Men in Tights

Today Chris Conway, our EarthCraft technical advisor, did our final blower door test, to determine the air tightness of our house.

"Tightness" is measured in air changes per hour at 50 Pascals of air pressure difference (ACH50); the idea is to measure how often the air inside the house is exchanged with the outside if the pressure outside the house is 50 Pascals higher than inside the house. In other words, it's a measure of how quickly a house "leaks" air. (That's what a blower door simulates: it sucks air out of the house at a given rate to create pressure differential, and then measures the difference in pressure between inside and outside.)

A "1" means that the entire air inside the house is exchanged with the outside once every hour. A "0.5" means that the entire air inside the house is exchanged with the outside one-half times every hour (or once every two hours). A "0" means that the entire air inside the house is exchanged with the outside zero times every hour (never). So the closer to zero, the tighter the house.

Our house is a 0.09.

To put this in perspective, EarthCraft guidelines require any EarthCraft certified house to have a 0.5 or lower. If, like us, you are aiming for the top tier of EarthCraft certification, your house has to be a 0.4 or lower. If your house is a 0.25 or better, EarthCraft requires a method of fresh air ventilation (an Energy Recovery Ventilator, for instance). So, 0.09 is pretty darn tight: in other words, the inside air is completely exchanged with the outside about every 11 hours. Chris thinks it's certainly the tightest house in Virginia.

Now, a few pictures. The blower door ...


... and the tester that shows you the pressure difference (at left, in Pascals) and the leakage rate (at right, in cubic feet per minute - which is then converted, using the house's interior air volume, into ACH50):

One Step Closer to Toasty Warm

For several days I had intended to take a picture of the radiant system in the basement. We previously posted pics of the pex tubing that's in the floor, which are the veins of the system. but the heart of the system is quite impressive. And it's mostly installed. We purchased the system from Radiantec and they did a fantastic job answering any and all of our questions as we worked with Bernie from Clarke County Plumbing to connect the system. Speaking of Bernie, he claims he's still snowed in, so he didn't show up at all this week to work on our house. Andreas pleaded with him yesterday to come next week - and plan to spend the whole week there.

While the system itself is connected and pressure tested, Bernie hasn't fully installed/connected the Polaris gas water heater. He was supposed to connect the gas line on a previous day, but he deferred that to a future day, and hasn't been back. He also needs to install the expansion tank, a heat trap (as required by Earthcraft for certification) and connect the overflow to the drain pan or sump pump. Today, Washington Gas came to install the meter outside, so as soon as Bernie shows up again, we'll be ready to fire it up and test it out.

Then the other piece that needs to be connected for the radiant system to be operational, is the thermostat controls. Andreas installed all of the thermostats on the walls and now we need Tom the electrician from Creager Electrical to show up to connect the temperature control system (the brain) to the heart so we can control the temperature in each of the five zones.

It will be really wonderful to have heat in the house, since we still have some work to do inside. But I suspect most of our inside work will be complete before Bernie and Tom are able to finish their work.

The outside of the house has been a better situation. Jeff Gunther from Grove Construction and his sidekick Andrew did a wonderful job on the deck, which they finished yesterday afternoon. I'll take some pictures of the final product and post those early next week. Jeff and Andrew need to come back to clean up their work site (which has been in the neighbor's back yard) and Jeff will finish installing the cedar siding that Aaron Holmes's crew never completed. That's scheduled for Saturday, January 2nd since Jeff is taking some well-deserved time off around the holidays. I think the house will look much better from the street once the cedar siding is visible on the Western side of the house.

Update at Last!

Many, many thanks to Mom and Bill for coming two weekends in a row to help out with home construction projects. It's been a busy time since I last blogged, and most of our effort on the house was cleaning up some errors Aaron Holmes (from Cornerstone Building Services) and crews he hired had made. There's still more of that to address, but we're making progress there. The rest of the time was spent moving various projects forward. Much of what we did is barely noticeable, but are important details.

Here's some of what we accomplished:

- Carried 165 sheets of drywall into the house, that 84 Lumber delivered in the yard.

