New House in Waban

Energy efficiency measures

2008-07-14T20:49:00.008-05:00

At the outset of the project, a key objective of ours was to increase the energy efficiency of the new house. We looked at fancy stuff like geothermal heat pumps and photovoltaic solar, but all those technologies are evolving rapidly, and now doesn't seem like the best time to invest. So, we planned for what I'd call conventional "best practice" energy efficiency. Here's a summary of those measures, and how they've worked out so far:

No central air conditioning

No fireplace or internal chimney

Exterior 6" walls, insulated to R20

Efficient double-pane low-E windows

Attic roof insulated with icynene foam and double radiant barrier

Hydronic (hot water) baseboard heating, one zone per floor

High-efficiency, modulated-flame, condensing gas boiler

properly sized

Indirect water heater

Compact fluorescent and LED lighting where appropriate

Non-metallic ducting for all exhaust fan penetrations

Bathroom fans are still a problem...

Gas heating costs, winter 2008

2008-07-13T06:30:00.004-05:00

Here's a tabulation of our gas bills for last winter, which totaled about $830 for heating, excluding the average $32/month we use for hot water.

Domestic Hot Water usage is estimated based on our summer bills
Total cost excludes National Grid's $13 connection fee

Roof insulation performance, warm weather

2008-06-09T20:32:00.009-05:00

The cathedral ceiling in the third-floor/attic, an unvented roof insulated with icynene foam and a double radiant barrier, seems to perform well in warm weather. We didn't install central air conditioning (too expensive both upfront and operating cost), and we both have office space in the third floor, so we depend on that roof insulation system for comfort both winter and summer. So far, in hot weather the attic temperature is always lower than the outside temperature, which I think is pretty good.

Boston's had our first heat wave the past few days, and I took some measurements today. We keep most windows closed during the day, opening them at night to pull cooler air through with a small "whole-house" attic fan.

Location	11 am	3 pm
Outside air	89 F	93 F	air temp
Exterior siding (south wall)	95	114	surface temp
Exterior shingles (roof)	132	152	surface temp
Attic ceiling	86	92	surface temp
Attic air	83	89	air temp
Second floor air	81	84	air temp
First floor air	80	82	air temp

The cathedral ceiling is only 6" thick (made of 2x6 rafters), so all that separates the interior drywall from the 150-degree shingles is 6" of icynene foam and the 1" radiant-barrier airspace.

Happy New Year

2008-01-10T06:40:00.000-05:00

It's our first new year in our new home. The house is wonderful, both in our everyday life with the complications of work and school days, and for the entertaining we've started to do. It has performed well in the winter and there are no real problems in any of the structures or systems.

I haven't posted here for a very long time, but have a backlog of material I'd like to get online, including interior painting progress (about 2/3 done now) and heating system performance (good).

House completed

2007-06-05T06:23:00.000-05:00

Here's the house just before the move last Wednesday, taken with the new Lumix camera B gave me for my birthday. The house is complete and ready for occupancy, the landscape is about half done.

Michael Shea is our landscaper, his guys Kevin and Roger are building the stone walls using Pennsylvania Flats. The wall along the driveway replaces the one from the previous house. The walled garden beds below the front porch also serve a functional purpose: they reduce the drop off the porch to 18", so we don't need a safety railing across the front.

The front walk will be made of the S&H bricks from the back porch of the old house.

Painting prep

2007-05-26T12:48:00.000-05:00

We're painting the interior ourselves. This means we're also prepping the interior ourselves. Originally this wouldn't have been too bad, since the house came prepped and primed from the factory. But then we ripped out about 400 square feet of various walls and ceilings for building inspections and rework.

The plasterers who finished the attic also did the patching. They tried to use plaster as much as possible, but where they were joining with the factory drywall they had to use joint compound (mud).

I didn't fully appreciate the difference then, but I sure do now. Plaster veneer is skimmed on, flat and level, and is extremely hard and virtually unsandable. It has to be done right the first time. Drywall mud is soft and sloppy, and cannot be done right the first time. Instead, you put too much on and then sand it off flat. This took me a week of late nights, generating more than 10 pounds of fine dust.

But now all the plaster/drywall is prepped pretty well, with a coat of a sealer called GARDZ that seals in the alkaline lime plaster for painting.

Almost there

2007-05-26T12:43:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long delay. I lost my camera, and have been terribly busy.

The house is completely working, and has passed its final electrical and plumbing inspections. Final fire and building inspections will be on Tuesday, and we move in on Wednesday, May 30.
My birthday is Tuesday - someone has a BIG wrapping job ahead of them.

We may not actually have a certificate of occupancy on Wed. It can take up to 10 days for the city health dept to sign off on occupancy, although there's no inspection involved. But there's no problem moving our possessions, and the worst case is we have to spend nights at our neighbors house.

More plastering today

2007-05-14T05:46:00.001-05:00

The plasterers didn't finish on Friday, plan to finish today.

Systems up and running

2007-05-14T05:43:00.000-05:00

The electricity is on and complete, all lights and outlets are working. The gas meter was installed on Friday, and we turned the boiler on on Saturday. So now there's water and hot water.

We're preparing for final electrical, plumbing, and fire inspections later this week.

Sheetrock tomorrow

2007-05-02T22:32:00.000-05:00

Attic walls and ceiling go up tomorrow, along with patches in the rest of the house, like the kitchen and entry ceilings which we opened for plumbing work. Everything is insulated and wired and ready to be closed up. My son and a friend of his helped me pull several runs of hot pink cat5e ethernet cable from the attic to the basement last weekend, along with a shielded cable for balanced audio between family room and attic.

I also ran simple phone wire to connect our telephone ringer, a nice two-tone bell that Betsy's grandmother rented from AT&T for some 40 years. After her grandmother passed away, Betsy called AT&T and told them the bell had been paid for decades ago so we were keeping it.

