a message of sustainability from whirlpool

I attended the Central Texas Water Conservation Symposium this past week and heard a fantastic presentation by Whirlpool's Global Sustainability Director, Ron Voglewede. Ron was full of useful and interesting information as well as exciting info on new and upcoming products.

The big news (at least for me) is that Whirlpool now has a ventless, heat pump dryer (#nerdalert). I cannot tell you how happy I am to hear this (think back to Steve Jobs rolling out the first iPad and how the fanboys peed themselves with excitement. That's me + this dryer.)

Your standard dryer blows. Literally. It pulls massive amounts of air from inside your home and pushes that air to the outside via the dryer vent. This forced venting causes a negative pressure in your house which results in unconditioned air seeping into your home, and Gawd-knows-where that air is coming from (imagine rat nests, spider sacs, and turds the builder hid in your walls). Having a dryer counteracts a major reason for having a properly-sealed house. If you recall (and why would you?), I wrote a ranting post way back in 2011 about dryers called "The appliance from hell: The lowly dryer". This new dryer is a game changer.

Voglewede announced that Whirlpool launched a ventless dryer in the US six months ago that not only doesn't blow but uses 70 percent less energy than a conventional dryer (dryers tend to use twice as much energy as refrigerators). As is often the case with new tech, the machine has gotten mixed reviews at the Whirlpool site (props to Wp for leaving the one-star reviews up). According to the reviews, there appears to be a design flaw in the filters that reveals itself after half a year or so. And new tech tends to cost more (this machine runs about $1,000 retail). Given that we had to shitcan a horribly expensive cutting-edge energy-efficient Whirlpool refrigerator weeks after the one-year warranty wheezed out, we'll prolly wait until they work out the bugs on this unit (or, given the fridge experience, buy someone else's). Nonetheless, this is exciting news!

water storage tank on the back of dishwasher (source)

Modern dishwashers are amazingly efficient. Studies show that the latest dishwashers use 17 times less water than hand washing, about 3 gallons per cycle. On the latest dishwasher tech front, the Europeans get all the cool stuff: Voglewede described units that recycle water, storing it in the walls of the unit (which then act as noise and heat insulation), futher reducing water use. At some point, we'll see these units here in the US (some units here already recycle some of the water, saving the last rinse for the first rinse of the next load).

A surprising set of statistics he shared is that dishwashers are installed in only 25 percent of multifamily units (apartments) and less than 70 percent of single-family homes. Having a dishwasher could save 5,000 gallons per housing unit per year.

Voglewede said that Whirlpool is thinking outside the box by trying to achieve net-zero for their appliances (if not neg-zero). Since the 70s, washing machines use about 80 percent less energy and 73 percent less water. Modern refrigerators use less energy than a single incandescent lightbulb (with newer, more efficient models using the power of a single LED bulb [hopefully they last for more than a year...]). Along those lines, Whirlpool has a test house in Indiana called the ReNEWW House, a bungalow retrofitted to achieve net zero energy, water, and waste. The family living in the house reduced per capita water use from 91 to 34 gallons per day, is net zero on power and water (there's a rainwater system), and is 93 percent waste free. To further decrease waste, Whirlpool has designed an in-home food recycler called ZERA that can even compost bones (serial killers take note).


Being a water guy, my ears perked when Voglewede said that, with population growth, our water bills will exceed our electricity bills by 2025 (I imagine that this is averaged over the entirety of the US). That's a pretty good incentive to save water. In our house, with per capita use less than 30 gallons per day, our water last year cost $202 while our electricity cost $1,070 (up from $713 the year before due in large part, methinks, to having an electric car [oooo: I smell a future post?]).

There were other cool talks at the event (which I will probably write about in a different blog), but this one (literally) brought it home.

[2/10/18: Someone turned me on to this site on ventless dryers]

the miracle of insulation

It's a brisk morning here in Central Texas, down to 33 degrees Fahrenheit (what qualifies as a brisk mornin' 'round here...). Peering through our window toward our neighbor's roof, this is what I see: The miracle of insulation!