- Measured and ordered paperless drywall for the bathrooms, as required by EarthCraft for the top-level certification (Aaron ordered greenboard, which is not permitted under the EarthCraft certification program top-tier)

- Met with two drywall subcontractors to obtain quotes for installation.

- Prepared PVC pipe for rainwater recapture tanks.

- Corrected framing mistakes (e.g., changed framing so the range hood exhaust can be centered on the wall the way it was supposed to be).

- Installed new framing around the TRV ducting and return air grill ducting in the guest bathroom and the master closet.

- Corrected the range hood vent ducting so it is now centered on the kitchen wall.

- ARS installed the fresh air ducting to the TRV and insulated the ducting in accordance with EarthCraft requirements.

- Nailed in electrical boxes in three areas where Tom from Creager Electrical left wires hanging for future electrical components.

- Mixed American Clay Loma and Porcelina plaster in buckets.

- Photographed all of the framing, plumbing, and electrical wires and noted measurements for each of these so that we know where they are hiding in the walls once the drywall is installed.

- Ordered copper-to-pex fittings to connect the pex tubing with the radiant floor heating system.

- Stained the cedar trim boards TW Perry delivered, which is for the house siding. (Aaron had not specified enough cedar when he gave us the requirements to order more, so the siding work has been on hold until all of the cedar come in. This was the first of three kinds of cedar we ordered again through TW Perry.)

In addition to helping with these projects, Mom and Bill brought us a wonderful lunch and homemade shoo-fly pie for Saturday, and fresh eggs and bacon from Pennsylvania Dutch country for breakfast on Sunday.

Sorry, no photos this posting.

Inspection vs. Expectation

There's common advice that folks share when talking about building a house -- it's what you inspect, not what you expect. One can provide contractors with detailed explanations of homeowner expectations on design, quality, etc., but trusting that will be done just does not cut it in the construction industry -- there's only one thing that will, and that's inspection. It's disappointing that many subcontractors cut corners. Perhaps it's a lack of training, lack of skill, lack of supervision, or all of the above. But there are too many horror stories related to construction that only strong supervision by the owner(s) and inspection of worked performed will ensure quality construction meeting the design intent. We faced that issue twice this week. First with the new clerestory window installation and then with the deck post installation. Our construction manager, Aaron, was the subcontractor for each of these tasks and his crew just failed to get it right the first time. The end result is they're doing the work over, which is taking more time, costing Aaron more money, and adding unnecessary stress and frustration (for us, for Aaron, and for his crew that's doing the work over again). So the clerestory window saga continues. One of the selling points for using Quality Window & Door was that they would send a technical rep to oversee all window and door installations if you bought windows through them. That's included in the price. This is another area where they failed. When the original windows and doors were installed, the tech was there for only part of the day. This time, they couldn't find a rep who was available, so the sales guy who royally screwed up our clerestory window order came instead. He doesn't seem to know anything about window installation either. The fact is the five windows that were installed on Tuesday were put in wrong, under his and Aaron's supervision. The workers did not follow the WeatherShield installation instructions, nor the EarthCraft House program's technical guidelines. Andreas caught the error. Had he not inspected their work, all of the windows would have been installed incorrectly. There were a whole host of problems, and now the windows will have to be removed. One primary concern was that there was no house wrap (e.g., Tyvek) used for the window installation and the caulking was wrong. Had this not been inspected, the problems would rear their ugly heads years down the road. Once again, Chris Conway, our EarthCraft Technical Advisor saved the day as he confirmed that what Andreas described was incorrect and he walked Andreas through the correct installation process. (This is probably the 40th or 50th time we've called him with technical questions related to green construction and he has been unbelievably helpful and patient with us each and every time. He's amazingly knowledgeable and helpful!) We spent Wednesday morning on-site so Andreas could supervise the window installation to ensure the crew understood the EarthCraft technical guidelines and I could supervise the cedar siding installation that had been scheduled. I was leaving early Thursday morning for a work trip to Aspen, CO so this was the only opportunity to meet with the siding crew. As it turned out, the siding crew was unable to do any siding installation since they had to help the window crew install the windows. By the end of Wednesday evening, about 15 of the windows were correctly installed, with 7 left to go (plus the work of removing the incorrectly-installed windows.) The second inspection came quite by accident. While we were on-site, we noticed that one of the deck posts on the North side of the house was leaning. Since Dominion Power's subcontractors were trenching there, we thought they might had bumped it with their Bobcat. It turns out they didn't, but the posts were not installed correctly. There are concrete deck piers. The 6"x6" pressure treated posts must sit directly on the deck piers. Apparently, Aaron's crew decided they would set one short piece of post on the concrete pier, and then set another short piece post on top of that - instead of one proper length deck post. Apparently someone leaned on the first deck post on the North side of the house, it shifted in the soft clay soil, and that's when we pulled it out to inspect what was causing it to lean. That was very disconcerting so we checked the next one -- it was also wrong, with two shorter pieces stacked on top of one another. We brought this to Aaron's attention, checked the third one, and that one was fine. Now, we need to pull out each and every deck post to find any more that might have been installed incorrectly, and Aaron will need to replace those. Again, more stress and frustration (and expense to Aaron) that would not be an issue had Aaron been on-site supervising his crew and/or his crew had been properly trained and/or skilled to perform this job right the first time. Yes, Aaron's accepting the responsibility for these mistakes and we hope these are isolated instances and no future situations like this will arise. If they do, we'll know, as we'll be inspecting all of the work that's done. Speaking of inspections, the City inspected our framing and mechanical systems yesterday afternoon and both passed. Southland Insulators will be on-site Friday morning to spray foam insulation in the roof/ceiling area and around the basement upper walls (in the joist areas at the outside perimeter of the house.) Then we can schedule a close-in inspection and start installing drywall!