Electrical service?

2007-05-02T06:20:00.000-05:00

Our electrician Chris Veliotis, setting up the electrical service again yesterday. This is our third or fourth attempt at this problem, and I think we've finally got it.

Electrical Code requires that the main service line stay clear of any window opening, such as that bathroom window on the corner, by 36" to each side and by 0" on the top. The code also requires a "drip loop" before the wire enters that conduit. Although the code allows the electric company to be pretty sloppy about how they install that drip loop (they can have 12-18" of extra slack), the final result can't violate the clearance requirements.

If you then add our inspector's incorrect calculation of the roof clearance requirement, and my desire not to run big ugly conduit all across the front of the house, you get quite a puzzle. The miscalculation was calling our porch roof flat, even though its pitch of 2.5:6.5 is greater than the required 4:12 - which means the service line has to be 8' above that roof, instead of the 3' requirement for a pitched roof.

But third time's a charm, and with that little turn around the corner I think we'll be fine. We might even have electricity this week.

Laundry room floor

2007-05-02T05:54:00.000-05:00

The laundry room is on the second floor, near our bedroom. The washer and dryer are Bosch Next 500 models, which are high-speed front-loaders. The word is that they can vibrate a lot, although you can minimize that with proper levelling. So we wanted a floor that would dampen vibration and absorb noise.

The structure of the laundry room turns out to be ideal, and I still wonder whether MSI did this deliberately. The floor of this 5x6 room is supported by 6 engineered joists, which are connected only to the band joist at the edge of the house. That is, there's no direct connection between the second floor structure and the first floor ceiling, they're decoupled. We added some 2x6 cross-bracing for good measure.

The actual floor is 3/4" plywood with 1/2" durock. The tile is set on a waterproof membrane, so we don't need a pan under the washer to catch water: in the unlikely case of failure, the little water the washer holds can just leak onto the floor. (Washer pan/drains are problematic because they aren't allowed to drain into the sewer.)

Under the floor is 4" of rock wool for noise control, plus rigid insulation around the exterior. The laundry machines will rest on 1/2" compliant grommets.

I hope this makes the laundry room acceptably quiet, because I don't know what more we could do.

Kitchen tile

2007-05-02T05:45:00.000-05:00

Our tile sub, Bob Ziegler, will finish the first floor kitchen/hall tile today. In this (lousy) picture from Saturday he's about half done, the diagonal layout means lots of pieces need to be sawcut.

The upstairs tile is all laid square and will go quickly, he'll be done this week.

It looks beautiful, I'm very glad we opted for diagonal layout. Will post cleaner pictures later.

Fire retardant paint and fire safety

2007-04-27T06:20:00.000-05:00

I ordered an intumescent paint additive which adds fire retardance to any latex paint, mixed it into a can of white primer, and gave it a quick test. It works!

The stormboard on the left was painted with plain latex primer. The stormboard on the right was painted with the same primer, with an additive called Flame Stop III mixed in. They were both exposed to a candle flame. The untreated board is shown after 90 seconds, when it ignited and sustained flame. The treated board is shown after 180 seconds, and still hasn't ignited.

Intumescent coatings work by forming a foam at high temperature. In a thick industrial coating, the foam would be inches thick and really fireproof the structure. In a thin paint the defense is minimal but significant.

We'll use this primer in the kitchen, behind all the appliances and cabinets.

Other fire-safety measures include backing the refrigerator, dishwasher, and stove cavities with rock wool, and wrapping bathroom fans with UL94-V0 nitrile foam. These materials are all good sound absorbers, as well as fire retardant.

Then there's all the building-code measures, like sealing floor penetrations with fire retardant caulk and foam, hardwired smoke detectors, egress codes, etc.

Attic radiant barrier installed

2007-04-23T19:53:00.000-05:00

The outer half of the radiant barrier was installed today in the attic - all that shiny aluminized housewrap. The early returns suggest that it works: air temperature got up to 83 degrees today, shingle temperature reached 135 degrees, but the attic temperature didn't get above 85. The attic is still completely open to the rest of the house, until the walls are built, so it's absorbing all the heat load from the house as well as solar.

The rest of the barrier goes right under the drywall. I'm going to leave the lower half (cripple walls) unfaced, to avoid more interference with wireless signals. So far both cellular and wlan signals seem to be unaffected.

New gas line

2007-04-23T19:47:00.000-05:00

Our new gas line was installed today. We thought they would reuse the existing line, perhaps with a new sleeve, but instead they trenched a new line to a new location across the street. The trench was actually subterranean, made by a "trenchless impact borer", which looks like a 4" torpedo with a hydraulic line.

I warned them they didn't want to dig 4 feet down in our previously excavated sand, but they don't seem to listen to homeowners. Didn't lose the utility pole, they just had to go wider than expected.

That black thing on the wall above the gas pipe is actually the chimney for the new house. With no fireplace the only exhaust is from the gas boiler, and since it's condensing, the exhaust temperature and waste products are minimal.

New water line

2007-04-23T19:41:00.000-05:00

Our new water line, 1" shiny copper, was installed on Saturday. Michael Shea did the excavation, Newton public works did the plumbing. The water meter will be installed Thursday - I requested it three weeks ago as soon as we got the installation schedule. Until then, we have unmetered access to Boston's finest Quabbin Gold.

Catching the breeze

2007-04-22T22:05:00.000-05:00

Finally a nice spring day and I can open some windows. Working on the first floor with a window open at each corner of the house (plus the front door) is remarkably pleasant. The breeze flows through the house, and it feels like there must be an ocean view somewhere near.

Icynene foam insulation

2007-04-19T22:13:00.000-05:00

Anderson Insulation insulated the attic with Icynene foam today. Very cool stuff: here's a quick movie of the fellow who spent about an hour spraying the attic, followed by before and after pictures of the attic peak.

