Green Building Open House

On Saturday October 4th 2008 people across the nation will open their homes and invite strangers in to learn about Solar Energy and Green Building. This tour is hosted by various organizations throughout the country. Here in New England we are lucky to have the North East Sustainable Energy Association, the regional host for this event. http://www.nesea.org/buildings/openhouse/

I am proud to have 2 of the homes I have worked on open for the tour.

http://www.nesea.org/buildings/openhouse/googleMaps/detail.php?id=1088
Directions http://www.eebt.org/Mapto101tispaquinst.html


http://www.nesea.org/buildings/openhouse/googleMaps/detail.php?id=1222

My current project, which will be under construction at the time of the tour, allows for people to see some of the inner workings of an efficient home. The most predominant features will be Structural Insulated Panel wall system, along with our Warm Light Wall. What is a Warm Light Wall, you may ask? The WLW is a prototype window system for capturing and storing the suns energy in your window. This home will have 150 sqft of this window system installed along the south side. This is no ordinary window! The use of advanced glazing's to insulate and allow for max solar gain is just one of the elements within the window system and yes this is a window system not just a window. The exterior shading is another part of the system, which allows control of solar gains when they are not needed. By shading the exterior of the glazing, you stop about 75% of the heat which would other wise reach you window and heat you home, adding an additional burden on your cooling system during the summer months. Many solar home features large overhangs to protect the windows from exposure to the sun. While they work well in many locations, they do not allow for shading in the morning and afternoons when the sun is low in the sky. They also tend to be rather large and sometimes gaudy looking. These shades allow us to design with standard overhangs, used on thousands of homes throughout New England, after all we don't want it to look like a solar home. The main element in the window system is the water blocks used to store the suns energy. Built in a way in which they look like individual window panes, which they are, well actually two with some water in the middle. TheWLW is project under development by Wendell Colson, The vise president of research and development for Hunter Douglas. I am personally pushing for this product to come to market. I have seen the system work in their test buildings and now for the real test, THIS HOME. This will be the first installation of his latest design, and if all goes well we may all have them available in the next year or so. When I first met Wendell at the NESEA building conference I had no idea I would have the opportunity to work with him on such an incredible project. We worked together on the MIT Solar decathlon project where he generously donated the previous version of this system along with a tremendous amount of help and guidance. I personally feel that his window system could be the innovation passive solar design, that will bring it into mainstream. Saving people hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in energy costs annually. Time will tell all, and I will continue to post more information along with photos once the window is installed next week. The total system will not be in place, as the shades will need to be measured for after installation of the windows. Once completed we will be having another open house for people to come see the finished product. I hope that you can come and learn about green buildings and solar energy, if you don't live in this region there will be tours in most neighborhoods across the country for a complete list of tours from ASES click here http://www.ases.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=257&Itemid=58

` Tom Pittsley
ecobuilder@aol.com
http://www.eebt.org/

Structural Insulated Panels installation

Here is a video showing the SIP's panels being installed on the house. Sorry for no action photos, but it's kind of hard to video while lifting panels into place. One of the things which made this installation go as quickly as it did, was the prefabricating of the panels from the manufacturer. While designing the building I utilized standard panel sizes to minimize waste of materials, as well as money. 8' walls are an efficient use of the panels, as they are built as 24' panels and then cut down to size. The ceiling sections of panels were designed at 24' to use one single panel to extend from the exterior wall to the bearing wall. The less connection points used to make the panels work is always recommended, less joints equal less air leakage.

So why would you use SIP's to build with? There are several reasons, the first being the increased R-value of the wall system. The 6-1/2" SIP used for the walls of this house have an R-value of 24.5, the total R-value of the wall system is R-26. The ceiling panels have an R-value of 40. A typically constructed building using the stick frame methods would have walls with an insulation value of R-19, but that is not the true R-value of the wall. The lumber contained within the walls has an R-value of 5.5, creating a thermal bridge points within the envelope. SIP's, although they have some lumber, located for structural load points have a continuous R-value throughout the wall section. One of the other reasons for using them is the decrease in air leakage. Air leakage into a building can contribute as much as 40% of the total heating and cooling energy loss within a structure. One other reason is the ease of construction, once you become familiar with the methods of installation the system goes together easily, this is also reliant on a good design and fabrication. So the roof is going on tomorrow and the next few days as we push towards getting the building weather tight and ready for our (Warm Light Wall) system to be installed next week. Stay tuned
Tom

Passive solar home construction

So, if you have seen my previous posts and video's you will know what I have been up to, building an energy efficient passive solar home. The video link on this post is the final part of the foundation system, which was the most difficult part of the project. Many people have commented on how different the foundation looked upon casual observation. If they only knew how different this was in comparison to a traditional foundation. Here in New England we are one of the few places were people feel the need to put a basement under our homes, for most of the country the slab-on-grade foundation system is conventional construction. Of course we do have some specific requirements when it comes to insulating and heating our homes in this region. This requires a different approach to building, rather than have our foundation being an energy drain on our building we actually use it to our advantage. The thermal mass contained within the foundation allows us to use it to store the homes energy at a constant rate. Once the slab is brought to temperature the energy needed to maintain this is very low, and at a very low temperature. We will be able to heat this home with water at a temperature of 85-90 degrees F. most conventional baseboard heating systems require a water delivery temperature of 160-180 degrees F. The low delivery temperature of the heating system is the key factor that allows the geothermal heat pump to deliver all of the homes heating and cooling needs.






As I am writing this, I have already finished installing most of the Structural Insulated Panels, used for the envelope of the home. I have taken some video of this as well and will post it when time allows. The SIP's showed up on the site on Tuesday afternoon around 2pm. and by this afternoon we had just 3 gable panels to finish installing before moving on to the ceiling panels. These will be in place tomorrow or is it today? The roof framing is scheduled to start on Monday with the hope of finishing it along with some trim by the end of next week. This portion of the project will continue at a fairly fast pace as we push to prepare for a open house scheduled for October 4th.






The most exciting thing we are using in this home is a prototype window system under development by Hunter Douglas. If we have our roof shingles on the roof as scheduled these windows will be installed for the open house. This window system is in my opinion the best innovation in passive solar to be developed in recent years. It contains a very specific glazing along with glass blocks filled with water to store the suns energy and regulate how it is transmitted into the home. Not only is it functional, but very attractive as well. I will continue to post videos and pictures of the project as we move forward.

more pictures of the project http://picasaweb.google.com/TomPittsley/PassiveSolarHomeUnderConstruction#

Thanks Tom Pittsley


http://www.eebt.org/


ecobuilder@aol.com