Month: March 2022

Spring in PA is always fun with the warm 60+ degree temperatures one week and snow the next. It’s been nice to have the house sealed up so work could continue inside. Topics for today’s post:

• Electric and plumbing progress
• Change in windows for the apartment
• Updated kitchen design for the apartment
• Added some minor home automation
• Initial blower door results

Electrical and plumbing. These are my estimates, based on what I see, but it looks like 90% of the B-wing electrical is complete for outlets, light switches, and subpanel. The A-wing also has the office, library, sitting room, and entryway completed. Looking forward to the install of the main panel as that will permit us to bring in our temporary power lead from 475ft away (currently on a pole in the front of the house). This will permit power testing in the building and activating outlets inside during the remaining construction.

Plumbing has come a long way inside as well. The main bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry have been roughed in. This includes drains for the mini-split condensate lines and water line for the fridge/ice maker.

Alright, so what are the changes to the kitchen and windows to the apartment you might ask. Well, I can’t show a real picture of the window changes as it hasn’t happened yet, but due to a mistake by the window company, some additional glass needed to be ordered and we chose to purchase extra frames and add two small windows to the east wall of the apartment to let more light into the main living space. Here is a digital picture of what we will be seeing.

The kitchen has always been a bit tight with wall space, but we had a breakthrough by adding an additional wall which fits everything we were hoping for: storage, sink, fridge, and dishwasher. The new wall was roughed in so plumbing could be installed. Here is a 3D rendering of our new layout.

The automation piece was just a small thought to get some dehumidifying started. So, we have a remotely controlled and monitored outlet plugged into our site extension cord with our dehumidifier plugged in. We can turn it on/off remotely, but can also check the wattage to determine if the unit needs to have its reservoir emptied.

We have had our initial blower door test, this test was unofficial, but gave us great confidence in the air tightness so far. The house was placed under 50 pascals’ of pressure and the air leakage measured. For a Passive House we have to be under 0.6 ACH50, which means <= 0.6 air exchanges per hour under 50pa of pressure. We were 0.27! This was more than double what was needed and we had some leaks that got missed, so that was a very exciting result.

Alright, that’s enough for this update. Next we hope to have:

• HVAC progress with Zehnder vents and ducting installed
• Continued electrical progress
• Septic and electrical trenching between buildings

We are well into March and have already had a couple blizzards (yeah). We Burton’s love snow and while it seems we are almost alone in our area, we still celebrate when we can. So, the final building hole has been filled and sealed, hence the title of the post today. Our min entry doors arrived and were installed and they are just beautiful! They are also thick. Stephanie has a fun taste in color and as you can see below, it’s going to put a beautiful pop of color after the siding get’s installed…right now it’s competing a bit with the green sheathing.

After the doors were installed, the team quickly transitioned to plumbing and that has progressed rather quickly. We now have what looks like a nearly fully PEX plumbed house.

Today was a snowy, windy, cold day. I stopped up at the site to take some measurements from the kitchen and noticed something when I walked in…it was quiet. I couldn’t believe how quicky it felt like I was “out of the weather”, with zero insulation. I looked out the windows and the trees moving and bending to the wind and expected to hear creaking from the house, of a high pitch whistle from the wind, but there was nothing. It made me long to move it, but also very thankful that there has been so much attention to detail.

Well, that’s it for now, here is what we have coming up next week:

• Finalizing minor air sealing details in A-wing roof and C-wing walls
• Progressing on rough in plumbing
• Starting septic install
• Working on A-wing electrical

This past week was filled with additional air sealing details, the start of roughing in electrical, and (drumroll…) the install of our huge south facing pieces of glass! Big shout out to Ventana USA for these beautiful windows and doors.

We have three large glass units on the south facade. Starting from the East side we have the master bedroom sliding glass door unit (96” wide), the family room non-operable unit (116” wide), and finally the main dining room sliding glass door (116” wide). These are all triple pane windows and we estimate between 500 – 600 pounds. Thankfully we took the time to remove the doors before install, but with a crew of 8 people, it was easier than expected. Let’s cover the install details a bit and follow up with some pictures.

The installation prep was very much like the other framed in windows, except the bottom was sitting on our concrete block, not wood. So, if you were on the outside of the house, the install layers consist of: concrete block -> bead of FastFlash-> vapor barrier -> bead + zig zag of FastFlash -> Window frame. The sides and top of the rough opening were coated with FastFlash the day before and the bottom was wet set just before we moved the windows into place. They will be finished with our typical backer rod and AirDam. We will also be adding some additional support between the sliding door vertical frame and the rough opening to keep that extra stable with all of the door closings over time.

You can check out a video of us moving these big windows into place.

As you can see, the crew also finished the other windows on the South side. Now we can officially say ALL WINDOWS ARE IN!

A common question is what’s next. So, I’ll start including our plans for the upcoming week at the end of our posts.

What’s Next

Next week we will be installing the man doors, air sealing details on the large glass from this week, finishing the liquid flashing on the garage, rough in electrical for the main building, and any other details in prep for our first blower door test.