Sewer connection, day 1

2007-04-19T19:43:00.000-05:00

We're running a whole new sewer pipe from the house to the street. The City of Newton usually requires this if you renovate more than 50% of a residence. Frankly, though, we really needed a new line - the 60 year old ceramic pipe had been compromised by roots, and couldn't run straight to the house since we moved 6 feet south.

Michael Shea and Company is doing the excavation, and will also do the water line on Saturday, and landscaping later on. Here's the crew after they'd opened the street and located the sewer main near the old connection.

The surprise was that the sewer main was 11 feet down, although in the "upstream" manhole it was only 5 feet. The main drops low under the aqueduct near us, but we thought the drop was downstream.

You can see our old sewer line running to that brick "chimney", then down to the deep main. The big shallow pipes are storm drains.

The plan was to replicate exactly that structure, but with PVC pipe embedded in concrete instead of ceramic and brick.

The result: the old connection has been capped, and the new one is complete and tied in a few feet downstream.

Then the whole street opening is filled with weak concrete, and plated over for the night while it sets. Newton Engineering insists they are going to require this of everybody this year, even though it adds 50% to the cost of any utility improvements. We kept about half of the perfectly good sand/gravel mix, to replace subsoil on our lot.

Cathedral ceiling insulation

2007-04-19T18:53:00.001-05:00

The Icynene insulation is too expensive to use everywhere, so it's only on the roof and everywhere else in the house has fiberglass insulation. In this picture of the attic you see where the untrimmed Icynene is used for maximum insulation value, fiberglass for economy, and trimmed Icynene where the cathedral ceiling is.

No, it's not much of a Cathedral, that's the term of art for a room's ceiling that is also an exterior wall, and it's always an insulation challenge. In this case, that part of the roof is framed with 2x6 rafters, so there's really not enough insulation between us and the 160-degree roof shingles baking in the summer sun (the roof design is unvented).

The plan is to implement what I call a double radiant barrier below the Icynene. The Icynene will be covered with perforated aluminum foil (actually an aluminized housewrap-like product called RadiantGuard). Then 1" strapping will be applied, then another layer of non-perforated foil underneath the sheetrock. The two foil surfaces have high reflectivity and low emissivity - they reflect radiant heat, and they don't radiate the heat they absorb. This is the same principle as a Thermos bottle, except that the surfaces are separated by air not vacuum.

It's hard to translate the potential benefit of this insulation approach to conventional metrics. Some analyses suggest that a single radiant barrier makes an R20 wall perform like an R30 wall, which is about what we're hoping for. We'll be able to measure the surface temperatures on the foam versus the drywall, and get a sense of its performance.

Addendum: performance measurements in warm weather

Street open tomorrow

2007-04-18T13:36:00.000-05:00

Sewer pipe will be installed Thursday and Friday. Water pipe will be installed Saturday, and street patched on Monday. Gas will be installed next week (small hole on other side of street), as will electric (overhead).

These one-day jobs each take two days because we're required to fill the street with concrete afterward, and it has to set overnight. 47 yards of concrete at $80 per, adding about $5000 to the job for no good reason at all. If the fill under the street is anything like our soil (class 1 sand/gravel) we'll use it for subsoil.

Moving day May 30

2007-04-18T13:33:00.000-05:00

We've signed up the Gentle Giants to move us back in on May 30.

Plumbing, electrical, heat, utilities are all on track to be done this month, so the house will be essentially functional May 1. First two weeks in May will be finish work on floors (tile), walls (sheetrock patching), and trim.

Electrical status

2007-04-11T21:20:00.000-05:00

The electrician wired the attic today, and successfully dropped the module "D" lines down their conduits to the basement. Here's the resulting rats nest...

Before and After

2007-04-11T21:12:00.000-05:00

The exterior carpentry is essentially complete, so not much is changing outwardly these days. Here's a picture of the old house, then current for comparison. (Recall that the new house is 6 feet further south.)

Utilities schedule

2007-04-09T06:37:00.000-05:00

KeySpan called me on Friday to ask when we wanted the gas line
installed.

I was momentarily stunned, but recovered quickly, and asked them
to come the week of April 23, after the sewer line is in. They
have their permit application in and will confirm the actual date
next week.

So the current plan is:

sewer: week of 4/16 (will confirm with Shea today)
water: 4/21
electrical: week of 4/23
gas: week of 4/23
water meter: ?

Plumbing progress

2007-04-06T08:36:00.000-05:00

Plumbers have been working this week, and should have the water system ready to test today. The big issue has been some of the drain piping that didn't conform to code and had to be reworked. For example, on another MSI house on Chestnut St, the drain lines used normal 90-degree elbows, but our code calls for large-radius elbows. So our plumbing inspector had us take out three ceilings to look for the same problem. In this case, MSI did use large-radius elbows, so there's no problem - except for the cost of repairing the ceiling, which we'll have to argue about.

Plumbers will move on to hydronic heating system next week, and the electrician will be in to finish wiring. We'll get our water pipe on April 21, then we can get electrical service.

All in all, we're looking good, and the only schedule uncertainty is the gas line.

Broken webcam

2007-04-06T08:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry the webcam's been out. I've been sick and don't want to infect our elderly neighbors by visitting to fix it.

Old house to new

2007-03-29T22:13:00.000-05:00

This is an experimental video showing a sequence of pictures of the old house last year, and a sequence of pictures of the new house under construction, all from the same perspective across the street.

Exterior almost done

2007-03-28T19:15:00.000-05:00

The front porch, siding, and trim almost complete.

Roofing and trim

2007-03-27T18:14:00.000-05:00

Jake and Bill finish roofing on the North side. The flying rakes on the front are complete, and the whole roof trim really looks nice.

New boiler

2007-03-27T17:50:00.000-05:00

The boiler was delivered yesterday to be installed tomorrow (presumably not in one day). And yes, it's the right one and the right size.

