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.

The First 24 volt HRV in the World… We Believe!

OK the house is extremely air tight… now what? The solution is to install an Eneready Heat Recovery Ventilation system which will provide quiet, comfortable and continuous fresh air year-round with the energy saving benefit of “heat recovery”. The 24 volt motor will draw its operating electrical power directly from the 24 volt batteries that are being charged by the PV solar panels. Inside the HRV the warm, perhaps moist, stale exhaust air leaving the house transfers its heat to the incoming cooler, fresh air stream.

This HRV not only prevents stuffiness, odours and condensation problems within the house, at 22 watts of electrical power consumption it helps achieve significantly reduced heating and electrical requirements while keeping the indoor air fresh.

Dave Hill at Eneready built this 24 volt prototype HRV for me for which I am very grateful… thank you Dave.

Invasion of the Insulators

Meet Jamie and Armin, installers of “close cell” foam. I wanted 4 inches of foam, they suggested 3.3 inches and I think they ultimately sprayed 4.5 inches of this foam gives us an insulation value of R28. Add that to the exterior sheathing and the already installed three quarters of an inch of exterior Styrofoam Cladmate and we should be close to R32 or better on the wall insulation. The SIP, Structural Insulated Panel roof with 9.5 inches should be around R66 and add the ICF Insulating Concrete Foundation blocks with 5 inches of closed cell with an R35 and all I can say is that this house is now super insulated.

Closed cell spray foam is also referred to as 2 pound or medium density. This foam expands 20 to 30 times its liquid size, and seldom requires trimming with little to no waste. Closed Cell foam cures rigid and the millions of microscopic bubbles which form during the expansion reaction remain closed and intact. This traps the reaction gases, and as such the R-Value of Closed Cell foam is close to that of the reaction gas, around R 7 per inch. The Closed Cell structure is very strong; increasing shear and racking strength by 300%. Closed Cell foam is a Code Approved Vapour Barrier with a permeability rating of under 45 ng, as well as a Code Approved Air Barrier and Thermal Insulation. Closed Cell foam is spray applied as a liquid to create an air-tight seal as it expands as a foam to stop air leakage. But unlike Open Cell foam, Closed Cell foam stops both convection through and within the wall cavity. Conservation is always the best form of energy savings so I can now say that I am extremely happy with this part of the construction.

Assault and Battery

 

Well it felt like that… these batteries are 318 pounds each. It actually wasn’t that bad. At the warehouse in Delta they just loaded the batteries (4 on one pallet) on my truck with a pallet jack. It was more difficult at the cottage as Rich and I had to slide them off the tail gate, down a plank and then used a hand truck to take them to their resting place in the container we built (shown in the photo). They slide around fairly easy however I wouldn’t want them any heavier. These four Surrette Big Red batteries will be the electrical storage for all our power requirements. Initially we will install three 224 Watt Sharpe PV solar panels along with our generator for all the electrical input. I will be writing on the solar panels and the propane generator as we install them.

Living “Off the Grid” is a gas!

Yes we have eleven propane gas lines! My intention is to try to use as little propane as possible however it will be there as a back up if required. For example I have installed propane to both dryer locations (main floor and the basement suite) however we will be using a solar clothes dryer called “a clothes line”. The domestic hot water will be heated by propane and the supply water will feed through a solar system first and if the solar hot water is heated sufficiently then the propane instant DH water heater will not fire. The Navien Instantaneous Water heater modulates so that if the in coming water has only been heated 50% by the solar the Navien will only burn enough propane to finish it off to the set temperature we require. I also have four propane space heaters but we intend to use the woodstoves to do 99% of the heating. We have a gas range and cook top although in the basement we can use the woodstove as well to cook on. Our back up generator will be propane however we are hoping to only use it in the winter as we are trying to design our power requirements to be satisfied by the PV solar in the seven spring, shoulder and summer months.

Let There Be Lights… And Make Them Extremely Efficient!

This cottage is going to be used in the winter so lighting is a major electrical load to consider. The winter months have the worst insolation (amount of solar energy) which means that your lighting must be very well designed. Having highly efficient lighting operating directly off the batteries (bypassing the inverter) is a very good start, because when you’re sitting around with just a half a dozen energy efficient lights on, the inverter efficiency would likely be around 50% if the power had gone through it. Most people do not realize the advertised efficiency of their inverter is usually only when it is producing around 2/3 to 3/4 full power. The low power efficiency of almost all inverters is poor. I was extremely happy yesterday with how the communication and the timing of the electrical / lighting considerations worked out. This project has gone well but this timing was unbelievable, the best yet, and it’s encouraging when events like yesterday work out.

