Making Our Home a Home Sweet Home: Part 3 - Fixtures and Equipment

Around the time of the window replacement, our gas pack (a combination air conditioner and gas furnace) needed to be replaced.  At that time, the contractor mentioned we didn’t need to bother replacing the ductwork, as it was R-4.2.  I didn’t look into what that meant (as far as ENERGY STAR or other recommended performance programs) and just took his word for it.  Later, after looking in my scary crawl space (see Part 2), I understand why he did not want to replace them or at least seal them.  While he installed a new digital thermostat, it was not programmable.  I also did not know to inquire about SEER and AFUE ratings (air conditioning and furnace efficiency ratings, respectively), so he just replaced it with whatever was on sale at the time.

A while back Duke was giving away low-flow fixtures to its employees (my wife Beth qualifies here), so we picked up a 2.2 gallon-per-minute showerhead.  But, it still takes a good 20-30 seconds for hot water to reach its destination at any of our three fixtures.  We have replaced all our incandescent bulbs with CFLs, but still have one halogen lamp.  Reasonable LED torch style floor lamps are not readily available yet.

These are not uncommon circumstances.  Ideally, of course, we’d address all these issues in one fell swoop.  All the walls, roof and crawl space need (some, or better) insulation and air sealing, which would impact the load and therefore size of the HVAC equipment.  We could use a more efficient water heating system, or at least a recirculating pump to minimize water use.  We should replace all our appliances with ENERGY STAR rated ones.

I’m guessing our financial reality is like a lot of other folks.  A lot of other responsibilities and commitments, with school debt, three kids, travel plans, the list goes on.  But, we got to the point where how we feel at home became a real priority.  The following posts will describe the pathway we took, and the thinking, and building science, behind it.

Making Our Home a Home Sweet Home: Part 2 – The State of the House

We moved into to our Durham bungalow in 2002. It is of 1940 vintage with a brick façade on the 24’ by 36’ original footprint.  A 12’ x 22’ wood sided addition was added 10-15 years later off the back of the house, and vinyl siding covered the same years later.  The home was drafty, inconsistent, and generally uncomfortable, in regard to temperature. When we first moved in the windows were hernia-inducing. By 2006, well before I was trained in existing home performance, we replaced them simply for the ability to open them and get fresh air and not necessarily for the energy improvement (which the new ones certainly provided). So new windows were in place when we started looking into our recent comfort improvements.  (I’ll pause here to say that I have learned that replacing your windows may not be the best first step to improving energy efficiency or comfort in your home. The following discoveries in our home seem to confirm the same.) We have storage in the attic, but it’s a shallow space with hardly room to stand between the collar ties and rafters.  Fetching stored kids clothes out of the attic was a trip to the sauna in summertime. The leaky access door provided a ready avenue of airflow. An interesting excuse for insulation had settled between the ceiling joists: some sort of black, sooty rock wool. The soffits lacked any venting. Two gable vents and a passive turbine vent were present.  The hardwood floors above our crawlspace gave us frozen toes in winter. The crawlspace itself was a horrible dungeon; a cobwebby critter hotel full of allergen-rich air rising into the house through the floorboards.  When we put a French door off the back room to the patio this fall (not an energy decision), we discovered the lack of quality and quantity of insulation in the addition.  As it turns out, there was no insulation in the walls and only a six-inch layer of critter covered fiberglass batt insulation laid on the drop ceiling above. It was actually a welcome discovery, because we now knew why that space was so generally uncomfortable. This also helps to confirm the likelihood and unfortunate reality that there is no insulation in the plaster-finished walls of the original (brick) portion of the house.

Pictured Above: The crawlspace. Typical by local standards including moisture, mold, cobwebs, and critters.

Making Our Home a Home Sweet Home: Part 1 - Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home. It’s pretty easy to read that phrase as cliché, passé, or as a slogan some potato chip maker might use to associate the taste of their potato chips with warm fuzzy feelings. I used to think all these things, until very recently, when my wife, Beth, and I decided to do some work at our house to improve comfort, health and performance. It’s actually been sort of transformational for me, making physical investments in this house. I’m buying into it, literally and figuratively.  Into the house, and the place, the neighborhood, the town, for our marriage, our family, our home. It feels good.

See, we’re traveling people. We both were born on other sides of the planet, and made our way to a common hometown on Virginia. Our nearly ten years here in Durham is practically the longest either one of us has spent in one place, let alone one house.  It has been a long process settling in here, but each year it feels more and more like home, especially with three little girls under the roof (when they’re not raising the roof!).