This photo is beautiful for several reasons. First, notice the lighter whitish colored areas on the brown composition shingle roof. Those are varying degrees of frost (I told you it was brisk!). The large squarish area of white is over a finished-out garage, completed sometime after the house was built in the 1950s. The roof in this area was clearly insulated since heat from the house hasn't melted or partially melted the frost. The rest of the house is either not insulated at all or poorly insulated (a reflection on 1950s construction, not the neighbors, who are fine folks).

Now notice the lines running toward the top of the roof: These are the underlying rafters, the 2x4s (2x6s?) holding the roof up. The frost level above the rafters is about the same in the insulated and poorly insulated parts of the roof. In the poorly insulated part of the roof, the rafters are serving as a wee bit of insulation since they preserve some frost compared to the space between the rafters. However, in the insulated part of the roof, the rafters are the weakest link, providing a comparative thermal bridge between the batts of insulation. In some parts of the roof, the rafters giveth; in other parts, the rafters taketh.

Since our roof is white, it's hard to see the frost levels and thus the amount of thermal bridging.

What does your roof look like?

week 27: doors and baseboards and pavers

Slowly but slowly the house is coming together, and it's looking mighty fine. The past week was focused on finishing the driveway pour, hashing out details on the landscaping, beginning the baseboard and (associated) door installation, and (of course) more sealing (enough with the sealing already, right!).

driveway done! (almost...)

They poured the curb and approach this past week, and it looks muy bueno. And last week's driveway pour has dried to a nice light grey. We still need to finish the drive from the concrete to the garage with grasscrete-ish material.

landscape details

Been hashing out material details with the builder on the landscaping. He was able to locate a local (and less expensive) manufacturer of elongated concrete pavers and set out some samples for us to gawk at. We're liking 'em. The pavers we would install are toward the top, and the different colors we could get are on the standard-sized pavers toward the bottom. They are made by Pavestone, and they are 3 inches by 18 inches and have other complimentary pieces if one wants them. They don't appear to be as elegant-smooth as the others we were flirting with, but our budget isn't as elegant either... However, these have enough of a different/modern twist to them to be worthy of the house.

doors and baseboards

I told the Green House Lady (who hasn't posted to her site in awhile, not even to brag about her non-existant electric bills!) that baseboards were going up before drywall, and she thought that was odd. And it is odd. Most commonly, drywall goes up first followed by the baseboards. However, since we're going for more of a clean look, the baseboards, slightly thicker than the drywall, are going up first and then the drywall will be butted against the top for a quarter-inch reveal.

We're doing the one on the right after Plan A didn't work out too well. With the concrete floors, especially since they were pre-finished, we don't need to worry about covering up a finishing gap. However, we will need to worry about that on the stairs and upstairs with the wood floors. In that case, another small board will be attached at the bottom. Saw a finish similar to this on the recent Modern Home Tour and think it will look great. The builder is little-kid excited about this detail and is talking about adopting it for all of his houses.

First things first, the doors and associated frames, to which the trim butt against, have to go in. Here are a herd of them waiting in the garage for love and attention:

And as a practice run, the baseboarder has been baseboarding the garage, which will have a similar finish to the house:

I don't think we mentioned this earlier, but the builder insulated the garage. He's a wee bit of a gear head and knows about our little cars, so he's taking special care of the garage. The insulation will be great if we ever decide to air condition the garage, a must for working on cars in the Texas heat.

None of the door-doors are installed yet, but two of the three pocket doors (master bath and master closet) are in:

And here's a detail of the trim around the door:

Kinda hard to see, but the trim is flush with the door jambs.

They also have the door and trim installed on the mechanical closet:

And have a start on the baseboards for the stairwell:

more sealing? are you serious?

Yes, more sealing... Sealing is great for fixated personalities, and we have fixated personalities (me more so than the bride...). Spent a chunk of the weekend doing a final and methodical inch-by-inch once-over on the inside of the house. The twist this time was building a home-made (half-assed) blower door with a good-sized fan, a sheet of plastic, and tape.

