Why Water Matters

This terrific article is posted in Salon.com. Here are a few excepts:

“For Americans, flushing the toilet is the main way we use water. We use more water flushing toilets than bathing or cooking or washing our hands, our dishes, or our clothes. When we think about the big ways we use water, flushing the toilet doesn’t typically leap to mind. It’s one of those unnoticed parts of our daily water use — our daily water-mark — that turns out to be both startling and significant.

The largest single consumer of water in the United States, in fact, is virtually invisible. Every day, the nation’s power plants use 201 billion gallons of water in the course of generating electricity. That isn’t water used by hydroelectric plants — it’s the water used by coal, gas, and nuclear power plants for cooling and to make steam.

Sixteen percent of the water disappears from the pipes before it makes it to a home or business or factory. Every six days, U.S. water utilities lose an entire day’s water. And that 16 percent U.S. loss rate isn’t too bad — British utilities lose 19 percent of the water they pump; the French lose 26 percent. There is perhaps no better symbol of the golden age of water, of the carefree, almost cavalier, attitude that our abundance has fostered. We go to the trouble and expense to find city-size quantities of water, build dams, reservoirs, and tanks to store it and plants to treat it, then we pump it out to customers, only to let it dribble away before anyone can use it.

One of the hallmarks of the twentieth century, at least in the developed world, is that we have gradually been able to stop thinking about water. We use more of it than ever, we rely on it for purposes we not only never see but can hardly imagine, and we think about it not at all. It is a striking achievement. We used to build monuments — even temples — to water. The aqueducts of the Roman Empire are marvels of engineering and soaringly elegant design. They were plumbing presented as civic achievement and as a tribute to the water itself. Today, water has drifted so far from civic celebration that many people visit the Roman aqueducts without any sense at all that they moved water, or how.”

It’s been awhile

We’ve been busy. So here’s a quick update, and I promise we’ll fill in more details later.

We’ve moved into the basement. That means our mini-splits are hooked up, the flooring is installed, trim is done, kitchen cabinets and appliances are installed. Everything is good to go in the basement, except we don’t have a kitchen countertop, our Panasonic ERV has a blown fuse so we need to switch it out, and we need to install doors.

Upstairs, the hardwood flooring is installed, and painters are there right now, you know, painting. Trim should get installed next week, and kitchen cabinets the week after. The powder room bathroom is done. I had a rough few weeks, so I’m tired of doing the work myself. Andrea’s dad, the owner of Pusey and Raffensburger in Lititz, PA is essentially finishing the project for us. Thank God!

What still needs to be done.

Hook up the AC air handler, install trim and doors, tile the guest and master bathrooms and install the sinks/toilets. Stain/coat the hardwood flooring. Install kitchen tile and cork flooring in the sun room. Order and install front windows – speaking of which, we decided to give up on installing aluminum clad wood windows, it’s not worth the battle with DC historic, so we’ll just do all wood. Painting them every few years is less work than trying to get an exception to their silly rule. What else, install the skylight, fix the porch roof, install the back deck. Decide on how to clad the fireplace, and then do that. Install the kitchen, finish electrical. Get working cable. So, what I’m trying to say is we’re almost done.

Best way to ventilate

One of the most frequent questions we are asked from people in the know is: what are you doing for ventilation?

Before I answer, let me quickly explain why ventilation is important. Ventilation brings in fresh air, and exhausts stale or polluted air. They are necessary in every house. In green buildings, which should be air tight, they are especially important. The mantra of most green builders is “build tight, ventilate right.” For LEED, we are required to meet ASHRAE 62.2 standards, which basically says to have a vent fan in each bathroom and kitchen, and to have a whole-house ventilation strategy.

A quick side note: When I’m talking about ventilation, I’m not referring to an attic ventilation fan, like a solar powered attic fan. Those tend to do far more damage than good. If you really think you want one, I have two pieces of advice. First, don’t do it. Second, if you really, really want to install one, get a home energy audit first and see what that professional tells you (it’ll probably be don’t install one, or at least air seal the attic floor first).

Ok, now we can continue.

What we are doing (Upstairs)

We have installed  a Broan energy recovery ventilator. An energy recovery ventilator mixes incoming air with exhaust air, and is able to recover much of the heat and moisture of the outgoing air to keep it inside the house - in this unit’s case, 69% recovery efficiency.  It also filters the air with a HEPA filter for improved indoor air quality. In our opinion, ERVs are the ideal ventilation solution for DC’s mixed-humid climate.