We’ve done some painting, made some minor interior changes over the years, but I didn’t really start to feel ownership in the place until we started making some significant comfort improvements. Sure, I have dreams (big ones) about designing and building a home for us someday. Who doesn’t? And, for crying out loud, I work at a design-build company, so the waiting strikes me each day as I view the delightful design work gracing the monitors around the office! Alas, it is not time, but we have warmed to our little Durham bungalow, and even a bit more, literally, with the recent work we have done. Bloom where you’re planted - Puttin’ down roots - Love the home you’re with. Choose your phrase, that’s what we’re doing!

What have I done, already, you ask? Great question. I’m a Home Performance Specialist after all.  So, I put my work into practice on my own home. Over the next week or so, I’ll walk you through the former state of our home, the approach I have for generating decision making, and the decisions we made for our home and our comfort. Stay tuned!

           Pictured Above: Bradley, Beth, and the girls at home.

Quite Possibly the Coolest Tool Ever

We no longer demolish at BuildSense. We deconstruct. What is the difference, you ask? Demolish equals knock it down and take it to the landfill. Deconstruct equals take it apart and sell it, use it, or recycle it. We often work with Habitat for Humanity deconstruction teams that resell the deconstructed materials at their Restore. The owners get a donation letter (tax day is coming up). Sometimes we directly reuse the materials. I have a serious pile of cleaned bricks at my farm for our upcoming house project (basement walls and columns) and a massive pile of old driveway concrete chunks that are slowly becoming retaining walls. But I digress.

The real point of this blog is to talk about the coolest tool ever. It is a de-nailer. This thing works like (and looks like) an air powered framing nailer in the reverse. You just slip the sleeve over the end of the protruding nail and squeeze the trigger. The offending nail pops out the other side (watch your toes). This radically speeds up the cleaning and de-nailing process for used lumber so it is ready for reuse. Nifty.

                                     Here's the link: http://nailkicker.com/joomla/

And no, I do not own stock in the company. Just a good idea for demolition done right: deconstruction, reuse, resale, or recycle.

Reclaimed Water: No Gray Area

Building codes are written for public safety. Sometimes they are quite clear and logical, sometimes they aren’t. Typically, it is disastrous situations that result in code modifications. Townhome and row house fires brought about greater fire separation between units. College dormitory fires brought about a sprinkler requirement. Occasionally, the code comes out with strong initial prohibitions to unfamiliar systems. One such situation was the use of reclaimed rainwater.

Though collected and reclaimed rainwater has been used for human water needs since the beginning of time, it was an unfamiliar commodity when introduced into the commercial building realm. So much so that collected rainwater was lumped in with all “gray” water. Gray water is water that is gathered after running through your laundry, dishwasher, down your sink or shower drain. Since the code lumped together the collected rainwater and gray water, it was all required to be chemically treated and dyed for public safety means before it was delivered to irrigate your landscape or flush your toilet. This makes sense for the soapy water out of your drain, but should it be required to chemically treat water that fell from the sky because it was gathered in a cistern before it was delivered to the earth? Some municipalities even required far-fetched labeling measures including “Non-Potable Water” signage over the toilets and urinals. (A thoughtful requirement for dogs that can read).

Fortunately, logic has set in and the latest NC Code update has separated reclaimed rainwater requirements from gray water requirements. Gray water must still be chemically treated and dyed, while rainwater requires a much simpler process. At ClearSense Properties’ 502 Rigsbee Building, we have implemented a reclaimed water system to flush toilets and provide drip irrigation to the landscaping. Less than 1” of rainwater on the roof overflows the 3000-gallon cistern. The water runs through a heavy particle filter prior to arrival in the cistern. Cistern water flows through an additional series of micron particle and UV filters before distribution through two non-potable supply lines; one to the seven toilets in the building and the other to the exterior landscaping. No chemicals or dyes endanger our pipes and fixtures from long term wear, corrosion, or staining. A solenoid valve allows for back-up use of city-supplied water in the rare event that the cistern runs dry. We are installing individual line metering to monitor the non-potable and city back up water use. Calculations based on the low flow dual flush toilets and anticipating 1” of landscape irrigation per week reveals a reduction of over 60,000 gallons per year from city water supply. (Pictured Below: Exterior cistern at 502 Rigsbee during construction.)