Front porch

2007-03-25T18:25:00.000-05:00

Our neighbor Ray admires the new front porch. The Ipe is beautiful and the porch is really well proportioned. There are some problems with the spacing of the boards, which we'll try to fix, but the Ipe is pretty difficult to work with.

Nice surprise

2007-03-23T15:56:00.000-05:00

The default wiring plan from MSI is to wire just about every room for telephone and cable TV. We told them not to do cable TV, but let them go ahead with telephone wiring even though we use a cordless phone system. I figured we could use the phone wiring for some other purpose, or pull better cable through their outlets someday if we wanted Ethernet.

Well, when MSI said "telephone" they actually installed cat-5e Ethernet cabling and the corresponding RJ-45 jacks. I don't really know why, and I'm not sure we'll use too much of it since we use wireless LAN. But having an Ethernet run through to the attic is definitely helpful, and today I discovered it's already done.

We'll connect the house to the internet in May. No cable, no phone, just internet.

KHS back from London

2007-03-23T08:22:00.000-05:00

I'm back from a quick trip to London on behalf of a client. I hadn't much time for sightseeing, but did manage to swing by Westminster Abbey to see Uncle David, a distant relative. The abbey does manage to uplift the mortal spirit through its soaring gothic arches, despite being haphazardly strewn with endless tombs and memorials. We Scots may rejoice especially in the return of our Stone to its rightful land.

In London we stayed near Hyde Park:

Basement floor

2007-03-13T07:26:00.000-05:00

The concrete slab for the basement floor was poured yesterday. Here's the view down the basement stairs:

And the result by the end of the day.

The cool thing about buying yard after yard of concrete is you get to write your name in it...

Ipe porch floor

2007-03-10T22:05:00.000-05:00

We've decided to build the front porch floor with a hardwood called Ipe (ee-pay). The original plan was to use a recycled wood/plastic material like Trex or TimberTech. However, those materials don't really look very attractive, they do show wear and wear out, and when they do wear out you bury them in a landfill. Ipe is beautiful, strong, and very durable, and will probably outlast the porch structure.

Roof trim detail

2007-03-10T11:10:00.000-05:00

The roof trim is that of a traditional Maine colonial, with

Roof pitch 10/12

12" eave overhang

6" flying rake

In this picture, the slight notch at the end of the frieze and fascia boards doesn't match. The frieze is going to be narrowed slightly to make them consistent.

Note that there's no vent in the soffit, in fact there's no vent anywhere in the roof. The roof will be sealed and insulated with icynene foam - what's called a "hot roof" with no ventilation required.

Window trim detail

2007-03-10T11:08:00.000-05:00

This is a closeup of the window trim on the south side. The important points are:

Band molding around the edge.

Heritage sill.

Clapboards align at base of sill

If you look closely, you can also see the clapboards are mounted rough-side-out. We thought carefully about this: the smooth side makes a cleaner and crisper sort of look, and 90% of the clapboarded houses in Newton are smooth-side-out. However, the rough side takes paint/stain better, and indeed about half the smooth-side-out houses have some failing paint on them. We also like the bit of naturalized texture from the rough side of the wood.

Heating system capacity

2007-03-10T11:06:00.000-05:00

One of our objectives for this house is energy efficiency, and so far we're doing well on that score. The house is well situated on the site, with lots of glass on the south side and not so much on the north. There's no fireplace or chimney to waste heat, and no air conditioning to waste money. It's tight and well insulated, though not "super-insulated" like a true high-performance home.

So now we need to install the heating system for it, and the question is: what capacity is required? It's a simple question, with a simple answer, but it's very common for boilers and furnaces to be oversized and inefficient. Traditionally, this is because installers didn't want to risk dealing with unsatisfied cold customers in the middle of winter. There's also a tradition of engineering conservatism and "fudge-factors" that continues to this day.

We observed this phenomenon at work this week, in the initial proposals for installing our boiler. The heating engineer at MSI sized all the baseboards, according to heat loss projections for each room. They got the important part right, which is the relative balance of heat for each room. They didn't know what sort of a system we would drive the baseboards with, though, or how warm we want the house. So their analysis included baseboard that could be driven at high temperature by a traditional boiler, and also included a 40% "safety margin", which is the maximum margin recommended.

The first proposal was to install a boiler capable of driving all 130 feet of baseboard with 600 BTU/hour per foot, plus another 40% "safety margin". This led them to recommend a 155,000 BTUh condensing boiler. My own heat loss calculation concluded that the house needed 40,000 BTUh to maintain 65 degrees in 0 degree weather, so something was clearly amiss. In fact, at the lower temperatures of modern boilers, the 130 feet of baseboard only consumes 1/2 the heat capacity.

We needed a more credible analysis, so our architect got a pro to do a quick heat loss estimate. He used a whole-house method comparable to mine, and got about the same answer except he recommended a 40% margin on top of the whole-house loss.

So his recommendation was 67,000 btuh, my calculation was 64,000 btuh, and we'll go with a boiler that's rated for 80,000 btuh (what's called the I=B=R rating). That's still probably too big, but it's a modulating boiler which means it can turn down its fire automatically, so the efficiency won't suffer too much.

Heat loss calculation

2007-03-10T10:59:00.000-05:00

I just consider the house as an aggregate envelope - the room-by-room allocation of baseboard capacity has already been done by MSI heating engineers. There are five sources of heat loss: walls, windows, basement, attic, and infiltration. I presume 0 deg outside temp and 65 deg inside temp. Considered in turn:

Exterior walls comprise 2851 sq.ft., at R20 lose 9266 btu/hour.

Exterior windows comprise 573 sq.ft., at U=0.34 lose 12663 btu/hour.

Basement ceiling is 1142 sq.ft., at R20 lose 1428 btu/hour (assumes basement at 40 deg soil temperature).

