Local Wildlife

Local Wildlife Under Our Deck

Going Green Isn't Always Staying Green!...Thought you might enjoy the fall colours.

The Latest and Greatest from the Lakehouse

I'ts Coming Together

It’s coming together!!! Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time for updates as it’s busy season at work so please be patient and hopefully I’ll get something up soon. For a quick update, the basement suite kitchen has been completed, including the 24 volt fridge, microwave, wood stove, and propane oven and cooktop. The photo voltaic solar panels are now up and running and the Longvie propane wall heater is installed. Also, I’m currently experimenting with some different LED lighting and setups.

Upcoming projects….the propane generator needs to be installed and the interior trim and interior doors still need to be installed.

Some of the Local Wildlife

These are a couple of my more creative and cute neighbours!!!

Stairway to Heaven or Ramp Down to the Dock?

View From Above

This photo was taken from a plane and I’m not sure who took it, but I thought it was a neat shot of the lake. Right now the lake colour is more brown than usual – because of all the forest fires and the rain last week there’s been some erosion.

Fan Door Test

Air tightness is the third leg on this three-legged table. If you have a coffee table designed for three legs, what good is it if it only has two legs? If you have a Super Insulated House with a high efficient Heat Recovery Ventilation system, what good is it if it isn’t air tight? Not much!

The R2000 air tightness standard to meet is 1.5 air changes per hour at 50 pascals negative pressure. Any house meeting this standard is extremely air tight! I want this cottage to be extremely air tight and the only way to confirm this and find out where it isn’t is to do a “fan door test.”

Lucky for me I have a son who is a keener when it comes to draft proofing; in fact he is starting his own company which he is appropriately calling “Comfort Home Draft Proofing.” Okay, the nut didn’t fall too far from the tree… but it’s a good thing because his cost to me is so low I will be doing these fan door tests several times. We are at the critical stage where any leaks we discover can be corrected. Everyone building a home should be doing a fan door test at the drywall stage, to confirm that the house meets this standard.

This test will really separate builders who know what they are doing from those who don’t. You can see the sprayed foam and read all the data about the excellent properties. You can see the HRV with its duct runs and read the tested efficiencies at various outdoor temperatures – however you can’t see air tightness! You need to do a fan door test! In the photos you can see the fan door being set up and you can also see the vapour from the smoke pencil.

With the house under strong negative pressure even a very small pin hole air-leakage spot will show up when the smoke vapour moves. At this point Jordan will mark the leakage location and he will go back later with the foam and seal the leaks. When he has completed this remedial work he then restarts the fan and checks the area again to confirm that the air leak has been fixed. Once we know most of the leaks have been plugged he will do a final fan door test with all the house data put into the system/computer. At that point, I will let you know the empirical results. It’s been over 40-degrees Celsius most of the week so after working most of the day there is nothing like diving into a glacier fed lake to cool off.

Hey… this lake is supposed to be cold!

Day 4… Let There be Light

Photo Voltaic Solar Panels are how we will get most of our electricity. There are three for now and another three when we develop the top floor next year… hopefully. It may be difficult to comprehend that in 100 square feet of collector we can get much of the power needed to power all of the electrical lights, equipment and appliances for most of the year.

Our lot is close to 30,000 square feet (almost an acre), therefore our collector area represents approximately 1/3 of 1% of the potential sun energy hitting our property. Thanks for the help that day ‘bro’! That’s my little / big brother in the photo.

 

Wow… free help, free power and a solar panel rack that will double as a kayak shelter. Don’t things work out grand sometimes!

The Sharp Solar Panel Poly-Crystalline Solar Module with 224Watt Maximum Power This poly-crystalline 224 watt solar panel / module features 13.74% module efficiency for an outstanding balance of size and weight to power and performance. The reengineered frame includes a contoured edge to improve water management, reducing surface moisture and debris. The new back support bars allow better performance under mechanical load. Using breakthrough technology, perfected by nearly 50 years of Sharp’s research and development, the ND-224U2 modules incorporate an advanced surface texturing process to increase light absorption and improve efficiency.

Common applications include commercial and residential grid-tied roof systems as well as ground-mounted arrays. Designed to withstand rigorous operating conditions, Sharp’s ND-224U1F modules offer high power output per square foot of solar array and feature:

• High-power module (224W) using 156mm square polycrystalline silicon solar cells with 13.74% module conversion efficiency.

•Sharp’s advanced surface texturing process increases light absorption and efficiency while providing a more subdued, “natural” look.

• Bypass diodes minimize the power drop caused by shade.

• Water white tempered glass, EVA resin, and a weatherproof film, plus aluminum frame for extended outdoor use.

• Sharp modules are manufactured in ISO 9001 facilities in the USA and come with a 25-year limited warranty on power output.

Cottage stays Cooler! Sun Angles Re-Visited… It’s Working!

