As we near LEED Certification

As an update to the May 14th LEED Home Tour, I decided to post the "Sustainable Features" of the home for all who attended and the followers of this blog as we seek Silver Certification. We have not really made keeping score a prioriety, but used the LEED credit scorecard for integrating concepts and best practices that we have not thought about. The house will aways evolve to get a little "greener" every year. Before and after photos are included at the end of this post to show the tranformation.


We are planning an aquaponics vertical garden  to be our next project to start next month and produce food year round. A new blog will start for that project. 

Sustainable Features are  as follows:

- Closed Cell foam / Batt Insualtion (Flash & Batt) biggest investment & value.Insulation is  R27 for walls & R 49 for ceilings. Some tradition batt and blown insualtion was used in 2nd floor ceilings (approx 40%).

- HRV (Heat Recovery Ventilator ) needed for any tight home

- Dual flush toilets (Kohler and Costco brand label)

- Low flow lavatory faucets (1.0 gal) & low flow shower heads (1.75)

- Tankless water heater Navien 98% Combi heater/ boiler (future radiant heat)

- 5 KW of Helious solar panels with Enphase Micro Inverters (thin makes the house NetZero Electric)

- High Efficiency Carrier Infinity two-stage Furnaces at 95% (with HRV connected to 2nd floor furnace)

- 17 SEER A/C unit only for 2nd floor. No A/C on first floor. Only Energy star ceiling fans

- Programmable thermostats

- Energy Star Appliances

- Energy star exhaust fans (had to take the new non-Energy Star out and return to the store).

- 10 watt LED lighting for the entire first floor and part of 2nd floor.  13 watt compact fluorescent were used for the balance of the house.

- Occupany sensor switches for Mud Room, Garage Light, laundry Room and Master Closet

- PEX water piping distribution to reduce 30% heat low of hot and cold water.

- Central 2nd floor water distribution system to reduce hot water distribution heat loss and supply 2nd floor laundry room in the same room. No long waits for hot water for showers.

- American made locally made lower level wood flooring and ceramic tile in bathrooms (such as Crossville, Dal-tile and Marrazzi tile).

- Material reuse of demolished lumber, marble tile from previous owner, and habitat purchase items such as two bath faucets, LED lamps, blinds and master bedroom doors.

- Custom Made cabinets with non-urea formaldehyde products and water based stain (however no FSC wood).

- Energy Efficiency Andersen Windows

- Miritec Fiber 50 year exterior trim

- James Hardie Hardiplank siding on 1/4" fandfold foam cold-break barrier

- Radon Fan (for indoor environmental health)

- Solar attic fans

- Chamber septic system (3 time more efficient)

- 1/8 acre vegetable garden to fee us, friends, family, and enough to donate to the food shelter

-  Pear & Apple tree for fall fruit

- Rain water harvest barrels (one in back & one in front for flower watering)

- Water tolerant native plants for a majority of plantings (some were existing and relocated). Only a few non-perennials are incorporated for color until perennial can be established next year.

- Mohawk Sonora carpet with recycled content

- Waste management. All waste was reused, disposed as recycled or waste in weekly small residential garbage cans weekly. Only one dumpster was used to haul 50% of the excessive drywall scraps. The other 50% were incorporated into the garden or given to friends for lawns & gardens.

- Low VOC adhesives used and "Recycle Content" green label drywall was purchased via Home Depot

- Low VOC caulk and foam sealants were used for infiltration sealing and seaming

- Borax, Murphy Oil Soap, water & lavender was used as a "Green Cleaning Product" that performed better than chemical cleaning agents

 

Before & After photos:

Event photos are to follow in the next post. A total of 55 people attended.

Part Two of the Construction Update - It's Looking Great

Nearing the end is the fun part, but the most stressful.

By the time most of you read this post, Cherie and I will have our temporary C of O and occupying the new house periodically. However in the meantime, Let's pick up from the previous update post. As we near the end the stress elevates becasue you have to make final decisions on colors, finishes, design elements that are going to be seen for most of our lifetime. Although we had a very detailed set of architectural plans, the beauty is in the details and finsihed product.
A sustainable home for the most part looks like a regular house wit only a few noticible differences.

I apologize for the post formatting for Google. The blog software unfortunately doesn't post the text and photos the same as seen in the editing format, so I appologies for weird text to phot layout. I have spent hours on my previous blog posts trying to get information to display correctly (with limited success). Blog software revision have gotten 100% better, but still needs some work. The simple addition of an "undo" command really helped on mistakes.