The new clerestory windows that have been installed look really great (again, no photos of those, since it was dusk when we got to the lot after going to our offices to work during the afternoon and early evening.) You can get the idea, though, from the picture taken inside looking out in the "incorrect installation" series below. (The window with the cardboard is the one that was broken upon delivery from WeatherShield to Quality Window & Door.)

Incorrect Installation:





Corrected Installation:




Leaning Deck Post:

Long Progress Report

Before I head off to San Diego for a quick work trip (27 hours out of town, 12 of which will be at an airport/on an airliner), I wanted to give a brief progress report on construction.

While we remain frustrated that several subcontractors think it's perfectly OK to not show up when they say they'll be there, there are some bright spots:

Tim Griffin from ARS has been working with us to calculate the HVAC loads for the house and determine the ducting requirements. An energy efficient, air sealed house is a lot different to work with than conventional construction. And our passive solar design adds another twist. Tim has experience with green construction and the Earthcraft Virginia program. And our budget constraints offered another challenge. Tim designed a system and lined up a crew - they're scheduled to start the duct installation on Monday.

The last four days were absolutely exhausting. Andreas had three off-days in a row, so I took some vacation days from work and also spent Wednesday morning on the project. We worked our tails off on the house. I wish everyone we're paying to assist and manage this construction project were doing the same.

Wednesday morning, Aaron and I installed the fan and the fresh air intake system to the fireplace and set that in place.

Starting on Thursday, I spent a full 10 hours on my hands and knees vacuuming the first floor of the house with the shop vac so there would be no dust and debris to contaminate the concrete floor when it's poured next week. Despite multiple requests for workers to clean their shoes before entering, most folks just kept walking in, tracking more dirt for me to vacuum up. I don't mean to sound so negative. But, really, how difficult is it to clean off your shoes before walking into the house, especially after you've been specifically asked to, with the reason for the request explained to you?

While I was inside vacuuming, Andreas was completing numerous projects, including digging a trench to install the drain tile so the sump pump outflow will run under our intended garden area into the stream at the back of the lot. It looks great and is ready for Bernie to install the two cast iron sump pumps next week.