The idea is to create a negative pressure inside the house (the fan is pulling air from the inside and blowing it outside) such that any leaks in the house will really be sucking air. And this jerry-rigged booger worked like a charm. I could feel the egregious leaks with my skin (a couple were blowing like a Motel 6 hair dryer!) and could easily see minor leaks using a smoky incense stick:

It might be a little hard to see, but there's an incense stick coming up from the bottom-center of the photo. At the tip of the stick, there's a trail of smoke that veers to your left indicating a draft (and therefore a leak!). That hunk of metal you see there, a hanger, tends to be an air leaker. I wound up silicon sealing all the open edges of these in the house.

Wished they made purple foam sealer. Purple would look great here.

The good news is that using this method I was able to identify a few terrible leaks we had missed with our earlier efforts and discover that the storefront window in the powder room is terribly-horribly (literally rattling-in-the-frame) sealed (need to talk to the builder about that...). The other good news is that after crawling over much of the interior of the house with incense (incanting "Searching top to bottom down. Leak, I'll find you. Leak be found!") I didn't find too many leaks. Yay! The other windows, the Rhinos, are tighter than Warren Buffett on a trip to Vegas.

Today I'll be back out there (the bride is working at a power plant in Primm, Nevada, this weekend...) sealing on the outside around the exposed eaves of the front and back porches and carport. After that, I think we'll be done sealing for awhile...

week 26: flatwork, parapet tops, and mo sealing!

The big news this week is installation of the flatwork, namely the driveway and walkway to the front door. It's not all quite done yet since the city made us take out the existing curb to put in a new one. Prolly for the best since it will look better if the concrete is all of the same vintage.

One interesting element of the driveway (and there's one in the walkway) are these three-inch holes for feather grass. The foreman thought this was quite odd...

We planted a couple feather grasses to see how they would work. They work!

A subtle change is that the parapets are now topped. Yay! Adds a wee bit of bling to the tippy-top of the house.

Since nothing progressed on the interior (a good thing), I spent the day there today (my birthday!) sealing sill plates (the boards that rest on the foundation) and the boards that attach to the sill plates. I've read that gaps between sill plate and slab add up to an eight-inch square hole in your house if you don't seal them. I believe it. When I sealed the gap on the western side of the house, you could feel a breeze coming out from that crack! Will spend a few hours tomorrow touching things up, but that should settle the wheeling and sealing (except for some work planned for the outside for next weekend). At this point we've sealed every crack we can find (and reach: can't reach the top of the stairwell windows). 

Had a good meeting with the builder on Tuesday morning at Lance Armstrong's coffee shop (I wonder if they slip something extra in the coffee there...). We talked about landscaping, tile, flatwork, wood floors, wood ceilings, baseboards, drywall finish, and the coming array of events to completion. We are in the home stretch, folks!

week 13: stuck on stucco

The time lapse is updated: On to preparations for stucco! The visible progress this week is the installation of paper, lath (that chicken wire looking stuff), and flashing about the windows. These activities are giving the house a decidedly Darth Vaderish appearance as it slowly fades into the shadows [insert ominous music here].

Some writing on the floor for the soon-to-be-installed posts to support the art wall:

The bride is worried about the powder room window, which has now been papered and lathed:

And some extra stuff that needs to be returned:

The onsite pow-wow

Based on some concerns we had on the installation of the paper and the roof lines at the end of the carport and concerns the builder had on the installation of duct work, we had a big pow-wow at the site Tuesday of last week with the builder; the stucco, framing, and HVAC subs; and the architects.

    stucco
If you recall from the update last week, I was concerned about how the moisture barrier was being installed. The long and the short of it is: The way the sub is doing it isn't a best management practice (by my understanding...), but the way he's doing it is not fatal (at least I hope so...). My understanding is that the best management practice is to have (1) a formal drainage barrier and (2) two layers of moisture barrier that (3) have the two layers of moisture barrier lap themselves such that there's (potential for) a drainage plane between the interior barrier and the external sacrificial barrier. I come to this understanding from the Zip System installation instructions (they mention 1 and 2 but don't specifically specify 3), the folks over at Building Science, Corp./Green Building Advisor (they mention 1 and 2 but don't specifically specify 3), and the International Building Code (they mention 2 and 3).