My electrician was supposed to start work on this coming Monday. Saturday he phoned at 9:30 AM to ask a couple of questions and make a few suggestions which let me know he was on the job site a day sooner than expected. That prompted me to go to Alex Nichol’s website (led-cfl-lighthouse.com) to explore lighting solutions. His website store was helpful, but since it raised some new questions for me. I phoned him at 10 AM. Based on his help, I phoned my electrician (Mark Rempel) back around 11 AM and found out that he was just about to start pulling wire. Together we made the decision to install the lighting wiring directly to the batteries in 24 Volt.

Then at 11:30 AM my neighbour at Lillooet Lake, Ralph Steinhauser, who is supplying my solar PV, inverter equipment etc., happened to go up there early for the weekend and came by the site and luckily met with my electrician. They were able to go over the mechanical room layout for the inverter and the batteries. Ralph was happy with the decisions we made, and my electrician was even more pleased to be involved in this project and thrilled that we were making some great decisions.

I am confident that I have made a good choice that will result in significant efficiency gains and even though I will spend considerably more on light bulbs I will spend appreciably less for PV solar panels.

In the same vein, I am planning to use the Eneready 24 volt Heat Recovery Ventilation unit that Dave Hill is currently building for me. We have been using an Eneready HRV unit from Dave in our current house for the past 27 years and so I approached him regarding constructing possibly the first HRV to incorporate 24 volt current. Also on Alex’s advice I am ordering a Sun Frost 24 volt DC fridge. They are the most efficient fridges because they use 24 VDC brushless motors so there is no inverter, no brushes or commutator to wear out. My cousins (The Bradley Brothers) are a dealer for Sun Frost. I am planning to order (from them) the R 10 model for the basement suite, which is our priority to finish this year. My electrician has already run the dedicated circuit / wire for both the HRV and the fridge to the 24 Volt panel. Since these are the only electrical loads that will run off and on, but continuously when we are there or not and because both these loads are so small (HRV 25 watts and will only operate when the humidity is above 40 percent and the R 10 Sun Frost fridge only consumes .17 KW hrs per 24 hours) it was equally important to take the electrical power directly off the batteries.

When we are further down the road (probably in about 1 – 2 months), I will have a chance to explore lighting fixtures and then I will discuss the specific light bulb needs and the choices we make. I am going to try to incorporate the bulbs that Alex already sells, however he informs me that he has access to others and there are more coming available all the time. I know a very knowledgeable lighting person (Allison at Norburn Lighting in Burnaby) that I have worked with, in the past couple of years as we renovated some sites including our 27 year old R2000 home in Burnaby. She is skilled at providing lighting and fixtures that are both aesthetically appealing as well as highly efficient at delivering the light required for the space or task. We are very pleased with the results to date.

Another important issue I will briefly mention here are phantom loads. Phantom electrical loads are in many / most TV’s, computers, printers, monitors, microwaves, cook stove clocks, instantaneous DHW heaters, infrared for security systems, etc. Some of them are on a standby mode so they will start up quickly. Always ON WARM cycle coffee pots are another always ON LOAD too. When you are on PV solar it is very significant how much power these phantom loads are draining power 24/7, and these very small loads means that the inverter will never go to the power saving sleep mode. We are going to try to avoid phantom loads. In future notes I will let you know how we make out. This is enough for now….

A Work of Art

There’s been a flurry of activity at the cottage.  Over the last couple of weeks the basement floor has been poured; the back framing is now 99% finished; all the sheet metal work is complete back to the furnace room or to the kitchen and dryer vents; the drain waste lines are and water lines are 99% complete; the underground propane line and main power feed from the generator location have been buried; the 11 propane lines in the house have been run and the work on the retaining walls has begun.  We are currently getting estimates on insulation, dry walling, painting, bathroom and kitchen cabinets.

Soon I hope to get pictures of all of this because the workmanship is outstanding – picture shiny sheet metal, black drain waste, blue Pex for the cold and red for the hot water, the propane lines (Gas Tite) in stainless steel flexible line with a bright yellow jacket and the electrical in white coated wire.  It has all been installed very neatly and truly is a work of art…at least to the mechanical eye. 

Regards

Doug