tape arrives.

Here's a peek at what its gonna take to seal every seam with the new tape - SIGA Wigluv 100 and Dockskin

just one revision.

Sorry for the delay; I've been slammed lately and honestly I was trying to put together a video for the next post but it's just pictures for now.

A busy week on the mountain and busy week elsewhere.  In just one week, we got a new niece [Kiera], I got promoted at work and we've got a roof on the house.

[Sheathing on the garage Monday; shingles by weeks end?]

[Taping the seams and sealing the envelope.]

[His/her closets leading toward the bath.]

And here comes our first, hopefully last revision - as you'll see in the picture below, the carpenters have completed the first run of stairs.  To the right the treads is the kitchen and to left is the pantry.  Things just didn't seem to flow right; we'd have to walk out of the kitchen to get a potato or fetch the bag of chips.  So we thought about it and I called Aaron at Structures.

[Current stair configuration.]

My first concern in the revision was $$$ and my other was delays; how much was this gonna cost us and how much would this set things back?  Nothing, except materials of course and Aaron even said Jim might work on it today.  [In the picture above, the new pantry will be located were the current stairs are.]  Since the stairs were built, all they would have to do is move them; upstairs I'd lose 12" of my "his" closet.  Ha, Steph wasn't giving up an inch ;-)  Aaron had a sketch to us by the end of the day and it was a done deal this morning.  Also, we'll be picking up some built in shelves in the kitchen, as a result of the revision.  I think Steph was pretty excited about that.

garage, walls, seals and ccc road

Another action packed weekend on the mountain.  The rain cleared up last Tuesday and it took a couple days for things to dry out, but the walls upstairs and the garage are well underway.

[Its taking shape.]

On Saturday, Dad stopped by to help replace hydraulic seals on the loader; they were in dire need of repair.  By 6:30 pm, we had things wrapped up and he was on his way.

[A before shot; nasty, leaky mess.]

I squeezed in a couple hours road grading and ditch digging Sunday afternoon - all of the rain we got last weekend really did a number on the road.  If I can get the ditches dug and cleaned, drainage shouldn't be a problem for at least a couple years.  This makes the perfect segway for some interesting history about our road:

Labeled as CCC Road in Thaxton, VA, our private road is also known as Flat Top Mountain Road.  CCC Road was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) either during the 1930s or early 1940s.  As many of you already know, Franklin D. Roosevelt formed the CCC to provide employment for young men in relief families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression while at the same time implementing a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. (Source: Wikipedia)  The CCC was broken up into roughly +/- 1400 camps that were scattered across the country.  Each camp was assigned separate types of work projects; anything ranging from forest protection to wildlife management.

Although I've exhausted my research efforts online, I have reason to believe our road was established in an effort to protect the forest and prevent fires.  One of my neighbors often rides his four-wheeler by when I've been on the mountain.  As he passed one day, I flagged him down for a visit.  He pulled to a stop with a big smile and we started talking.  It turns out that close relatives of his were CCC enrollees and they had all worked on the construction of our road.  [I'll have to take some pictures of the culverts, its impressive; all of the rock appears to be chiseled by hand and stacked.]

So you would think that this would mean our road is public, right?  Wrong.  The CCC was known to do a quite a bit of work on private land even though the majority of their projects were performed in our state parks and national forests.

If you'd like to learn more, please reference Wikipedia for more information on the Civilian Conservation Corps.

two floors and a puddle

The walls are going up, but the rain and wind has been pelting the mountain over the past couple of days.

I got a call from Jim with Structures this morning - he told me there was a large tree across the road blocking access for our delivery truck.  While we were on the phone, he said the delivery truck had chained to the tree and was already pulling it out of the way - you gotta respect that kind of dedication; I just wish I had some photos of it.

Also, Jim mentioned that even though the roof isn't up everything is intact and the site is draining properly.

[A view from the driveway.]

[The garage will come later.]

[Mudroom, half bath, and closets.]

[Looking at the front door.]

[Kitchen and stairs to the left.]

[A wet guest bedroom upstairs.]

[Master bedroom; to be continued.]

walls. brush.

Wow - this weekend was no joke.  We rented a chipper and hauled it up to the mountain to start breaking down all of the brush left from AEP's power line install.  Saturday dad joined us and we knocked out a heavy chunk of the brush as the wind from Hurricane Irene blasted the mountain.  The cloud cover and constant wind keep the temps down but the chipper but beating on each of us for sure. 

On Sunday, Steph and I started where we left off and called it a day around 3:00pm.  At 90F and little to no wind, we wore down pretty quickly.  Needless to say, we've got more work to do, but we'll wait for the cooler temps that the fall season will bring before we revisit that kind of work.

I decided to make a trip over the mountain after talking with Rob, Aaron, Jim and Adam at Structures today.  Rob had mentioned that the walls are officially on the rise and we can expect a lot of changes on the mountain this week.  I arrived at the driveway to discover what looked like to be a house slowly forming before my eyes.

[Panels and walls.]

[Between the slab and wall panels.]

[And a closer look.]

[Door and window frames to be cut out after the first air tightness test.]