Finding Environmentally Safe Building Materials
Have you been trying to find environmentally safe and sustainable building materials for your project? In March 2014, the Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) group held a Better Envelope Solutions Showcase in San Francisco to help you find some of these materials. Their goal was to exhibit insulation and weatherization materials and products that provide […]
Heat Pumps Installed and Operational
In earlier blogs we talked about sizing and selecting two heat pumps for the house. Here are some pictures showing the completed installation of these two heat pumps. The outdoor units are mounted on the side of the house. One indoor unit is placed at one end of the downstairs living room, the other at […]
More Basement Sealing
The blower door test revealed that there was still room for improvement (see On-going Saga of Air Sealing). One of the areas of air leakage was from the basement. Tom and his crew checked and ensured that the polyurethane liners are well taped to the stem walls. They also added foam sealing over the tape […]
Attic Sealing and Insulation
The attic covers only part of the house. To insulate it, Tom’s crew placed 20 inches ( ) of loose fill cellulose. Blower door tests and infrared camera shots showed that the access to the attic was still leaky. They quickly placed two layers of foam board to close the access off and foam sealed […]
Wrapping the House for Air Tightness
When we decided to rewrap the house and replace the siding, we looked for a high performing house wrap. We chose the SIGA Majvest. This product is waterproof, windtight, tearproof while vapor porous. We will use a companion SIGA product, the Wigluv, to seal everything off. These SIGA products have been used widely in Europe […]
Getting the Right Siding
To fix up the siding we ran into one complication. Tom discovered that the house is not wrapped properly behind the siding. In fact, in many areas, there are only bare wood boards. We needed to find a way to install a good house wrap. Our original thought for the front aluminum siding was to […]
Save Energy, Lose Weight
It is well known that humans expend body energy to keep warm. Research by a Dutch team examines how this seemingly obvious notion applies to the body in indoor living environment. A research paper cited several studies that allowing the indoor temperature to drift with outdoor temperature can be beneficial to weight control. For example, […]
Getting the Right Roof
The bottom roof is in bad shape and must be removed. There are some worn areas on the top roof and side roofs. We also have to patch part of it up after removing the chimneys. The chimneys were removed for two reasons. First there was a lot of air leakage around the chimneys, and […]