Let me tell you, it was hell finding the lapping clearly explained somewhere on the interwebs. Everyone says two layers, but (almost) no one says how those two layers should lap (I finally found it in the International Building Code). The sub claims that the way he's doing it is the "right way", that you want the drainage plane to empty back into the stucco so it gets away from the house. Furthermore, he points to the Zip System as providing the fallback moisture barrier if his system fails. He also notes that moisture infiltration that results in drainage in the drainage plane is more of an issue in the wetter north than in the drier south, claiming that he's only ever seen water dripping out the bottom of a weep screed in Texas once, and that was with a 10-year-old paint job (stucco paint's ability to reject infiltration decreases with time). When asked about not having a formal drainage plane, he pointed to the drier, warmer climate of the south. When asked about the International Building Code, he points to the exception to the rule, which he says the Zip System fits into the exception (I'm not a lawyer, but my read of that exception [admittedly not the clearestly written piece of English out there...] refers to the need for double layering not the how of the layering).

I'm not convinced, but only being vaguely book-smart on the issue, hearing some of the truth of what he's saying (much of building science is biased toward the colder north), and seeing evidence of the sub's obvious concern with waterproofing the house, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. Furthermore, the builder will have all this prep work inspected by a third party expert. Plus the sub is already halfway done papering and lathing the house. The lesson here is to build construction requirements you really care about into the contract beforehand, something we didn't do. At the very least, I have photographs for the later lawsuit (Joking!!! [I hope...]).

    HVAC
The builder started off the conversation by noting that we were installing the F1 of HVAC systems, an appropriate comment since this weekend was the debut of Formula 1 racing in Austin. There are a lot of load-bearing solid beams running this way and that about the house. This makes it a wee bit challenging to run ductwork since cutting holes in solid beams could compromise the structural integrity of said beams. After a bit of looking and chatting (and subsequent advice from the engineer), we're going to drop the ceiling in the downstairs hallway in the master suite to get air over to the master closet and laundry room (I like ceiling height changes, so this is cool with me; one of the architects said that height changes make the higher heights seem higher), run the air to the master suite through the second-story roof and then down through the guest room closet (not ideal from a friction loss standpoint, but the alternative [more lowered ceilings] wasn't great), and then cut two holes in the beam in the living room to get air over yonder.

    roof line at the end of the carport
This turned out to be the easiest issue to solve despite the builder and sub initially questioning the water-proofing wisdom of it and reluctance to redo what has been already done.

I started off by pointing out the constant height of the eave edge along the front of the house, and then pointed out the non-constant thickness coming around the north side. "You referring to that triangle bit there?" the sub asked. "That looks like [let's use the word "feces" here for this family friendly blog]. I'll fix that." And that was that, fortunately, because I was willing to go to the mat on this item.

    misc.
Building a house includes lots of problem solving as issues pop up, so there were lots of side discussions about this and that, including the eyebrows over three of the windows (how to do it with stucco and avoid water and cracking issues). It seems the window guy has figured out how to install the problematic windows. We still need the storefront to get installed (at that point, we will have doors!). We talked about the garage doors (fiberglass for the side access door; aluminum with glass for the garage door (good news: We'll be able to see the Isettas; bad news: We'll have to keep the garage clean). There are some details getting worked out on exactly how the limestone for the facade will be attached and supported.

As expected, it was indeed great fun hearing the architects talk about the house and the cantilevers. The Usonian Expert, aware of the builder's concerns about the strength of the cantilever, joked that perhaps we needed a re-eneactment of Frank Lloyd Wrights famous demonstration on the strength of the columns for the Johnson Wax Headquarters by piling sandbags on top of one until it failed, way past the required strength. I proposed using architects (ha!).

next steps

Still some loose ends to clean up on the framing, need to get the roof done, and need to finish the straggling windows and doors. The builder says that once the house is closed in, work will start on the HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. He's also starting to make a push on the cabinets, so we'll need to meet with the cabinet lady. We'll also need to start thinking more seriously about the low voltage stuff (speakers and security).

week 12: windows, water, wastewater, and whatnot

Three months in: Woo hoo! Every week amazing progress happens (we've been told by folks to not get too used to that as things slow down once work focuses on the interior...).

The big news this week is that the windows arrived! And they look mighty fine. Although aluminum windows from the old days have a bad rep, these are pretty sweet with a thermal break, an Energy Star rating, and nice lines outside as well as inside. And they're recyclable! But hopefully they won't be recycled anytime soon...