As I mentioned it was extremely hot outside however the cottage stayed significantly cooler. I spent the afternoon inside the house installing the same (different size) Nomalock insulation on my Domestic Hot Water lines and the recirculation on the Navien water heater.

I took this photo at just after 5 PM. The sun is just starting to make contact with the West side windows… add in the other well designed over hangs, the extremely high insulation levels, the reflective metal roof and the high performance windows and what a surprise… you have a much cooler house!

Installing the Geothermal Piping

The weather has been extremely hot lately and on this day the temperature was expected to get close to 40 degrees Celsius so we planned to start working earlier in the morning while it was still cooler. The trench had been dug the day before; we were going to install 4 items in this trench. The 1st item is the geothermal water lines to the lake, 2nd was the irrigation water line to the beach plateau, 3rd was the electrical tech cable to the PV solar rack on the beach and the 4th was the “Big O” drain pipe from the house surface water.

My job was to install the insulation around the pipe. I used a pipe insulating foam product called Nomalock, it is cheap, excellent quality, very easy and quick to install. The entire installation went like clock work, we started at 7AM and all 4 lines were buried by 12:30 and the water line was working on the beach….we were finished! Now when I say finished….I mean almost dead….in fact my neighbour who was helping ended up throwing up and in bed with sun / heat stroke.

The trail to the beach is very narrow so we could only excavate 2 feet deep…6 feet deep is required you are wanting to extract heat from the ground in this region therefore we needed to insulate these geo lines. These buried larger lines will be the supply and return header system because our geothermal system will take all the heating and cooling out of the smaller pipe loop field in the lake. At this point I am hoping to install the loop in the lake sometime next year.

Drain Water Heat Recovery

Randy (my plumber) installed my “drain water heat recovery” unit today.

The purpose of a “drain water heat recovery unit” is simply to recover the thermal energy we normally throw away down our drain, particularly during a shower. The Watercycle model DX 4048 (the brand I chose) is a water to water heat exchanger designed for use with drain water.

Water is the most expensive natural element to heat and carries a significant amount of energy. Any hot water that goes down the drain carries away energy with it. That’s typically 80–90% of the energy used to heat water in a home. Drain water heat recovery systems capture this energy to preheat cold water entering the water heater. This drain water heat recovery technology works well with all types of water heaters, but especially with my demand (instantaneous Navien water heater) and my future solar pre-heater.

Water will enter our home between 5C– 12C and is heated to 50C in my water heater. Showerhead temperature is approximately 41C and this warm water is going down the drain.

This energy will be brought back into my home to substantially reduce hot water heating costs. The Watercycle is a drain waste heat exchanger which will heat water coming into our home by 12C (43.5% effective) using energy from the water going down the drain.

It’s very simple, there are no moving parts and it consumes no energy; it just saves energy and money since I will now require less energy to heat my water.

This Cracker wants to Poly! Vapour barrier detail is Leo’s game.

Leo has to be the fastest staple gun in the west. He was applying acoustical caulking (referred to as “black death”) and stapling the vapour barrier on all of the load points and other areas that foam will not be applied. It was a pleasure to watch him fly around at great speed while still producing a quality job. I had intended to “fan door test” his work unfortunately I forgot the equipment at home. Had I been able to do this test where I would have depressurize the house to a significant negative pressure, I would get a measured result to see how well Leo really did. The R2000 Standard is 1.5 Air Changes per Hour at 50 Pascals negative pressure. I intend to do this fan door test numerous times over the next couple of weeks to identify any missed spots with the caulking, vapour barrier and / or foaming. When I built my Burnaby R2000 house in 1983 I did this blower door test 4 times during the insulation / drywall stage…..it was very educational and rewarding finding areas that were missed and then fixing them. Over the last 27 winters we have never spent over $100. a year to heat our Burnaby home. I want this house to exceed the standard and to be extremely air tight …… it will be!

To Air is Human… this Quack is trying to Seal my Duct!

Rich (my neighbour at Lillooet Lake) is laughing now, but if this duct isn’t air tight “somebody’s gonna get a hurtin.” Duct seal isn’t pretty to look at so you may as well do it with your eyes closed… apparently!

Air leakage on ductwork is no laughing matter. After a great design and a quality installation it would be nice if the air actually got delivered to its destination. There has been little improvement in sheet metal fabrication in the last 100 years. Air leakage is particularly noticeable on the gores (seams) on elbows, seams on pipe and the joints. At our company, where we always “duct seal” every job and then we “duct blast” (fan pressurization) our installed sheet metal work and it is surprising to still find air leakage, especially when our guys understand the issues and work very hard to avoid leakage. Our goal at Solace Homeworks is 95% air delivery which is difficult to achieve, however we consistently do it and what it accomplishes is dramatic. I will get into the many benefits of  forced air systems for air tight homes in a later topic.