We talked about installing granite countertops, but I didn't have the  photos readily avaialble. The installers did a great job, however the template was off a little and the installers to 12 hours making modifications until 8:00 at night on Holloween night. Reguardless, they did an excellent job and cleaned-up after themselves.

Included below are photos of Cherie doing everything. Everytime Cherie would tackle a new skill, she would ask me snap a photo (hence all the photos of her and not me). She still get a most he credit for putting in some quality sweat equity that most women I know would not do. She has been a great partner and wife in building this house.


The shopping for finishes and making decision is the most stressful part (because it what you will see every day).
During our purchasing trip for materials for the bathrooms and kitchen backsplash, I insisted that we only be shown "American Made Products" (to support the local economy and reduce the carbon footprint of the product). Retailers were very cooperative to assist on finding a local and competitively priced product. We were surprise to find a great selection of Dal Tile made in the USA at Home Depot. Our second bathroom, is 100% American Made Home Depot tile. The master is going to have Crossville tile produced in Crossville,Tennessee (not shown  becasue it's the last project under construction).

Double doors purchased from Restore Charity in Lombard adds a contrasting element to the master bedroom with an arched custome window currently under fabrication.



Cherie and Steve Hopp rehanging the front door and frame to get it to swing and close right



Cherie in a hooded mask priming the arch at the window over the two story entry. All paint was Zero VOC Pure paint.

Cherie on the Scafold ready to prime the arch and wall

Cherie preping for paint int he Great Rooom




Cherie finishing one of many trims in the Master Bedroom
(she even has her own tool belt and pink tools we won't use)





Now we are hitting winter snowflakes of 2012



Great Room with fireplace framed

Cheire installing Durarock cement board in Master Bathroom

Porcelin Dal tile (made in america) installed in the Laundry / Utility Room.

2nd bath with Wood Plank Porcelin tile (and it has a hand scraped texture)

Labeling of the wood plank floor to remind me the plank sequence installtion when I have to remove the assembly to spread tile thinset mortar.

Workout room laminate floor installed by Cherie and carpenter, Steve Hopp. Product was sustaianble and purchased at Costco Wholesale. Putting this type of floor down is all about hte first two rows and having a very clean subfloor.

10 pieces of existing marble from the previous owner was used to tile the 1st floor bath. Luckily Cherie and I were able to find an additional 8 pieces of marble that match exactly that and completed a beautiful floor with left over materials. Otherwise the original material would be useless. Looks great now. Maybe we can get LEED credit for reuse.

Cherie painting the very top window trim on two stories of scafold plus a  ladder to get to the very top. You could pay me to do that paint job (but Cherie voulenteered).

Fire place finished and functioning minus a hearth and trim cap stones. This was a great change from our old open traditional fireplace in the current house to a glass front ventless firplace (which eliminates  most of the heat loss). The fireplace generates 35,000 BTU's without electic in the case of a power outage.

A mudroom was added into the  2 1/2 car garage space to add a place to hang coats and store shoes. The key is to keep mice out of the house. That were our cat Kelsey comes in.

 Doors reused from the previous owners garage setup removed and saved for future use (this if the use). The garage was returned back to a garage, however the oriewntation was rotate to the side of the house.

Mahagony wood double doors for master obtain from Restore in Lombard for $40 each. Our last opening to finsh.

We still maintain a sockpile of reuseable material even at the finish stage. You be surprise how many little block pieces you need when doing the final finish work, Nothing went to waste. We only had one small dumpster during the entire project at drywall. Many scraps were saved, but the drywaller were not big on saving material as opposed to saving time. They did read our contractor board of rules and appreciated the low-VOC adhesive. They have never used it before and thier company choose to start using it, becasue the guys did not get headaches and an reduced breaks needed (hence production increased).

I'll have another few post, but wanted to bring our friend, family and followers up to date on the progress and didn't fall off the end of the earth. As we move to the finish, the project has been very rewarding. A USGBC Tour is set up in May at the house for USGBC members and guest to see in person. Posting on the mechanicals systems, including the Venmar HRV, to follow in the next post.

The Long Awaited Update of Construction - From Drywall to Solar Panels

As much as I kept up with my log during the first two years, but I just couldn't force myself to make the time to publish an update when the was so much to do.