Elmer sent a crew on Thursday evening to install the nailer strips along the exterior walls (the TerraBrick walls). This was to fix mistakes Aaron had made when he cut and installed nailer strips some time ago, but they were of varying heights, so they all had to be removed and trashed. One of the considerations when building with a solid exterior is how to place electrical outlets along those walls. Ours will be centered in a baseboard. The size of the nailer strip in our house is extremely important, as the electrical boxes are screwed into that, and it also is the nailer strip for the baseboards. It needed to be a specific height so that the 1.5" of concrete would not come into the electrical boxes and so the electrical outlets would be a consistent height throughout the baseboards. It was good to get that corrected, since we're hoping that Bartley will be able to come on Wednesday to pour the concrete floor on the main level of the house.

After months and months attempting to get Washington Gas to install service at our house, their subcontractors came on Thursday early afternoon to do the street cut. First thing Friday they were back to trench on the lot and bring the gas line to the back of the house. It was only after I made a phone call to an executive at Washington Gas & Light Holdings that we saw any action. That's all water under the bridge now, but here's a special thanks to WGL Holdings' Marcellous Frye for getting the right people on the job for us.

Piedmont Roofing's crew was supposed to come on Thursday, but they ran over on another project, so they were to be on our project early Friday morning. Mid-afternoon Friday, they finally showed up. But they were not prepared to do what Aaron said he asked them to do. So they installed the roof boots on the plumbing and radon vent and promised to come back on Saturday. They didn't show up this morning. They had several hours of work time before the rain, so it's disappointing they were no-shows.

Tom (the electrician) came on Friday morning and finished everything he needed to for the electrical rough-in inspection. Andreas scheduled that for 9am on Monday.

Accurate Insulation was scheduled to come Friday morning to install the rain gutters. Only one person showed up. He looked at our house and said he couldn't do it himself, so he'd have to get help and come back on Saturday. He said he'd be at our lot by 8am. We showed up at 8:10 and he was there, with a co-worker, only to inform us that the job was COD. Aaron never sent us a contract and most vendors accept payment afterwards. So I drove home to get the checkbook and was back on-site an hour later only to learn that the crew didn't have screws long enough to attach the downspouts through the EIFS and into the concrete columns. So I drove to Brown's Hardware in Falls Church, but they didn't have any 5" stainless steel screws the Accurate folks requested. I then went to Home Depot. They didn't have any either, so I bought some 4" screws (the longest they had) and some 5" lag bolts. As it turned out, neither of those options worked, but the 4" TapCons I had in my truck (leftover from affixing the extruded foam board to the basement walls) fit the bill. All of that running around was a waste of time. After they left, Andreas and I attached some drain tile to direct the water away from the house. As soon as we were done, the rain started to fall. So I don't have any pictures of the gutter and downspouts yet.

After weeks and weeks and weeks, Quality Window and Door sent a service guy out to repair the sliding glass doors that were difficult to slide, install some weather stripping on a sliding glass door that didn't have some, and fix the loose-fitting locks on two of the swinging exterior doors. This was the third service guy to come out to work on the doors. Well, he got most of it done, but we'll need a fourth visit. He didn't have any weather stripping with him, so he couldn't do that. He fixed the two sliding glass doors. And he fixed one of the two locks. Maybe the fourth time will be the charm and someone can bring weather stripping and properly fix that remaining jiggly lock problem. How difficult is this...really?

Loudoun Stairs supposedly was going to come by on Friday to measure for the staircase to the basement and also bring some photos of what the staircase would look like. But they didn't show up. Can anyone recommend a good (but affordable) stair company for some basic stairs into the basement?

Andreas and I installed the pex tubing on the first floor this afternoon (Saturday). We didn't finish until after dark so, again, no photos. Clearly we were focused on getting the job done and not on documenting that for the blog. Sorry folks. We'll snaps some pics later.

While I'm on a flight to the West Coast tomorrow, Andreas plans to clean the basement floor so that can dry and allow us to test some sample coloring for the concrete floor stain when I'm back on the project Tuesday evening. There's a lot more on the schedule for next week, but I guess it will get done only if the subcontractors show up. These days, I'm not holding my breath for that! And please don't ask me about the clerestory windows.