We have primarily seen ERVs installed onto the return side of the central heating/cooling duct system. This is fine, when done properly, but most HVAC installers don’t properly damper the system, and can’t handle the more sophisticated controls. In addition, any time the ERV is on, the air handler fan must also be on, which significantly lowers the recovery efficiency do to the increased electric load.

For those reasons, we separately ducted our ERV. There are 4 supplies – one in each upstairs bedroom, one on the main floor – with returns in each of the 3 bathrooms. The ERV actually replaces our need for bathroom exhaust fans, enabling us to recover a large portion of the energy that would normally have exhausted from them. We also have fewer penetrations in the building envelope (than having an exhaust vent for each bathroom), which saves even more energy.

Because this ERV only needs to be on for about 12 hours a day, per ASHRAE 62.2 standards, anytime we need to use it for bathroom ventilation, we flip a switch and a boost turns on the ERV if it happens to be off. We’re using the American Aldes Zone Register Terminal as the boost in each bathroom.

In short, what we are doing is the most foolproof and high end mechanical ventilation strategy.

What ARE we doing? (Basement)

Because we are planning on renting out the basement, we wanted to keep our systems separate, to minimize air and odor transfer, even though the Broan ERV is big enough to provide ventilation for our entire house.  

For the basement, we choose to use a Pansonic WhisperComfort. Since we installed it in our bathroom, this also provides spot ventilation along with the whole-unit ventilation. It’s a small ERV that provides between 36% and 66% energy recovery efficiency.

Because it operates at about 40 cfm, we’ll leave it on 24 hours a day. Panasonic recommends that this unit be used in a single open space – compared to the 3 rooms in the basement – so we’ll install a jumper duct between the bathroom and the bedroom to provide better air transfer.

Since we haven’t turned on this system yet, the verdict is still out on how effective it will be. Stay tuned for results.

Spray Foam Insulation!

Last month, Horizon Houseworks installed spray foam throughout the house. The difference before and after is incredible.

Now, it’s actually warm working inside, even in the 40 degree weather and without any heat working. Just our body heat and a few halogen bulbs warm up the space to a reasonable temperature.

Even with more air sealing required in numerous small spots that the spray foam wasn’t applied on (and the leaky bathroom skylight not yet replaced), our air leakage number dropped in half to 2,500 cfm50. That’s a savings of about $250 right there. We expect to halve this number once we’re done with all the air sealing.

We used closed cell (also called 2 pound or high density spray foam). This delivers higher r-value (insulation effectiveness) per inch than almost any other product.

Details, Details

• We foamed the perimeter of the ceiling on each floor, which minimizes airleaks to the outdoors, as well as serves as a firestop between the floors
• We installed 6″ of insulation in the attic roofline, which combined with the 1.5″ of polyiso on top of the roof, is a well insulated attic
• By leaving a 1″ air gap between the existing front brick walls and the 2×3 wall frame, there was space for 1″ of continuous foam, plus 2″ of cavity insulation. You don’t want to have more than 2″ or 3″ of closed cell cavity insulation on a brick wall, because it won’t allow enough moisture transfer from the brick through the insulation.
• We tried to fill the cavities as much as possible, while minimizing any overfill that had to be cut, which produces waste, takes time, and doesn’t seal in any voc’s as well as the original seal of the uncut spray foam.

Spray Foam Works!

As I’ve mentioned a few times, we are insulating our house with spray foam. We decided on a closed cell spray foam, because it provides more insulating value per inch than an open cell.

The insulation was installed about a month ago, and we could immediately feel that our house was warmer. In fact, it’s been cold for about a month (in the 20s at night) and until our heat was turned on a few days ago, we were able to completely heat our basement with this tiny space heater. That shows how effective the spray foam is at keeping us warm!

I was also impressed by how strong it is – if you punch it, it hurts your hand. Also, within 24 hours of it curing, you could not smell it. A lot of people are concerned of off-gasing of chemicals of spray foam, but with our closed-cell product, it really is not off-gasing hardly anything that we can tell. Conversely, a friend recently insulated with an open cell spray foam product, and even two weeks later the rooms still had an overwhelming smell.

Next Tour – Sunday the 3rd

That’s right, come check out the progress before drywall covers up all that we’ve done!

11am on Sunday the 3rd of December. You know where we live. If not, send us a comment and we’ll email you the address.