ClearSense Update: Reuse – Big and Small

It recently occurred to me that in the midst of moving at a million miles an hour on this project, we have only been updating our BuildSense|Studio B “on the boards” and “under construction” facebook page with images of the new building during construction. This is truly unfair, because it is only half of the story. For those of you unfamiliar with Downtown Durham, you may not be aware that this building has had a previous life. Originally constructed in 1945, the one story masonry building served as a farm equipment and tractor service center. In the early 1970’s it became the “Tire King” and has been largely recognized as such for many years until they relocated up the road two years ago.
That’s where our story of reuse started. Though the building was filthy, dark, and dank, and reeked of old oil, we observed a masonry shell that had not endured significant cracking or damage after certainly settling and shifting to its maximum over 55 years. We were happy to know that we could reuse this existing structure to support the needs of raising the roof and adding a second story.
Interestingly, the decision to add a second story prompted numerous ideas for the best manner to achieve it. The roof was comprised of 2x10 wood joists supported by steel beams. While this certainly supports a typical residential floor load, the commercial loading requirement would have required additional joists and still flexed underfoot. Furthermore, the exposed ceiling would offer little for sound insulation from the first to second floors, nor have any fire resistance value. Some combination of insulation and gypsum board ceiling would be required. The topside would surely require an additional layer of plywood to smooth out the surface after the old membrane roof removal destroyed the existing underlayment. Then we would be required to finish the floor with a final floor covering. Is this all worth it; especially knowing that it would continue to have the 3” slope over 50 feet (the slope of the old roof)? The answer for us was “no”, and I am very pleased with the decision.
We removed all the old wooden joists and salvaged them on site. We installed new infill steel beams between the existing beams and columns and added a steel deck above. We poured a composite concrete slab from 5” to 8” in order to remove the slope. Additionally, it serves to structurally strengthen the existing steel and provides a structural diaphragm for the overall stability of the entire building. There is absolutely no bounce in the floor. It carries a one-hour fire resistance rating. It provides great sound insulation. Both the underside of the steel deck and the sealed concrete floors will serve as finish surfaces. The moral here is that sometimes striving to save certain items, though it emotionally feels right, is actually the wrong decision.
So how did we get back to feeling great about both the new concrete floor and removing the old joists? We stored the joists on site and have used them for infill framing and blocking for interior non-structural framing. Additionally, we have made use of them in a rather non-traditional manner by designing and building our new main staircase of the repurposed material. Members of our skilled team, including George Thorpe, Bradley Yoder, and Scott Metheny have been transforming the old lumber into a new feature. In a unique manner, the new stairwell will tell the story of the old building every time a visitor traverses the stairs. (Below, Scott stands on one landing laid out in the shop with treads in the foreground).

ClearSense Building December Update

December saw lots of changes at the ClearSense building on Rigsbee Ave in downtown Durham. We started the month with the new steel frame, roof, and floor slabs in addition to what remained of the exterior shell of the original single story building. We are very pleased with our choice of roofing panel. The R-42 insulated metal panel is both super insulated and aesthetically pleasing on both surfaces. The underside will be the finished ceiling to the second floor interior space. (see photo below)

By the holiday break (at our required pace for this project, none of our team took much time off), one interior stair was roughed in, plumbing, mechanical and electrical systems were at 50%, storefront window frames were installed, and some of the second story siding work was completed. Most prominently, the wind turbines and photovoltaic array are up! (see photo of the ClearSense rooftop below) These systems combine for a rating of approximately 35.5 kW to power the building of just under 12,000 square feet. The turbines are quite prominent, practically a beacon of clean energy generation. We're very proud of them - are they the first building mounted wind turbines in Durham, in the triangle, in the piedmont? Please let us know. Unless someone tells us otherwise, we'll take credit for that as another of many "firsts" in our local building industry (see our website “Recognitions” page for more).

Our goal is that the building itself will be constructed to be approximately 50% more energy efficient than a typical existing commercial building of the same size and use and that the clean energy generation will provide approximately 37% of the remaining power needs of the building. Though our team only designs and builds energy efficient and certified "green" buildings, we were able to exceed our regular standard and install the clean energy generation systems with the help of a grant proposal accepted by the North Carolina Green Business Fund. We are very pleased to have established this relationship and thankful to the NCGBF for their assistance. Stay tuned for more on the innovative work at 502 Rigsbee Avenue.