Attic roof is 1600 sq.ft, at R20 lose 5196 btu/hour.

Attic gable walls are 250 sq.ft., at R20 lose 813 per hour.

Infiltration assuming 0.4 ACH (9000 cu.ft.) lose 10689 btu/hour.

Total is 40,000 btu/hour. I think the 0.4 infiltration is conservative, and the house should actually be in the 0.2-0.3 range according to its construction practices.

Siding and Trim

2007-03-05T07:41:00.000-05:00

Good progress last week on the window trim, roof trim, and siding. They started on the South side, will proceed to West, North, then build the front porch in a couple weeks before finishing that side. With good weather, the exterior should be pretty complete by the end of March.

In bad weather, there's lots of interior carpentry to be done this week: seaming the walls and floors together at the module boundaries, and building the basement stairs.

Basement still full of snow

2007-03-05T07:38:00.000-05:00

The basement still has about 1-2" of icy snow, from the storm before we installed the house. We melted the first 6" with a large propane heater (serious carbon monoxide hazard), then switched to calcium chloride which made some progress over the weekend. But it's going to be cold this week, so I doubt we're going to get it melted and ready to pour the concrete slab floor.

Kitchen sink

2007-03-03T21:10:00.000-05:00

Here's the kitchen sink, from my designated position in front of it: I'm the dishwasher in the family. The aperture looks through to the family room so I'm not isolated after dinner. (This is one of those panoramic photographs, so the lines look curved but they're really straight.)

MSI did a great job installing the sink under the solid countertop, the only problem is it's the wrong sink. I wanted a large single bowl, not two small ones. With two small bowls you can't soak a pot, and you have to choose which sink to wash things in, so the gunk goes down the disposal.

It was perfectly clear on the spec, so I'm sure they'll replace it if I insist, but I hate to see good work torn apart just because of preference. Maybe we'll just live with it for a while.

Utility reconnection stumbles out of the gate

2007-03-03T20:51:00.000-05:00

One of the benefits of modular construction is that the electrical circuits are wired and inspected on the factory floor, so once their installed it's easy to get the real electrical service up and running. Many projects don't even need temporary electrical service, and we're fortunate to have generous neighbors who let us borrow a circuit's worth.

Not so easy in Newton, however...

The modules are wired, the panel installed and half-wired, and grounded to two 8-foot copper rods driven under the basement. But the electrical inspector says we can't get service until the water line is in. Since we can't dig for the water line until April 15, we're going to have to keep running on temporary power.

National Electrical Code says service must be grounded through two electrodes, just like we did. The water line, if present, may substitute for one of the electrodes but you still need two.

Massachusetts Code is slightly different, says that if a water line is present you must ground the electrical service through it.

Newton interpretation is that if a water line will be present you must ground the electrical service through it. No water, no electricity.

Kind of pointless and irritating, but not really a big deal. We are going to run into bigger problems in the utility reconnection, though: the water, gas, and sewer fiefdoms all have their own issues and inertias.

Movies for Macs

2007-03-03T20:36:00.000-05:00

I can't encode movies for Quicktime, but here they are in Google Video, which should work for many viewers...

Module setting day 1

Module setting day 2

First sunset

2007-02-27T22:39:00.000-05:00

Friday afternoon the four of us watched the sun set from our new family room. It's been quite a week!

The house is wonderful. Just about every aspect is better than I had expected: the house fits the site without looking too boxy (despite the lack of porches and trim), the rooms feel spacious but not grandiose, the shipping damage is minimal.

There's about two months of construction remaining, plus utility connections and landscaping. I'm confident we'll move in by June.

First look: kitchen

2007-02-27T22:32:00.000-05:00

Entering the kitchen from the front, looking through to the back:

Panoramic view of south side, standing in front of sink:

Panoramic view of north side, standing in front of stove (not installed yet):

First look: family room

2007-02-27T21:59:00.000-05:00

Here's a panoramic view of the family room. The rectangle at the near right will be an opening into the kitchen.

First look: living room

2007-02-27T21:56:00.000-05:00

In the living room, at the front of the house, looking back through the dining room and family room, to the back yard. We didn't order that chandelier, it was just swinging in the breeze all the way from Pennsylvania.

Button it up on Friday

2007-02-27T21:53:00.000-05:00

On Friday, the heavy lifting is complete, and the SetWright team finishes shingling the roof peak, and hemming the modules together inside and out.

Back view

2007-02-27T21:50:00.000-05:00

Here's the house from the back. The left (north) side has the kitchen, with guest room above.

Last module down

2007-02-27T21:37:00.000-05:00

The last module is set in place. Note our crane operator, one of the brothers from Pick Construction, in the cab. Since I've built robots and other computer-controlled motion systems, I knew that 2 or 3 axes of motion were being simultaneously controlled to create the crane's smooth motion path. Watching on Wednesday, I just assumed this motion control was done by computer. Not so. Paul was doing that by hand.

Electrical interconnection

2007-02-27T20:25:00.000-05:00

When we left our heroes, they had dropped the main electrical panel into the basement, prewired with all the connections for module "B". Now they're feeding all the connections for module "D" down through "B" to the basement.

But there's a catch. The conduit through module "B" is obstructed halfway through. So here the SetWright foreman is trying to clear the obstruction, while the crane suspends the 10 tons of module "D" above him. No luck, so he cut a separate passage, and we'll route it properly later.

That conduit existed only to make his life easier.

South elevation with dogwood

2007-02-24T08:03:00.000-05:00

This picture shows the south side of the house, just before final erection of the roof peak on Thursday.

In front of the center windows (the dining room) is a very special dogwood tree, which was given to us by my grandmother when we bought the house in 1991. All the nursery people we spoke with advised us against planting a real American dogwood (cornus florida), which have been failing in the Northeast due to anthracnose infections. They said we should plant the hardier Chinese (kouza) dogwood instead. But my grandmother always loved dogwoods, and I really wanted one, so we did it.

