Interior Finish Starts!
Now that drywall, plaster, and priming are complete, the crew is busy installing cabinets, tile, trim, and doors. There’s something going on in every part of the house! Our cabinet manufacturer, Herrick & White, delivered the upper mudroom and [...]
Landscaping
As the inside of the project moves along, outside it is a race to finish up our landscaping before winter. Our landscape architect, Sudbury Design Group, and the landscape contractor, Moniz Landscaping, have designed and executed a beautiful plan for [...]
Duct sealing
Our HVAC installer, Boucher Energy Systems, was out Friday to commence duct sealing. The Energy Star rating system specifies a maximum permissible amount of duct leakage from our ventilation ducts. Even though the entire duct system is located within the [...]
Getting Plastered…
As soon as the insulation contractor finished with the interior acoustic insulation (actually, even before), our drywall and plaster contractors were on the site to keep things moving. Being ever mindful of our goal of a low-VOC house, our contractor [...]
Our Own Solar System
We hit a big milestone today - we went off the grid and starting producing our own electric power! Our 14.7 kW array will provide a substantial amount of the home’s energy during most of the year. Our solar installer, [...]
Summer Construction Videos
Our most recent construction videos! Three months of activity compressed into just a few minutes. In the rear video you’ll see the chimney framing at about 0:08, the external garage insulation at 0:16, work commence on the rear patio at 0:49, and the chimney brick veneer going on at 0:56. The garage roof gets installed about 1:23, and watch carefully for the septic system tank being placed in the bottom left corner about 1:37. Finally is the rain slicker (1:59) and the cladding (2:10).
In the front video you’ll notice the trench for the electrical power to the house (0:07), the driveway (0:10), the roof installation starting about 0:43, the cladding going on starting about 1:10, and finally the drywall delivery at the very end. And throughout the video are swarms and swarms of subcontractor’s trucks as they finish framing, install mechanical and electrical systems, and insulate the house.
Blower Door Test Redux – a REALLY Airtight House!
Once the exterior wall insulation was completed, our LEED Rater, Mark, came by to do another blower door test and IR examination of the insulation. Our goal was to identify any spots where insulation was missing, and fix any air [...]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1JoUx5k_NQ A lot has happened since my last update several weeks ago. Much of September was devoted to installing the interior insulation in the project. This is one of the most [...]
Cladding the house
Now that the exterior blueskin barrier and the roof are on, we can move to the siding (cladding). The first element in this is the yellow Benjamyn Opdyke Rain Slicker, which provides a thin drainage mat between the wall and [...]