You can even stay after to help us install some Roxul batt insulation for sound-proofing and also for below the radiant heat.

The Best Ductwork Possible

Ducts are just about installed. No we didn’t install them ourselves, we had a fabulous crew from Minnicks do it. (We aren’t getting a dime for saying this, but they do terrific work.) Ductwork is simple if you do it right. Unfortunately, 95% of the time ducts aren’t installed properly.

A couple best practices that we are doing:

1. The duct system was designed using ACCA Manual D, which determines appropriate duct sizing. 
2. No flex duct. Only rigid metal ducts.
3. All ducts are fully airsealed with mastic putty.
4. Duct runs are as short as possible.
5. Returns in every space.
6. Multiple zones – one per floor.
7. All ducts are in conditioned space, and insulated.

Why did we do these things? We wanted to get the exact amount of air required into each room, no more and no less than needed. When there is too much or too little air, the system must be on longer to compensate, costing extra money to operated.

Let’s address each of the best practices mentioned above in greater detail.

We want to minimize the pressure in the duct system. Flex ducts, long duct runs, and ducts with many hard turns all slow down airflow, making it hard to get the appropriate amount of conditioned air in each room. We’re keeping duct runs as short as possible, and then using commercial diffusers (registers) to throw the air from one side of the room to another.

Any duct system not properly sealed with mastic is going to leak, either into attics, basements, or behind walls. This leads to numerous problems, such as uncomfortable rooms, high heating/cooling bills, pressure imbalances in the house that can cause doors to slam, and indoor air quality problems like excessive dust and moisture. Athough often more air tight when they are first installed than metal ducts, flex ducts can easily be punctured during construction once they are installed.

Having returns in every room helps to ensure proper air balancing. This minimizes hot/cold rooms, and again, slamming doors when the A/C kicks on.

Multiple zones. One upstairs, one downstairs. When we’re sleeping, we can only cool upstairs, and not the entire house. This saves money, and energy. What a concept! Adding an extra zone costs roughly $1500.

Without question, the most significant way to improve our indoor comfort is by keeping all of our ductwork inside the conditioned envelope. What this means is that by insulating our attic roofline, the ducts resting on the attic floor are in the heated/cooled part of the house. They won’t be sitting in a 150 degree plus attic, which exacerbates any imperfection in duct installation, be it air leaks or poor insulation.

What is Structural Insulated Sheathing?

That’s what our building inspector asked last week. “I’ve never seen it before,” she said. ”There is no way it can handle shear wind loads.”

Needless to say, I was stupefied. Structural Insulated Sheathing (SIS) is sold by numerous manufacturers, with DOW being the major player. It is an acceptable substitute by all major building codes for OSB or plywood sheathing. This is why we installed it on our addition instead of OSB.

SIS has three attributes (to OSB’s one):

1. Shear strength – Structural lateral bracing and transverse loads
2. Insulation (R-3.0 for 1/2″ product, R-5.5 at 1″)
3. Water-resistive barrier

This is why more projects are using it. With ENERGY STAR version 3 set to launch January 1, 2012, the use of SIS will likely skyrocket due to new thermal bridging requirements. But that is in the future, this is now.

Because of our inspector’s lack of familiarity, and the fact that I did not have any documentation prepared for her – in retrospect, I should have been prepared with info from DOW’s website on its capabilities – she gave us two options:

1.  Have an engineer write a note saying that SIS has appropriate structural properties for shear strength

2. Install metal T-bracing on the side walls of the addition, and plywood on the inside of the back wall to provide shear strength 

What We Did

If I wasn’t so tired, and frustrated with the overall inspection process, I would have fought it. However, I just want to move in to the house so we don’t have to sleep at friend’s houses anymore. This is how I end up making sacrifices – I get worn down by dealing with issues that shouldn’t be issues.

I also wasn’t about to pay an engineer money for information that I already know, which would have taken who knows how long.

So, we installed metal t bracing on the side walls, which took a half day to install, and we will add the 1/2″ plywood after spray foam installation. This means that our back wall will be 1/2″ thicker, which is not cool, but I can live with it.

Another inspector came by yesterday and passed our framing once he saw our ‘new’ bracing technique.

Radiant Heating

We are installing radiant heat for a couple of reasons. First, hydronic radiant heat is the most efficient way to heat your home. Second, it’s a more comfortable heat. You can’t lose when it’s better AND more efficient!