The first few years were indeed dicey: it never got anthracnose, but had bouts with scale and several cankers which I carefully removed. Over time it grew stronger, and has now been healthy for years. Taking out the large spruce that was obstructing it will also help.

My grandmother passed away a few years ago, but I think of her every time I see the beautiful tree she gave us. It's now perfectly situated with our new house, and I can't wait to see it bloom this spring.

(I think the holly bushes will have to move, though.)

New movies

2007-02-23T13:23:00.000-05:00

I remade the movie of the first day (looks a little clearer now), and made a movie of the second day.

The setting phase is almost complete, we'll "take delivery" in an hour or so. I'm blogging from our neighbor's house (where the webcam is), since our internet connection seems to be having trouble with file uploads.

Joe Derba wins tractor pull!

2007-02-23T13:15:00.000-05:00

The last module (upper north) was on a long 56' trailer, but only 12' wide. So we thought it would be easier than the first big one. Not so. Here's the truck trying to back it into our driveway.

And here's the problem...

We tried yesterday's trick: pulling the trailer sideways and back with the tractor chained to the hitch. No dice. The house is too heavy and stuck on the curb, and the truck doesn't have the traction it needs when there's no weight on its back wheels.

Next idea: use the crane to lift the back end of the house, lightening the load and lifting the wheels over the curb. Well, that just transferred more weight to the front skid, so it couldn't move at all.

Next we tried hooking Joe Derba's 4-wheeler and pulling with that, too. Seems like it might work, but in this attempt the two vehicles are working at cross purposes.

Finally, we get Derba's 4-wheeler and the truck pulling together, and the module skids off the curb, down the ramp, around the tree, and over the road into position. We backed it into the driveway, and were done with the hard part. Here's a quick movie of the operation (Windows format, about 4mb).

Repaired shipping damage

2007-02-23T12:54:00.000-05:00

The lower south module was damaged Tuesday night, when the truck driver tried to go up Chestnut St and brushed the top corner on a tree branch. The two outer boards were cracked and tipped in a bit, like so:

Derba's team cut out the damaged parts and replaced them Thursday morning, with the new 2x12 you see along the whole middle of the house.

Module setting movie, take 1

2007-02-22T00:23:00.000-05:00

Over in the links to the right, you'll find a 3-minute time-lapse movie of the day we set the first two modules. It's a bit rough, and the first minute is a bit boring...

The movie's in a Windows-only format, sorry. I'll try to make a better quality one in a more ubiquitous format.

Two down, two to go

2007-02-21T22:21:00.000-05:00

The first two modules are set, and fit on the foundation within about 1/4", maybe 1/2" in a couple spots, well within tolerance once the sheathing and clapboards are applied.

Project was slowed today, there's some shipping damage to the top of the southern module (left-hand in this picture), which must be repaired early tomorrow morning before the third module can be set on top of it. We've had the expected difficulties getting the modules into our driveway, but the module transport has been much smoother today, the crane operation (by Pick Construction) has been seamless, and the setting crew (SetWright, engaged by the house manufacturer but actually an independent out of Maine) has been great.

We'll get the other two set on Thursday, and hope to get the roof erected before the (light) snow that's forecast.

Great day for Up!

2007-02-21T22:20:00.000-05:00

The first module is up and away. This is the lower south, with the living/dining/family rooms. Also the biggest one with the longest trailer.

Don't try this at home

2007-02-21T22:17:00.000-05:00

Two of the modules are on 56' trailers, which are tough to back into a 12' driveway from a 34' street. So the technique involves decoupling the truck, driving around the block, reconnecting it via a 12' chain, and skidding it around the last 25 degrees past that tree on the right. Then the truck can go up our neighbor's driveway, reconnect normally, and back down our driveway.

Electrical panel installed

2007-02-21T22:09:00.000-05:00

The electrical panel is all wired, here the SetWright guys untie it from its shipping position and drop it into the basement while the crane holds the module aloft.

Stairway to heaven

2007-02-21T21:39:00.000-05:00

The view from the front door. Watch your step.

The side door needs some work, too. Who's there?

Sneek peek at kitchen

2007-02-21T21:37:00.000-05:00

Here's the north wall of our new kitchen, viewed through the interior wall just before the module was set into place.

Big trucks

2007-02-20T22:07:00.000-05:00

All four modules arrived and are parked overnight at the Braeburn Country Club. There was some undue excitement getting them there, since they arrived at rush hour, delayed by a flat tire on route 9, with mistaken instructions to use Chestnut Street which is off-limits to trucks never mind houses. But after a couple hours idle time on Allen Ave they were escorted up to Braeburn, and we'll be ready to go at 9am tomorrow.

The kids saw the parade go by on Fuller St while coming home from karate class, and are getting very excited.

Oh, this is one of the small ones, by the way. The upper north, I believe. The big ones look large even on Allen Ave.

Wednesday's the day

2007-02-19T16:07:00.000-05:00

Trucks carrying the four modules of our house will leave Pennsylvania at the crack of dawn Tuesday morning, arrive here late afternoon, then be lifted into place on Wednesday. An 80-ton crane will show up tomorrow evening to be in place in our front yard for the next morning. The roof will be erected on Thursday.

So, with a bit of luck and a lot of work, by Friday we'll have a house. A bit unfinished, perhaps, but a house nonetheless.

Pit stop :-)

2007-02-15T17:00:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, a neighbor observed a truck driving down our street. It slowed by our nascent house, as many do, then stopped. A man got out, went in the porta-potty, got back in his truck and drove away.

Another weather delay

2007-02-12T18:40:00.000-05:00

There's some weather headed our way, with a good chance of snow/sleet on Wednesday, and almost definitely high winds on Wednesday-Friday. So we've postponed the module delivery again. Try again next week once we see the forecasts.

