Long Live EarthCraft House Virginia!

Andreas kept a close watch on the crew today, inspecting on a regular basis and coaching when they forgot to do something that met the EarthCraft House technical guidelines. The EarthCraft book and Andreas's persuasive personality persevered and, at the end of today, we had 22 clerestory windows installed! The only clerestory window issue remaining is the window that broke, presumable en route from WeatherSheild to Quality Window & Door.

If all goes well, the siding crew will finish installing the cedar siding tomorrow.

Here are some pics of the windows installed as well as the new house wrap properly installed and with seams and staples taped over.

Super Siding

Andreas snapped this photo with his iPhone and emailed it to me. I had to get it up on the blog. Doesn't the cedar siding look wonderful? I love the shiplap siding with the 1/8" gap between the boards. That adds so much character in a contemporary design way. The color of the Osmo all-natural stain we selected is so beautiful to me, exactly what we wanted, and I think it looks fantastic against the light grey/tan stucco. This is a nice way to end the day!

Holey, Holey, Holey

Bob DeMarr's crew came back to core drill some holes through the foundation and the TerraBricks for the TRV fresh air inlet and exhaust and the fireplace fresh air inlet. In addition, Piedmont Roofing came back and completed the roof penetrations for the fireplace chimney and the kitchen exhaust hood pipe.

TRV Fresh Air Inlet:

TRV Exhaust:

Fireplace chimney:


For Range Hood:

For Dryer Vent:

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:

The Electric Company

Earlier this week, Dominion Power's subcontractor dug the trench in our lot and ran the conduit and electrical wires through that. It's great that we won't have above ground power lines running from the street, down our lot, and connecting to the house. Underground lines will look better and, importantly, are not susceptible to tree branches falling on them, knocking out power.

At our condo in Arlington, we participate in the Dominion Power's green energy program. I expect we'll do the same in our new home.

At the same time the crew installs the conduit and wire for electricity, they laid conduit for Cox Cable. That's standard practice, even though we don't plan to have cable TV service.

Thanks, Tim! And Sunday Progress

Last night, Andreas and I enjoyed a delicious bottle of Prosecco, which a neighbor (Tim) gave us several weeks ago as a thank you gift for the tour of the construction site we gave him. The gift was unnecessary, but greatly appreciated. We raised our glasses toasting Tim and the other, gracious, residents of Falls Church, who we have enjoyed meeting over the past several months.

Today we cleaned more. It's not glamorous, but it is necessary. We vacuumed in the basement, preparing for more scrubbing of the floor. And the upstairs, where we cleaned up around the duct system registers. And Andreas broke up more concrete that was dropped around the lot by Bartley's crew. I think that's the last of it. Finally, we placed plastic sheeting down over the newly-poured concrete floor to protect that when the windows are installed tomorrow - at long last. Sorry, no photos again today. Except one of the tasty Prosecco!

Saturday Progress

We started work early this morning. The first task to tackle was filling in the basement window wells with stone. Of course we didn't want to fill them up all the way, but there was a deep mud pit area in each window well and that needed to be filled in, up to the base of the window well insert. We bought 1/2 ton of inexpensive #57 crushed stone to fill up most of the pit, and 1/2 ton of a more expensive decorative stone (it's called chalet) to top that off. So what you see from inside the basement is only the decorative stone. We couldn't have put any more stone in the bed of my little Ford Ranger since we already were close to maximum weight. So we thought we might have to make a second run for stone. Then it occurred to me that we could make lemonade out of the lemons Bartley's crew handed us this week. We broke up the leftover concrete they had carelessly dumped on our lot and put that in the window well pits first. We covered the broken up concrete (which is as if we had just put some larger rocks down first) with the #57 crushed stone next. It worked out well - we didn't need to make a second trip for stone and we used some of that concrete and didn't have to take it to the Fairfax County dump. There's still some left, but we think we might be able to use that for another project.

After a quick lunch, we filled the bed of my truck with free Wood Chip mulch from the City of Falls Church. We used some of it to freshen up a neighbor's yard area where some muddy water from our construction site ended up after a heavy rain earlier this week, some of it covered over the mulch Bartley's crew dumped concrete on, and the rest of it went on the corner of the lot to stabilize some soil, hoping to minimize any future run off.

Now came for the hard work - cleaning the basement floor. As we wrote in a post some time ago, before the sump pumps were installed (and once after they were installed when a crew unplugged the sump pump right before a heavy rain) we ended up with water in our basement. The water brought with it some very fine dirt that sat on the basement floor for months while we've been focused on construction. We decided to clean that up so we can soon stain the basement concrete floor. It took a few hours on hands and knees with a scrub brush, and now the basement bedroom, closet, and bathroom is clean. The floor is drying and we'll test the coloring for the soy-based stain tomorrow before we clean another part of the basement and then put down some plastic tarp to try to keep the area from getting dirty again.

