Hi all,
This was another action packed week. Trim, electrical, plumbing, cabinets, roof patching, HRV finishing details and clean up of site. Sebastian sanded and ripped miles of the resawn lumber that Steve Potts milled up for us last week. My plan was to complete the grounds clean up and the interior this week but I missed the mark by a few days.
Hope to see you all on Monday, July 5 at the Open House, 11am - 2pm, and you can see for yourself..........Terry
Jorge and Bill glueing and clamping the mitered corner of a formica counter top.
Since last week we dug about forty feet of new trenches for water, electrical and waste lines.
Joel making the final connection of Blue 2s waste lines to the septic. Dennis Rodoni donated a 1.2 gallon low flush toilet with a dual flush mode- low volume for yellow and higher volume (1.2) for other stuff. We now have a working toilet.
This guy Ken from Nayak, New York responded to my free Craig's listing and took apart and hauled away the tea room/office/tool shed.
Monday teaser.
Components for space ship to be revealed on Monday.
The blue shroud seals up around the exhaust duct in the kitchen while the ERV is running. Here Rudy of Sebastopol Heat and Cool is reading the digital balometer which measures the CFM (cu ft minute) being sucked into the exhaust. Each of the six registers, 3 intake and 3 exhausts, are measured and then tuned so the the entire delivery and exhaust of air is balanced for each room. This room is set for around 25 CFM of exhaust. Most "old school" heating and cooling delivery systems are calculated by intuition or habit or something like what you did in the last house. Note the LED light above Rudy's head.
Rudy is using a Duct Blaster, a mini version of the Blower Door we used to test the house for air leakage. With all the ducts sealed off in the house, the fan at the bottom of the silver duct pressurizes all the ducts inside the house. Here Derek is reading the monometer which shows just how much the ducts are leaking inside the house. His first test number revealed too much leakage. He had to go around each joint and connection with a smoke pencil to find and seal the leaks and bring the maximum leakage down to 5% volume of air flow.
Roger Lippman donated his time and test equipment to set up a monitoring system for each electrical circuit of the house. This will enable precise calculation for each of fifteen different uses of electricity in the house. The data will then be downloaded onto a computer each month and posted on the Passive House website so other people can learn how one passive house uses electricity/energy.
The last dump run. Bob here looking at the pile of metal for recycle.