Derba Construction

2007-02-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

Our general contractor is Derba Construction, of Walpole, led by Joe Derba. They've done a great job coordinating the demolition and foundation, and now have a brief respite before the modules show up.

Overdesigned drainage system

2007-02-08T20:11:00.000-05:00

Here's the monster drain for the roof, required by Newton. By my calculations, we can drain 6" of rain per hour. That's 20X worse than the 100-year storm rating in the Northeast (6" per day). Pretty ridiculous.

Modules rescheduled for Thursday

2007-02-08T20:05:00.000-05:00

We've rescheduled the module placement for Thursday, Feb 15. Same plan: transport modules from Pennsylvania on Wed, lift and bolt them in place on Thurs, erect the roof on Fri. The foundation is complete and Derba has nothing to do until then.

Basement with a view

2007-02-08T19:56:00.000-05:00

The concrete strip down the middle will be the footing for some steel columns to hold up the center of the house, at the module boundaries.

The slab for the basement floor will be poured later, after the modules are placed.

Too cold, postponed delivery

2007-02-05T15:44:00.000-05:00

We've postponed delivery until next week. The setting crew (SetWright) says the hydraulic tool (*) they use on the fasteners that connect the modules is not tolerant of this cold.

There's plenty of other work to do in the meantime, and we can look for a better site to stage the modules.

(*) We were wondering what this hydraulic tool could be. Some sort of impact wrench, perhaps? Finally decided it was called "Joe", the hydraulic tool that doesn't like the cold.

Ready for backfill

2007-02-04T20:09:00.000-05:00

Foundation is ready to be backfilled Monday morning. The white pipes are the drains for the roof - Newton requires any new house to be able to drain a rainstorm of 6" per day without flow into adjacent properties. Not really a problem through our sandy soil.

After backfill Derba will build the kneewalls (wooden parts of the foundation) on Tuesday, then kick back for a couple days while the crane operator and setting crew place the modules.

Delivery on Wednesday

2007-02-03T07:21:00.000-05:00

House modules are scheduled to be set on Wednesday (yes, Feb 7). One will arrive in our driveway Tuesday afternoon, to be lifted first thing Wed. We're looking for places to stage the arrival of the other three.

Derba is scrambling to get the foundation backfilled and ready, but all looks good.

New toy - Panoramic photos

2007-02-01T21:39:00.000-05:00

I bought a new software product called Panorama Plus that automatically stitches multiple overlapping photographs into a panorama. It's based on technology from University of British Columbia, and completely automatic: you just give it a set of pictures and it does the rest.

Foundation poured

2007-02-01T21:28:00.000-05:00

Foundation was poured today. Looks straight and square to me, we'll see when they take the forms out tomorrow.

Footings done

2007-02-01T10:46:00.000-05:00

The footing for the new foundation was poured on Monday. Our neighbors have graciously let us use their driveway for the forms crane and concrete pump, which is shown above. Yes, you can pump concrete, great distances in fact. The blue crane above is pumping concrete into the footing forms, and is controlled remotely by the fellow in a white shirt with the wireless orange control box on his belt.

In addition to the artifacts I mentioned before, we placed the key to the front door of the old house under the footing for the front door of the new house.

1-888-CURE-ALS

2007-02-01T09:34:00.000-05:00

Our concrete supplier is a supporter of the ALS Association. As many of you know, our friend Stephen Heywood, inspiration and co-founder of the ALS Therapy Development Foundation, passed away this Thanksgiving. Please support their search for a cure.

Ready for concrete

2007-01-27T16:50:00.000-05:00

The forms for the footings are all set and awaiting reasonable weather to pour the concrete. Probably Monday - the additives and techniques we're using for the concrete have a good track record down to 20 degrees, but no colder.

The footing transfers the load of the foundation and house down to the sandy soil, and is located 9' to 13' below the first floor.

We are placing a collection of artifacts under the footing for good luck. Coins include a British pound, Israeli shekel, Canadian dollar, American dollars (Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea, plus Kennedy half dollar), Jamaican dollar, a half-dollar we got in St. Lucia on our honeymoon, a T token, Korean 500 won, and a French 5 franc piece. We have a number of rocks from Lake Joseph in the Muskoka region of Canada, where my great-grandfather had a family summer home when I was growing up. And a number of shells from Cape Cod and Florida.

Measure twice, dig once

2007-01-27T16:33:00.000-05:00

Our foundation is essentially a rectangle 25'1" by 47'4", with a diagonal of 53'6" (right?), as ably demonstrated here by the Derba Construction tape and drill team. Well, getting the foundation square and within 1/2" to meet the modulars isn't really the problem. Getting that rectangle in the right place on a site cleared of all references is the tricky part, and we screwed it up. In the absence of our surveyor, we taped it out from the street, figuring we'd be within 6" which is good enough for the footings.

Unfortunately, we took the 6" tolerance too far - the measurement was off 6", the marks were off 6", and the excavator was off 6". On a good day, some of those errors cancel. On a bad day, the error accumulates (on a really bad day, the error multiplies, but let's not go there). End result, the hole was in the wrong place. See that man at the far end? He's supposed to be in the middle of the hole.

The mistake cost us 2 days, plus we missed an ideal warm day to pour concrete. Our surveyor came by the next day and has given us proper references to work from.

Our new basement

2007-01-24T08:04:00.000-05:00

Here's our foundation excavated to the level of the basement slab, before digging the footings. The soil is all sand with a few rocks in it.

Tall foundation

2007-01-24T07:58:00.001-05:00

The foundation walls end up about 10' high at the back, so we're going to step them down a bit and build structural knee walls below the modules. In this picture, Terry Heinlein, Tom Chamberlin, and Joe Derba (L to R), are hashing out the details of the stepping.

