My wife often tells clients, "Photovoltaics, countertops made out of recycled Coke bottles, and the green product du jour may be sexy, but if you want maximum green for your green the first step is to insulate the heck out of your house and make sure every crack and crevice is sealed." It's hard to get worked up about insulation and thermal envelopes but you can get religion talking to Jeff Reilich of Environmental Quality Control, our "building performance consultant". Here Jeff consults with Rafael on duct design.
We are going to have a very "tight" house. We are using blown-in dry pack cellulose in our ceilings and R19 batts in the walls.
Sergio is sweating the details on the duct fabrication.
In the previous post I described the prep for the blown-in installation. Luis is running this crew. He showed me how they take the recycled dry cellulose material and run in through a grinder and then pump it up into the joist bays.
These guys are making sure that every tiny crack is sealed and maximum insulation gets above every light fixture and speaker and that we hopefully have low energy costs and useage. Jeff estimates
that in the ceiling areas where we have 16" of blown-in insulation that we will get an R60 rating!
We are gearing up for the start of drywall next week and the
start of cedar siding installation soon after that. The siding was prefinished in Greensboro and was delivered on Friday.
My next post will be on the stucco installation which is going full steam as well.
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