I just gave a new friend a link and opened the blog to check to see if I started a post earlier and realized a year went by.

"Life is to short to not share it" ... so I have two update entries to catch the world up to where we are today.

Since it's important to keep my friends and family updated, I'm making time tonight to update. I'm going to break it up into two post, so you don't get too excited.

Since drywall arrive you can imagine what has happened in a year.

Progress went slower than expected. In the spring water seepage in the basement continued to be a problem.

I threw in the towel and decided that it was time to put a sump into the crawls space (in which I tied in my radon fan into it and drafted moisture out of the subbase). Obviously, when I did this in the late summer of 2012, the drought came, which dropped the water table and my sump pump that ran every 11 minutes, doesn't run at all (and hasn't ran all winter). I doubt my radon fan made that much of a difference..... but no water is good.

Also during the summer, the solar panels were installed. Thanks to friends John, Jeff and Dale, we got the job done and only had to remove the panels 2 times to get the job done exactly right. The solar array is made up of (20) 250 watt Helios solar panels with Enphase micro inverters for a total of 5 KW. We have been on line for 4 months and "Netzero Electric" to date (so no electric usage bills). We can't be a true "Netzero Home" unless we get rid of 2 our high efficiency gas furnaces and natural gas. With the cheap cost of gas, this was the most carbon responsible value.

Beautiful cabinet job Joe!.. We'll miss you.

As we got to drywall, my wife Cherie came through as the champion as we headed for the home stretch.  I stuck to the dirty and mechanical type jobs and Cherie played carpenter/ painter. After drywall, Cherie and I  worked together on painting. I did a good amount of the priming and Cherie did all the painting (see photo of Cherie on the scaffold painting the arch). In order to save money we painted the whole house with a Wagner Paint Crew machine using Pure Zero VOC paint from Menard's (a Sherwin Williams/ Conco product). This was the best zero VOC paint and at a great price. We thank Jordan at Menard's for working out some great bulk pricing for us.



Cherie installing a Schluter System

Once the painting was done, it was time to install the 3/4" wood floors. Steve Hopp, our carpenter, Cherie and my self did 95% of the install for approximately 1,000 sqft. of 1st floor Oak floor that came from a Sustainable Forest. Duration too about a 4 to 6 weeks to install. See photos of Cherie installing the Schluter Shower system as we takled one bathroom shower.

With the wood floor complete, the cabinet were right behind it. Steve Hopp and Cherie installed Adler custom cabinets provided by J & J Cabinetry. All stains and sealer were water based  and the particle Board was formelerhye free to meet LEED. We did not use FSC wood however (it was too costly and too hard to find). I think we had some FSC mixed components.

The saddest part of the entire project is our cabinet guy Joe Phiefer of J & J Cabinets died a month after the installation. We were so pleased with the final product, we decided that to have him make the proposed serving bar in the adjacent dining room. We he called, we got the bad news from his wife that he passed away 3 weeks prior of a fast spreading lung cancer.  Unfortunately , he did not see the cabinets fully completed, so we a posting a photo of his beautiful work in memory of Joe.

   

As the cabinets finished the doors hanging, floor trim and window trimming started with the team of Cherie and Steve Hopp. At his point Cherie and Steve became attached at the hip almost 2 days a week, while I did the Solar panel install, HVAC duct work and framing of the fireplace (see photo of Cherie framing).  I appears that Cherie is really picking up the load when we needed it most. I also took care of the exterior work and 5 acres.

With the cabinets complete the granite counter tops were installed within a week. Although we considers, a recycled type product, the cost was to high and we really had our heart set on granite (so at least its a natural product).



A bit of wild life



Although we didn't live in the house during the construction period, we kept a huge garden and enjoyed the benefits of fresh vegetables such as tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, eggplant, green beans, carrots, lettuce, and gourds that you can not eat (thanks to Mike's planting mistake). There was always enough fresh vegetable to eat as long as we watered the garden. We share our harvest with friends and family. The summer  drought took a toll on our garden output, our virtually no fall pears on our one tree that produce 1,000 last year, and our pine trees suffered badly along the road . The only good news is the grass barely grew and Mike didn't have to cut it.

Part two coming within 24 hours.



Life is a bowl of Garden Cherry Tomatoes
(they taste as good as they look)



A strange mushroom in the yard