Month: January 2022

It was an unexpected, yet exciting time with week as our window order had been delayed waiting on our triple paned glass from over seas. So, surprise to us, we were planning on only having a fresh air Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) meeting, it turned into a huge window delivery day too!!!

For those interested in ERV’s and what that fun meeting was about, please feel free to head over to our manufacture site Zehnder. Simply put, this unit will be bringing in fresh air and taking out stale air very efficiently 24×7. ERV sounds a bit fancy, maybe we should just call it our fresh air system. We will be using two main products that you are welcome to read about as I will indeed be documenting the install and such.

• Zehnder Comfoair Q450 (fresh air unit)
• Zehnder Comfotube (fresh air ducting)

Nothing exciting there until the unit and tubes arrive, so on to the windows. We partnered with a Passive House certified window manufacture that just so happened to be located 1 hour away, Ventana USA. I have found there site pretty, but not as easy to find what you are looking for, so here is a direct link to the European style tilt & turn windows that we purchased for our home. The professional pictures on there site are nice and all, but nothing compares to having the real thing delivered, yeah. Picking up the large 500 lbs pieces and moving them into the house was indeed a nervous task. Here are some pictures of that move.

If you made it this far, you deserve to see the last video of us moving this large piece of glass into place: https://youtu.be/iUrxejvkXm8

The next question you might ask is, why didn’t we place them directly in their final location upon delivery? With our air sealing details, we can’t install the windows until we a air/water seal our window openings with liquid flashing, which requires some weather above freezing to cure. It looks like next week we will see a break from sub-zero temperatures and have 3 days in a row with highs in the 40’s. There is still so much to do with the garage and windows, but with the priority being the garage we likely won’t see window installs for a couple weeks.

The weather apps showed 2 – 4 below Fahrenheit last night, but our two sensors both recorded 12 below this morning. No new snow for the past few days and we did have 2 days this week where we made some great steps: Garage loft floor joists and mini-split installs. Let’s go over them both with some pictures.

Yes, mini-splits will be our primary source of heat and cooling in our house. The house is so well insulated that we don’t need a large heating or cooling system. The BTU demand is actually calculated using our weather, combined with our insulation, solar heat, house orientation, and a bunch more science and math around thermal bridging and transfer through different materials. There is some software that does these calculations for us (WUFI), so we aren’t flying blind or simply guessing. Anyway, on to the pictures.

The outdoor unit can’t be installed yet as the concrete pad still needs to be poured and the weather has not permitted that. Our team did brave the cold and make some additional updates to the garage in some below freezing weather.

Notice that the floor joists only cover one of the garage bays by design. Our shed style roof gave us the additional head space to put in a loft on the high side of the garage while we chose to leave the lower side vaulted for some additional vertical storage above David’s workshop area.

That’s it for now. We love winter and are so thankful we have some snow to play with, even though it slows the build down. We praise God everyday for His blessings in our life through all of our ups and downs.

Happy January here in PA. The weather had been kind to us during building in December, but winter weather has finally caught up to us. The temperature has been low, which makes it hard to work outside, but with the roof on, the team has been able to make additional progress inside.

Below you can see our “Glass Wall” as we call it. It spans our office and library with a total of 27 2’x3′ windows. We actually went with clear polycarbonate to avoid safety glass on the lower row.

We had one or two slightly warmer days, so the team went outside and spent more time on the garage framing.

Also just before the end of the year, the team filled in the last few pieces of sheathing on the main building.

One more photo for fun. It was a nice calm day and I was able to get a high drone shot that included our entire build site and nearly all of our property out to the main road.

Ending the year with a water tight roof on the main building was a great end of the year and gives me some confidence that winter will be “mostly” kept out of the building…except for what blows in through window openings. Oh, and here is a fun slideshow of changes throughout 2021: https://youtu.be/IQrLeK2wIbU

We’ve received a number of questions about the lack of visible rafter tails to build eaves on as well as the lack of window openings. So, I thought I’d take the time to explain both of those answers in this post. For context, here is a recent picture of the front of the house.

Where are the windows?

Very odd looking, I know. The question about windows is a quick one to answer. There will be five windows on the front of the house, but they simply haven’t been cut out of the sheathing yet. That is the case for a few other windows on different sides of the house.

Where are the rafter tails?

This is a great questions, and while I love to get technical about it, I don’t want to bore anyone. The short version is that it is easier to make and maintain an air tight home without the rafters penetrating the air barrier. We will definitely be having eaves on the house, but they will be attached to the roof and walls. The front and back of the house will actually have 3 foot eaves, while the rest of the house will enjoy 2 foot eaves. This acts like an umbrella and keeps the majority of water off the walls. This concept and a few others related to our design are actually explained very well by Matt Risinger on his YouTube video here. I’ve watched many of Matt’s videos and he does a great job documenting his house build and you’ll find many similarities between our house designs. It’s actually funny to me to see how as the Burton’s were working through all of the hard decisions to build a Passive House, that there was someone (a professional builder, Matt Risinger) out there documenting his home rebuild and only deciding on going for a Passive House certification long after his remodel started.

Now that the exterior is nearly done for the season, the follow up posts will focus more on the interior, which often isn’t as exciting as the changes seem physically smaller, so please feel free to let me know if you’d like to see something specific. These are topics I’ve heard come up:

• Solar system design, size, batteries, backup, costs, etc
• Final house design, the digital 3D look of the whole house
• Personal story behind why we are doing all of this work
• More specifics on: power management, water management, construction project management, home automation
• …something else completely