Welcome Back Aaron

Our contractor, Aaron Holmes, was on vacation over the past week. We'll be glad to have him back so construction picks up pace. Last week we expected the plumber to come to start rough-in plumbing work. No show. The good folks at Bartley were going to do the final grading. Rain prevented that. Andreas was able to caulk the interior edge of the sill plate, which sits on the foundation, to prevent air flow. We cleaned around the house/lot as well. Other than that and the shopping mentioned below, it seems like there isn't any noticeable progress, but we certainly worked on various aspects of the house each day. 

With Aaron back in town, hopefully he brings good weather with him since Bartley will be on-site Wednesday morning to start the final grading. We also will sit down with Aaron to review the next details of the construction, to ensure everyone's on the same page, and we will go through the EarthCraft Virginia green building worksheet to verify that we're meeting the required sections and earning points as we planned at our first meeting with Chris Conway, our EarthCraft Technical Advisor. It's better to spend time reviewing the standard/requirements on a regular basis than to miss something and not get certified as a result. Details, details, details!

We enjoyed meeting a few folks on the lot in the past week as well. Jes and Jody are using the same house designer for a planned renovation of their home in Arlington, so we showed them our house and exchanged war stories. Chris Conway came by yesterday morning with some folks from the Environmental Protection Agency who are involved in developing the EPA's new green home program focusing on indoor air quality. It was great to get their perspective on the house. 

Recycling Dumpster, Window Update, Pranksters, and Thieves

About a month ago, I asked for suggestions from readers of this blog on where we might find a recycling dumpster for our construction materials. Sat Jiwan responded with some recommendations, Andreas made some phone calls, and we ended up choosing Environmental Alternatives, Inc. in Clarksburg, MD, which was one of the companies Sat Jiwan had recommended to us. Believe it or not, their pricing was less expensive than traditional dumpsters that just drop off at the landfill, and they'll also provide us with a detailed report of what we placed in the dumpster for recycling. That report is important for the EarthCraft House Virginia premium certification we're pursuing.

I'm dismayed that over three weeks after the great window fiasco was identified, we still do not have a resolution. Another meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday between Quality Window & Door and Sustainable Design Group. I'm hoping everything will be resolved to our satisfaction by the conclusion of that meeting. The windows are so important to the house and these companies advertise as professionals. I truly hope they live up to their word. A few folks have emailed me noting they are considering doing business with these companies but are awaiting the resolution of this window mistake before proceeding. I'll be sure to post on this blog when this issue is resolved (or not).

The final grading was supposed to have been done Wednesday and Thursday of this week, so the weekend was spent moving supplies, sorting through some leftover wood from framing to keep good pieces for other projects, and to recycle the remainder of it. Lots of manual labor, dirt, sweat, and general hard work. Just in time for the rain, which will delay the grading. That's OK though, now the lot is ready and the grading can happen when Mother Nature's ready for it to be done. In other news, the electrical rough-in work has been completed. The plumber will be on-site soon to start the plumbing rough-ins. Our contractor, Aaron, is on vacation this week and I'm heading out of town for business, so not much will take place on the house.

We know the quantity of signs in our front yard is a bit much, but once we had a couple signs from key vendors/partners, like the bank, the EarthCraft Virginia program, and our contractor, many other vendors jumped on the bandwagon adding their signs to the bunch. For a while, we thought perhaps the signs were mating and having babies when no one was watching! Well, someone had a bit of fun on Saturday evening at our lot. Someone, perhaps a group of kids, rearranged all of the signs, grouping them together and turning some around so they couldn't be read from the street. That actually was kind of funny. 

What was not so funny was the theft of about 150-200 leftover Terrabricks (Compressed Earth Bricks) that disappeared from our lot on Thursday night or Friday during the day. We didn't need them for the house, and the theft saved us the time and energy moving them out of the way so the final grading can be done, but we were planning to use those for a wall at some point in the future. It's never a happy time when someone steals something from you, but it's a good thing for us that we don't leave anything of significant value on the property sitting around. With technology as it is today, I wouldn't suggest anyone try to steal anything else, unless they'd like to risk the chance of being caught on video in the act. 

