When Times are Tough...

...insulate your walls with used lunch bags. Yeah, no kidding, we really found this jammed in behind the bathroom window exterior trim. Hey, whatever slows the draft, I guess.

• 4/9 :: Jeremy adds : So what did the guy have for lunch. A peanut-butter sandwich??? That is crazy fun to find.

Earth Advantage Certification Part 1

A week or so ago, Rachael, Alex (project head), Stephen (Green Hammer owner) and Rebecca (helps navigate green certification processes) met with Glen Wear at Earth Advantage. Earth Advantage was once an energy-reduction program run through PGE and is now an independent (of PGE and Enron, thankfully!) non-profit that works with homeowners, developers and contractors. The primary focus of Earth Advantage remains energy management, but now extends to include indoor air quality, environmentally responsible building practices and resource efficiency.

We worked with Glen to identify the specific aspects of our remodel that are, and are not, green. The list was 19 pages long, and while we didn't have every box on every page checked, it was evident that we had made many intentional, sustainable choices. Some of those choices were ours--we knew we wanted: a house with a smaller footprint, to reuse as much as possible, to use FSC certified wood and low-VOC paints and primers, to create a drip irrigation system, and so on--but many others came from Green Hammer. Many of their "green" practices are inherent to the way the company runs. These include Non-required erosion control, recycling what can't be reused, reusing all that can be, participating in green building symposiums and buying locally.

We'll hear back from Glen in the next week or so with some suggestions for improvement as well as some cost estimates (non profit does not mean free!). Glen will need to test some air flow aspects to see how leaky our house is and how quickly air recycles. More on this when we get there!

Uncrumbled

We had to fix the rough opening of this basement window. The concrete around it was crumbling badly and the wood was beginning to show signs of deterioration and rot. Since this window will soon be obstructed by a deck, it's better to take care of it now rather than wait. We're keeping the window despite the deck because we'll still want to be able to ventilate the basement bedroom/office with a cross-breeze.

This window is in the Southwest corner of the basement. The view is facing Northwest, into the back yard.

Seismic Plates

These seismic plates are installed in nine or ten places around the basement. If the earth starts shaking, they'll help prevent the sill plates from walking off the foundation. The bolts along the bottom edges are epoxied into the concrete (yes, with city-approved epoxy!). This page at Seismic Safety has a good overview, with illustrations, on how you go about retrofitting your house for earthquake resistance.

Earthquake Insurance

Unlike the prescriptive hold-down anchors we used in the stair tower, this is a retrofit hold-down anchor. They look the same, but the difference is that these bolts are sunk into holes drilled into the 100-year-old concrete foundation underneath. They're held in place with epoxy instead of the poured concrete that would otherwise dry around the prescriptive type of anchor.

When you install a retrofit hold-down in Portland, you have to pay a certified testing and inspection company to stand there while your contractors epoxy them into place. This is the most we've ever paid anyone to stand and watch something happen. At least the engineer, Anthony, was a nice guy.

The upside (ha!) is now that we're officially on record as having used city-approved epoxy, we'll hopefully be able to get earthquake insurance. This is probably a good thing to have if you live on the Ring of Fire. We won't know for sure until we talk with our home insurer. We'll be sure to update you later on their verdict.

Kitchen Demo Close-Up

At the risk of sounding redundant, this is a very busy mess.

This is Our House on Drugs

Apparently, we can't get enough deconstruction. We'd really thought that was behind us. Are we addicts? The builders called us this afternoon to inform us that it would be far easier to solve some kitchen and bathroom plumbing, electrical and insulation problems by tearing down to the studs instead of fussing with fish tapes and jigsaws on and behind the existing finished surfaces.

The wooden ceiling boards over the kitchen came down first, which revealed ceiling support beams at 34" intervals. Compare to modern wall studs at 16" or ceiling joists at 12". This means that there's not a whole lot of support for the ceiling, especially if we're going to have roofers and painters up there in a couple of months. Green Hammer is going to add retrofitted interleaved supports so that we've got them every 17" or so.

This is a big mess, but in the long run it's going to save us a lot of headache and money because it'll make the systems jobs a lot easier. After this, there's not much left to deconstruct except for the side access basement door (in the plan, but not done yet) and the garage (not in the plan, but coming summer of '08 or '09).

Recycled Windows

These are the old kitchen windows. We are going to reuse the muntined sashes as interior windows in the first floor landing walls. The idea is to bring some of the West-side light that enters the stair tower into the kitchen. If this doesn't make sense right now, stay tuned... the windows will probably be installed in the next week or so.

Kitchen and Bathroom Windows Out

The old kitchen and bathroom windows are out, soon to be replaced by new, Low-E insulating windows. The two kitchen rough openings are in the foreground.