Status

2007-01-20T17:50:00.000-05:00

The house has been successfully demolished and the site cleared. On Monday we start excavating and pouring footings for the new foundation, which will be poured late this week. Once we see how that goes we'll schedule delivery of the modules, probably on/about Feb 1.

So far so good, project is on track for us to move in on May 16.

Sad?

2007-01-20T17:46:00.000-05:00

Yes, it was difficult and sad to demolish the home in which we shared so many memories with family and friends, including our marriage and the birth of our children. We've been planning this for a long time, though, and along the way our committment has grown in many emotional and financial and logistical steps. For us, the demolition on Wednesday was another step, and not the sudden leap that observers may perceive.

There's nothing left of our house now - even the concrete rubble you see here has now been removed. But our attachment is to this place, this community, and the people who live here, and that transcends the structure of wood and concrete that has stood on the property for 80 years.

The other difficulty I'm less comfortable about is building a house during wartime. But is it really wartime? It's hard to tell, with the nation's objectives so unclear and the burden of sacrifice falling upon so few. Our president has recently called on us to "sacrifice" by watching the disturbing horrors of war on television, but we don't actually get those channels in America, and it doesn't seem much like sacrifice anyway.

What is clear is that there are far too many people in this world for whom the destruction of their home is violent, not voluntary; arbitrary, not planned. We are privileged to live in a community free of that threat, with the support of our family, friends, and neighbors. We must not forget that privilege, and work to extend it to others.

There goes the neighborhood!

2007-01-17T23:47:00.000-05:00

Demolition movie

2007-01-17T23:03:00.000-05:00

Here's a time-lapse movie of demolition, built from the webcam photographs.

This is an 8mb Windows media file.

Mr. Swiffer

2007-01-17T22:56:00.000-05:00

Here's Tom Chamberlin, our project manager from Derba Construction, manning the hose in 12 degree temperatures to keep the plaster dust down.

Excavator ballet

2007-01-17T22:51:00.000-05:00

Our excavator is Fred Hixson of Fredrickson Jones Contracting, out of Walpole at 508-668-7888. They've done an amazing job so far, making that machine almost dance, and bringing down the house with very little stray debris.

Engineering delay

2007-01-16T15:16:00.000-05:00

We cut and capped the water and sewer lines this morning, 10 feet away from foundation as requested by Newton Engineering. But when their field guy inspected it at 2, he said they needed to be cut closer to the property line. So we have to cut and cap them again. Then in the spring we'll cut and cap them a third time at the mains under the street.

Update: at City Hall, the chief engineer confirmed that we cut them in the right place, so we're good to go first thing in the morning.

Permits approved

2007-01-15T19:43:00.000-05:00

Our demolition and building permits were granted on Friday, so we're all ready to go. Actually the demolition permit was granted a while ago.

Energy efficiency

2007-01-15T17:25:00.000-05:00

Aside from providing our 9 year-old with her own bedroom, and connecting the house to our back yard, a key objective of this renovation is to increase the energy efficiency of our house. We looked at fancy stuff like geothermal heat pumps and photovoltaic solar, but all those technologies are evolving rapidly, and now doesn't seem like the best time to invest. So, we're planning for what I'd call conventional "best practice" energy efficiency:

No central air conditioning
No fireplace or internal chimney
Exterior 6" walls and attic insulated with Icynene
Efficient double-pane low-E windows
Hydronic baseboard heating, one zone per module
High-efficiency, modulated-flame, condensing gas boiler
Tankless gas domestic hot water
Compact fluorescent and LED lighting where appropriate

After this renovation, our next energy priority will be to upgrade my commuting car to all-electric. By the time that's done, thin-film photovoltaic or other distributed-generation options will be available, and we'll look to make our next step.

Webcam

2007-01-12T07:28:00.000-05:00

The webcam is running but sitting in our living room; we'll move it up to our neighbor's window this weekend.

We finally submitted the site plan yesterday, after fixing some incorrect topography in the survey. The city engineer expects to approve it this morning, and demolition should be Monday. The house core is done and supposed to be delivered last week in Jan, so it's a race to get the foundation ready.

Demolition this week

2007-01-08T15:16:00.000-05:00

The building department has reviewed our permit applications, and with "routine" edits we'll submit tomorrow, they'll be ready to issue by Wednesday. Demolition will probably be on Thursday.

S&H City Hall pavers

2006-12-24T15:23:00.000-05:00

Existing rear patio had about 2000 S&H City Hall pavers, which are water-struck bricks that are kind of pretty and practically indestructible. So we saved them on pallets in the back yard.

Perennial rescue successful

2006-12-24T14:59:00.000-05:00


After	Before

The plantings are wintering in the back yard, and large rhododendron from the back has moved to our neighbors.

Site plan

2006-12-24T14:47:00.000-05:00

Here's the plan for the site, showing the new house superimposed on the existing house. The front face of the new house, excluding the porch, is approximately in line with the existing.

The biggest change is the new foundation, although about the same 25' width as the existing, will be located 6' further south. If you look at the current house from across the street, you can see this move makes visual sense. It also makes the landscaping easier on the driveway side, where there's a fairly steep pitch down to the driveway, and on the southwest corner, which is where the back door will be.

Even on the narrow lot, all sides are well within required setback dimensions.

Kitchen elevations

2006-12-20T15:40:00.000-05:00

Here are simulated views of the kitchen - first the north side:

Then the south side, looking through to the family room. The "magic" refrigerator has a deeper interior than exterior (like Mr. Weasley's car in Harry Potter...), thanks to the extra wall depth at the inter-module boundary.

And the view through the kitchen to the back yard:

Plans

2006-12-20T15:30:00.000-05:00

Here are plans of the first and second floor. These were done with a consumer architectural program (the Better Homes and Gardens one, version 6.0), and aren't exactly accurate, but they're pretty close. We used this to help visualize design decisions.

On the second floor, I think there's probably a door for that closet :-), and the roomlet next to it is a laundry room.