Community Outreach

I've written previously how much we're looking forward to moving to the City of Falls Church. Arlington, where we live now is great, and I've loved living here the past twelve years, yet there's something different about Falls Church that makes it feel more small town, more "homey," more connected from a community perspective. That was proven to us again today when we attended the City's Village Preservation and Improvement Society (VPIS) meeting.

VPIS works to preserve the City's natural and built environment, historic structures and landmarks, and promotes cultural activities. The topic of today's agenda was green construction. Patty Shields, sole proprietor of Metro Green, a local green construction & renovation firm, spoke about her new construction house located in the Westover neighborhood of Arlington, VA. This house, just last week, was awarded LEED Platinum. It is the first residence to gain that certification in the Mid-Atlantic area. (The home currently is on the market for $1.195 Million. We toured it during an open house a few weeks ago - it's quite nice and, if I lived there, I'd spend most of my time on the top level enjoying the green roof!) Doug Fraser, the building official for the City of Falls Church, spoke on the City's new green home program, from which our house is pursuing recognition (in addition to the EarthCraft House Virginia program). Doug asked Andreas and I to attend the meeting and give an overview of our house, which we were happy to do. I was impressed with how many people were attending this meeting on a Spring Sunday afternoon, but even more so with the passion exhibited by these VPIS members for their city (...our city) and their genuine interest in learning about green construction.  They asked some great questions and we were happy to share what we've learned along the way. It also was fun to meet some of the folks who have been following this blog (thanks!) and also some new neighbors over off of Lincoln Avenue. It was an enjoyable afternoon.

Also, today, we spent some time cleaning at the lot, giving the shop vac a good workout upstairs while Andreas pulled some nails out of perfectly good (reusable) board the framers had thrown on a scrap pile. Even though we'll be recycling any leftover scraps, we don't want to waste what we can reuse ourselves.

Weekend Summary

I truly was hoping to have positive news on the "Window Worries" post by now, but despite multiple conversations, our house designer, John Spears, and the folks at Quality Window & Door still have not come to any resolution. As happens so often, each side made mistakes and no one's willing to take responsibility. Hopefully continued discussions next week will lead to a quick resolution. We'll be in the third week of discussions. Enough talking, time for action!

Piedmont Roofing finished the installation of the standing seam metal roof. It looks awesome! Well, except one piece of metal on the North side fascia at the very back of the house, which looks severely dented. I was told by the roofers that it will be fixed when the drip edge is completed after the EIFS is installed. Piedmont Roofing's been a great company to work with - honest, helpful, responsive, quick. But I think we need to hold some money back from the final payment until it's resolved to our satisfaction.

Speaking of EIFS, we're chomping at the bit to get the extruded foam board and stucco installed. But that can't happen until our contractor, Aaron, caulks around all of the doors and windows as required by the EarthCraft House program. There are a host of other items that need attention over the next week in order for us to stay on track with Tier 3 certification, which is the EarthCraft Premium level.

We had an extremely informative meeting with Chris Conway (the Green Gobbler) with Conway Construction. Chris is our technical advisor for the EarthCraft program and he is worth his weight in gold! We don't need a psychologist while building a house, since we have Chris! Andreas and I went to DC on Friday morning and toured my friend Mike's townhouse which is in the final stages of a complete renovation. His house is absolutely beautiful and I can't wait to see the finished project. From there, we went to our construction project and met up with Chris. On the way out to our project, Mike asked what the value was in pursuing a green certification for the house. Most folks think we're getting tax credits or something similar. My answer to Mike was that EarthCraft is giving us peace of mind, since it's another set of eyes looking at this project and comparing the on-going work to an established, vetted standard. EarthCraft is our construction conscience ensuring the right thing's being done at all times. That's not to say that mistakes won't be made, but someone else is looking out for us to ensure they're not covered up in a way that would be harmful to us or to the environment. 

I'll interview our EarthCraft technical advisor, Chris Conway, and write that up for the blog in the coming weeks.

 

Smooth As Silk

While I was in Montreal for work this week, the pressure test of the radiant floor tubing was conducted (we did a great job, the tubes consistently are holding 65 psi) and the folks at Bartley Corp. poured the 4 inch concrete slab in the basement as well as the area way steps. This concrete had about 30% fly ash in the mixture, which makes it much more environmentally friendly and will score us even more points on the EarthCraft House certification.