In the photo above, you can see the the Hardie board installed on the house where Hardie board is supposed to be installed (stucco will be everywhere else). Also note the black lines on the green panels. The green panels are part of the Zip System, sheathing with built-in moisture barrier on the outside and special tape (that black stuff) to seal the seams.

You can also see from that photo above the face plates on the eaves, also made out of Hardie, installed. They really look sharp.

The garage is fully clad and has its windows installed (we chuckled that the garage windows are double paned...).

And there be Hardie on the south side of the house as well:

The sewer line and water lines are hooked up and waiting for city approval:

Also, the art wall that separate the entry from the dining area is now roughed in:

as is the lowered ceiling above the dining area (done to allow ductwork to jump into the living room):

issues resolved, issues pending, new issues...

We now have the missing window in the kitchen:

The bride is already in love with it. Lets in a little light from the side.

Window X, the window above the powder pooper, is turning out to be a, well, pooper. Unfortunately, it didn't get ordered (the architect uses Window X for window planning purposes [kinda like Planet X: does it exist or not?]; however, it turns out we reach X number of windows in the alphabet, so we really have a Window X). The window only costs about $200 to make, but the one-time fees and shipping add an extra $400 to the cost, and it takes six weeks to get built and on-site). The window is spec'd to open, but we figure that doesn't really make sense with a bathroom window that opens up onto what amounts to the front porch area (Tinkle, Tinkle, Little Star?). Perhaps the architects wanted an opening window because of the thickness of the aluminum on the outside (see second photo in this post). Regardless, we told the builder that we're fine with a (non-opening) storefront window for that location, something that can be gotten locally relatively quickly.

The roofing detail at the end of the carport has not yet been resolved:

Watching this closely since the roof is apparently going on this week. This needs to get fixed cause it looks like ass.

Someone showed up today to start installing weep screed (the metal stuff at the bottom of the outside walls to facilitate drainage from the wall to the exterior):

 and moisture barrier (that black stuff on the lower part of the house):

and herein lies an issue: That don't look right to me. The idea here is that you put two layers of moisture "barrier" up because the top layer is sacrificial (I put barrier in quotes because it's not an absolute barrier; you really don't want an absolute to allow the wall to breathe so it can dry to the outside or to the inside). The stucco bonds to the top layer and compromises the hydrophilic (water repelling) properties of the barrier. As the stucco dries, it retracts a wee bit and creates a drainage plane between the first layer of moisture barrier and the second, thus creating a drainage plane. Ideally one would use a proper drainage plane here (a thin layer of drainable puffy stuff), but a number of folks (including the builder's stucco expert) say using two layers of moisture barrier works (and the Zip System actually constitutes another layer).

All of this is fine, but what I don't like is how the layers are layered. I think that stuff should be layered like this:

with each layer independently shingled upon itself rather than the way it is now (the black lines are the layers of moisture barrier and the orange is the stucco):

which creates truncated drainage planes (not good) and thus, no drainage. This risks compromising both layers. Sure, the Zip underneath is a last chance to move that moisture away from the wall, but then why have two layers in the first place? I ain't no stucco expert, but that sure don't look right. Hopefully this is just a case of a Sunday working not really knowing what he was doing...

coming up:

They still need to install the big ole window in the living room:

as well as a couple of problematic windows, one at the front of the house at the side and the big one at the top of the stairs. In retrospect, these windows probably should have been storefront. The Gerkin windows have flanges at the sides to attach the window to the walls at the sides. For the case at the front of the house and at the top of the stairs, there's nothing to attach to on two to three sides.

We'll also be meeting with the architect, builder, and HVAC sub on Tuesday to discuss duct runs. The architect is calling for 10-inch holes to be cut into the beams, something that's making the builder nervous even though the engineer has signed off on it. Truth be told, it makes us a little nervous too. I suspect that there are several of these cutting-holes issues about the house. Should be an interesting meeting. We're especially looking forward to the architect being there: This will be our first site visit where he's there as well!

moment of bliss:

The dumpster is gone, so now we can get a full shot of the double cantilever. Everybody say "aaahhhhh...."