Sorry there are no pictures today; we were busy working and I forgot to snap some photos. It's too dark in the basement to take good photos with the iPhone, so I'll try to bring a real camera tomorrow.

Friday Progress

A few steps forward, a few steps nowhere. Bernie from Clarke County Plumbing connected both our sump pumps, and removed our temporary sump. Once power is connected to the house, we'll have two sumps running as necessary to ensure the water level stays tame (below the house, that is).

The sump outflow into the drain tile:

A step nowhere was the power connection. Dominion Power talked a good talk about service standards to connect the permanent power, promising an install within three weeks of the order date. We originally were told it would be last week. Then on Monday, we were promised this week, absolutely, the power would be connected. Miss Utility has spray painted all of our neighbors' yards so often that it looks like kids came through marking graffiti! But still no permanent power service. We'll stay on their case - we need the power to be connected on Monday, or we may have to manage new challenges.

That new challenge is the delivery of the rainwater recapture tanks. Three tanks, 1,400 gallons per tank, totaling 4,200 gallons of rainwater. Those, too, were supposed to have been delivered this week, but they didn't make it. We didn't push that at all since Dominion Power's subcontractor has been a no-show.

The folks at ARS continue to do a great job installing the ducting for the TRV. They'll be back on Tuesday and they expect to finish then. The weather hoods for the TRV were supposed to come in today, but...you guessed it...they didn't. We're hoping they'll arrive on Monday, and Bob DeMarr's crew can come out to drill the holes in the TerraBricks for the TRV air inlet and exhaust, as well as the dryer exhaust and fireplace fresh air inlet. Demarr has a core drill which will work perfectly for each cut. Tools are a wonderful thing!

Piedmont Roofing came today and installed the flashing around the East, South, and West side of the house. It looks like they did a nice job, but Aaron will have to inspect it when he's back on our project next week. We don't know if Piedmont re-sealed the flashing on the Northern side, which seems to have been allowing water through at the seams.

And we inspected Bartley's work with the concrete floor. Overall, the floor is really cool and it's definitely the contemporary look we're going for. Bartley's crew did a pretty good job with making the floor as smooth as possible. My three complaints are: 1) the shower was poured to the wrong height - it's too low as compared to where the drain was set, and now the water won't go down the drain unless we install tile on the shower floor which will cost us more money and is not the look we want. 2) they tracked mud into the still-wet concrete, so we have a few spots throughout the first floor where one can see mud in the now-dry concrete. The crew knew this was to be our final floor finishing - nothing on top except some soy-based stain. We explained that to them before they poured and insisted they be extremely cautious as to not track any dirt or debris in, or allow any dirt or debris to rise to the top, so it was irresponsible of them to allow this. The good news is the soy-based stain color is espresso brown, so it probably won't be a problem at all. I just can't understand why workers simply ignore such important details. 3) The workers were extremely sloppy and they did not clean up their messes. There are drink containers around the house. But most disturbingly, they dumped concrete all over the place and did not clean it up. I heard Aaron give them very clear instruction, and I heard their acknowledgement understanding the instructions, that they needed to be extremely careful about where any concrete is dumped on the lot. It needed to be dumped on OSB (leftover from the parging project) at the front of the lot. Again, instructions ignored and it's extremely disappointing that Bartley's crew did not clean up after themselves. This weekend, Andreas and I will be out there cleaning up after Bartley's mess once again, then driving the concrete to the dump and paying for it to be recycled by Fairfax County. Question for any sub-contractors reading this - why is it so hard for your colleagues to follow some simple instructions/requests?

You can't see clearly in the picture, but here's the shower poured to the wrong height:

Here's their mess:

And, the moment you've been waiting for, the concrete first floor:

Windows - Now Scheduled for Monday Install

We just learned that the clerestory windows are now at Quality Window and Door and are scheduled to be installed this Monday. We know that the casing for one of the windows was broken and we haven't been told when that replacement window will arrive. But Quality said we should install the broken window anyway and replace it when the new one comes. Keep your fingers crossed that all goes well on Monday!

Renovation Nation Update

I'm back from my business trip to Florida and wanted to provide a quick update. The publicist for the Planet Green channel commented on my earlier blog post providing some clarification. She said, "My name is Janice Sample and I am the Publicist for Planet Green. I checked the schedule and it doesn't show your episode is airing tomorrow; I apologize for any confusion. I will find out when the episode will air and I will see what we can do to make sure you get a chance to view it. I will be in touch.