Several people who know about such things were incredibly impressed with how smooth Bartley finished the slab. That's exciting for us, as the concrete will be the floor - there won't be carpeting, tiles, wood, or any other flooring on top of the concrete, so smooth makes us happy! I didn't get a close up look at it myself yet, since it was raining tonight and our construction site is a mud-pit, but I hope to be able to admire Bartley's work up close and in person on Sunday.

We thought all of the TerraBricks/CEBs would have been made by now, but when I stopped by this evening, it seems like they have a ways to go yet.

FSC Wood Arrives! FSC Wood Installed!

One of Earthcraft's requirements to certify a house as green, is that more than 50% of the wood used in the house must be sustainable/green. One program that promotes sustainable practices for wood products and certifies wood as sustainable is the Forest Stewardship Council. The wood we purchased from T.W. Perry's branch in Gaithersburg, MD is FSC certified. Also, our first floor deck (not outside deck, but actual subfloor on the inside of the house) is AdvanTech, a green engineered wood product. Here's our stack of wood products just after delivery: And here's the framing crew, headed up by Hector, working away early on a Saturday morning to install the floor joists and first floor deck:

It's Easy Being Green

We've posted earlier blogs about the EarthCraft Virginia certification program. On Tuesday, we met with Chris Conway, our EarthCraft technical advisor; John Spears, our architect; and Aaron Holmes, our construction manager, to review the EarthCraft certification standard and to determine if we met the requirements and could achieve enough points for the house to be EarthCraft certified.

EarthCraft has three levels of certification: regular EarthCraft House, Tier 2 (known as EarthCraft Select), and Tier 3 (known as EarthCraft Premium). As you might guess, the required standards are even more stringent for tiers 2 and 3 and more points are required for each higher tier. (150 for regular, 200 for tier 2, and 230 for tier 3)

It took over three hours to review the certification technical standards worksheet line-by-line and compare that with our house plans. Since we set out for this to be a green house, we expected to easily achieve the regular EarthCraft House certification. After the careful review, it became clear that we had met all of the requirements for EarthCraft Premium certification AND we earned 462 total points as we calculated them. The certification restricts the total number of points that can be earned for certain categories (e.g., Durability, Energy Efficiency) and when we capped our points for these categories, we were still left with 331 points. Since Tiers 2 and 3 are new categories as of April this year and, to the best of our knowledge, no one else has built an EarthCraft Premium certified house, we have a chance at being the first EarthCraft Premium House in Virginia. That would be wonderfully amazing if we can make it a reality.

Kermit the Frog says it's not easy being green. I beg to differ. It is easy - you just need the right architect!

Certifiably Crazy

While some people think we're certifiably crazy for embarking on this project (instead of just buying an existing house), we think it would be crazy to buy a traditional (energy inefficient) house in the DC area that we don't really like and then have to put a lot more money into updates and upgrades. This way, we get what we want in terms of style of house, sustainability in construction and living, etc.

Speaking of certifying, we attended a green building class in Roanoke this past week for the EarthCraft Virginia certification program. This training was geared for construction companies, architects, etc., but they allowed us to attend as owner-builders. The EarthCraft certification is like LEED for homes, but it's a much less expensive certification process. The program started in the Atlanta area and, to date, more than 4,500 homes have been certified by EarthCraft. The program expanded into Virginia just a few years ago and they are hoping to certify several hundred homes annually in the Commonwealth.

The seminar focused on how the certification program works. There are minimum requirements that must be met in order to receive EarthCraft certification, then there are other points a builder has to earn in addition to the minumum requirements. Many of these requirements are tied to energy efficiency. For some homebuilders, this will take some significant change to their construction practices in order to achieve certification. For us, since we have intended the house to be environmentally-friendly from the start, this is a validation to ensure we are actually building green.

We've been assigned an EarthCraft technical advisor who will oversee our construction and conduct some on-site inspections to ensure we meet the required standards. We're very hopeful that we'll achieve this certification.