The only cons to installing radiant heat is the added cost of installing the PEX tubing, in our case hePEX from Uponor. We estimate that it cost us over $5,000 for PEX tubing, heat transfer plates, manifolds/controls. Since we installed the tubing ourselves, we saved at least $5,000 in install costs.

The PEX tubing is cheap, the heat transfer plates and connections were expensive. We used the Uponor heat transfer plates, which we screwed to the floor from the ceiling below since we are keeping our hardwood floors.

Radiant heat transfer plates installed below all floors

These are the highest quality you can find, which transfer the most amount of heat from the warm water running through the hePEX tubing.  We also don’t have to install a radiant barrier with this system, or leave an air gap between the PEX and the insulation. We do need to install insulation in the floor joists, and we’re using Ruxol which should also provide sound insulation between the floors.

Doing the underfloor radiant is more efficient than keeping our radiators, since the water supply temperature only needs to be about 100 degrees (perhaps lower, we shall see once it’s operational) vs 160 degrees + for the radiators. High efficiency condensing boilers (and in our case, our Daikan air to water heat pump) cannot efficiently get water hot enough for old school radiators. A WarmBoard rep told me that for each 3 degree drop in the required supply temperature, there is a 1% gain in efficiency.

Install

We are doing two zones, one per floor. Each zone consists of 5 loops. In general, you want each loop to be roughly the same length to ensure an even temperature through the house. The loop should have no more than 250 feet of PEX tubing. Each one of our 10 loops was about 220 feet long.

It took us over 2 weeks of nights/weekends to do it all. First, it took numerous hours to screw in the 200 plus heat transfer plates, and cut some of them to size.

Fishing radiant tubing through joists

Second, it took us a few days to figure out the most effective way to run the tubing through all the joists. After many frustrating hours spent with quite a few friends brainstorming options, we finally figured out how to install the tubing. But it was still a pain! I can see now why our HVAC company jumped at our offer to install the PEX, and I’ve joked with them numerous times about it. Once the PEX was installed, snapping them into the heat transfer plates was a snap. Haha.

Drilling all the holes through the joists, fishing the PEX through each joist, and then trying to get it to do a run and back per floor joist without a crimp takes serious patience, and at least 3 sets of hands.

Many hands and many ladders needed to fish the radiant tubing

There were about 10 places where we had kinks in the PEX, which is not good. There are 3 ways to fix it. The first is to remove the entire section and start fresh. The second is to take a heat gun immediately after making the crimp. We did the third option, cutting the PEX on either side of the crimp and putting it back together with a fitting.

Don’t Use the Same Heat Transfer Plate When Building New Floor

The biggest pain was installing the system on the new floor. Because the area where the sleeping porches used to be was about a 5 inch height difference in places, we didn’t want the radiant installed from below. This meant we had to install it to the new subfloor. We had to lean the AdvanTech against the wall to install the tracks and then the PEX.

Screwing in the heat transfer plates below subfloor

We would never, ever do this again, because the margin for error was so small.

Laying the subfloor in new sunroom area

There are two options that we could/should have done here. First, is using Warmboard, which is a subfloor that has grooves built into it for the PEX to lay on top.  It’s a great system. The other option is a heat transfer plate that is installed on top of the floor joist (and below the subfloor), and is independent of the subfloor. We found the latter product about 2 weeks after we installed our tracks to the subfloor. Either option would have made installation a breeze for the new floor section.  Now I know.

Always Live with the Best

To conclude, I am really excited we did radiant heating. Forced air systems dry out the air, and with radiant systems, you can be comfortable at a lower temperature. Have you ever felt a radiant floor on a cold day? It’s amazing! You just want to lay down on it. I think our dog will love it too!

However, I should have gotten more help from our HVAC company on installing the system. Figuring out how to do it without expert advice was really difficult. If we were installing it on top of a floor, it would have been really easy, but the under floor install was not.

The Kindness of Friends

Building a home is tough. Renovating a house is tougher. Renovating a historic building is the most challenging. Renovating a historic home, as your first project, is ridiculous! That’s the way we roll.

Were it not for the kindness of friends and neighbors, we would be in dire straights. Every week a new, unforeseen challenge pops up, and every week, someone different comes out of the ethers to help.

The list of people we need to thank so far is long, and growing, since we’re at just about the half way point.  

So, to all of you who have helped, offering your time helping out for an hour or a day; loaning tools; sharing advise and contacts; having us over for dinner; letting us stay at your house for a day or a week; we’d like to offer our profound gratitude.