Best and warmest regards,
:jas"

Janice, I appreciate your taking the time to look that up and comment on the blog posting.

When I receive more information on the air date for the episode with our project, I'll let everyone know!

More Pictures From Yesterday's Concrete Pour

The pump is controlled via remote control:










Pouring the Shower:




Tools used to smooth the concrete:

Concrete Pour

They're boarding my flight to Fort Lauderdale (quick, overnight work trip), but I wanted to post these pics from the start of the concrete pour this morning. I haven't seen the end progress, but Andreas said that Bartley did a great job. P.S. The concrete is a green mixture with 40% slag (or fly ash, I didn't catch which one).

Renovation Nation

We received an email stating that the Renovation Nation episode featuring our house will be shown this Friday, August 28 at 9:00pm EDT on the Planet Green channel. However, when I look at TV Guide on-line, it indicates that two different projects will be shown on this show on that date.

With that disclaimer, please tune in to Renovation Nation this Friday, just in case the episode with our house is on. And if anyone has Planet Green channel and you'd like to invite Andreas and me over to watch the show, drop me a comment here. We don't own a TV. Ironic, I know.

Inspections and Getting Ready for the Last Pour

Today was our day of inspections. First, the City's building inspector came out for the electrical inspection. Pending a few items, we passed the inspection: one box had too many wires in it, one wasn't raised out of the floor high enough, and ... we have to have a light switch for exterior lights next to each exterior door including all 10 sliding glass doors - needless to say at this stage that's impossible, so we're going to have the lights either on a timer or a motion sensor. Ugh.

The next visit from the City was the erosion control inspector. He was just doing his usual "post storm" rounds, and commented that our erosion control measures looked good - in particular, the dug-out silt fence on the south side (see my earlier post). Phew!

And lastly, the City's urban forester stopped by to check on whether we had managed to mangle any trees. Since we hadn't all was well on that front, too.


Some more progress. First, a picture of the radiant heat pipes on the first floor that Mike and I had laid over the weekend, getting ready for the concrete pour on Wednesday.

Next, Tim Griffin from ARS came, with an ARS field service technician and his team of two installers. We had set them a hard task: the TRV (total recovery ventilator - a Lifebreath product that's a combination of both and ERV plus an HRV) that we had bought for them to install was new to them, and they had to spend some time getting familiar with it. After a bit of head scratching, and realizing it was easiest with the manual held upside down (really!) they had figured it out. Their installers cut the floor penetrations, both for the TRV, and for the ducting for a future "should-we-ever-need-it" Air Conditioning system. One word about their crew: they were the cleanest people to work on our project yet. The minute they saw our shop vac, they started using it. I was very pleased.

The floor penetrations they cut, and fitted with boots, are one of the last things we needed to get ready to pour concrete. The only things still left are a few pieces of blocking (so the concrete doesn't run into places where we don't want it, like the basement, or our windows), and we'll be ready!


(And, by way of explanation, in case you're wondering about ERVs and HRVs ... an HRV is a Heat Recovery Ventilator. It extracts the sensible heat - the heat you can feel - from the exhaust air and transfers it to the fresh supply air. An ERV, an Energy Recovery Ventilator, does that plus it also transfers the latent heat - the heat it took to evaporate moisture into the air - and so has some dehumidifying effect as well. The drawback of the pure ERV unit is that, since its core is made from paper, it is susceptible to damage from freezing in cold temperatures. Combining both an ERV and an HRV and adding a defrost cycle fixes the freezing problem, gives you the best of both ERV and HRV, and results in what Lifebreath calls a ... TRV - Total Recovery Ventilator.)

Responsibilities

The last few days have been a time to take care of some responsibilities.

Remember a post way at the beginning of this journey about me being the Responsible Land Disturber? Really what that means is that I'm the person to make sure muddy water doesn't run into our neighbours' yards or into the street. Well, we had quite a bit of rain over the weekend, and combined with the digging from the folks who put our gas line to the house (National Pipeline, under contract to Washington Gas), the silt fence on the south side of our lot was covered up to the top in mud. So, being responsibly, I spent a few hours on Sunday digging out the silt fence. Not very glamorous, but necessary.


The other responsibility we had was to make Mrs Brown's lot look nice again, after borrowing it for so long. I found some more leaf mulch at the City (free!) and hauled another (we had already previously done a few mulch runs) four truck loads to the lot. This is what her lot looks like now. Better?

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.