Did you include thermal breaks in the headers?

Not doing that could lose a fair percentage of what your windows gain.

-AC

The exterior foam makes the wall pretty thermally broken.

The headers aren't thermally broken. In addition to the exterior foam, there will also be 7 inches of cellulose on the inside side of the header that will futher slow thermal transfer since the wall is now 10" thick. All in all, the target was to have a ~R40 wall (not including windows which are R7.3).

Ten inches thick walls?

Sounds like serious walls certainly merit Serious Windows.


-AC

Yep, 10 inches. I won't be able to do it everywhere in the house, but this was kind of my best crack at a passive house retrofit.

I certainly admire your willingness to go the distance on your remodel, a real commitment.

No half measures there.

Best,

-AC

Daox, what made you decide on 10" as opposed to 12"? The reason so many people use 12" walls is that it seems to be a good break even point for wall vs. window R value. Much more doesn't accomplish a whole lot with regular (Good) windows on a manual J or PHPP. You have broken the bank with the Serious (ly expensive) windows.

I just got estimates on Marvin integrity fiberglass 3 pane windows for my house and the ROI was over 100 years as opposed tot he vinyl replacements I already have. They need to go because they condense moisture. The ROI for replacing them with double pane Marvin Integrity casements is closer to 70 years but the comfort value is immediate upon replacement and very real.

This room remodel is an experiment and the outcome will influence the remodel of my entire upstairs which is largely untouched and has the same plaster wall insulation.

My target was an ~R40 wall. That target was based on an overall future target of R60 walls which is what I've seen on most passive homes. At some point in the future, I hope to get around to putting 4" of foam on the exterior bumping it up to R60. The reason to limit it to 10" is this is a remodel. This room I had a good deal of interior space to loose. My upstairs rooms are much smaller and I can't afford to loose 6" of interior space. I might only be able to loose 2" or 4" up there. Thankfully, with the planned hydronic heating system on multiple zones this shouldn't be a problem and unbalance the heating loads.

The windows definitely cost a ton and will never pay for themselves. Seperated from the cost of this project, they cost more than everything else combined. I wanted to see what the best was and how it performs compared to other windows. I'm unsure if I'll use them upstairs or not. This winter will show how well they really work. In addition to that, I also believe that homes should be built to last 100 years, and I sincerely hope that mine is still standing well after I am not around to see it anymore. With any luck those windows will still be keeping those future occupants comfortable and keeping their bills low. That would be pretty cool.

I haven't made a ton of progress lately, but I'll put up what I have done.

I started shooting expanding foam into the gaps between the foam board insulation on the exterior last night. My great stuff gun seemed to clog up so I tried the cleaner can. It pushed out a bit of gunk then it plugged completely... So, I quickly took it in the garage and disassembled it. I dumped all the bits into a bowl with acetone in it and they're bathing in it currently. This was my fault. I let it sit way too long with a mostly empty can on it. I should have put the cleaner on it before letting it sit that long. Lesson learned. It is no longer clogged, and it should work.

Other than that, I've been trying to figure out the how I want to make the cubby hole I'll be making. On the other side of the corner shown below is my TV. We currently use a small table and put the electronics on it. But, I'd like to make an in wall cubby to store it all. So, I've cut the wall away for it and outlined where I want the hole in the wall to be.

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1351174203


You can see the faint penciling in where the hole will be.
http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1351174203

Time for more updates. I am NOT a fast working carpenter at all I've found out. But, everything seems to be going together.

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1351616687

Friday night I went and got some materials. Since I remove four trash cans full of plaster, I wanted to put some thermal mass back into the wall. To do this I bought 1/2" concrete backer board that will go on the wall first. To go over the top is a higher density 1/2" drywall. This won't equal the thermal mass of all the plaster that I removed, but with the addition of the insulation and better air sealing it should more than make up for it.

I had been discussing thermal mass options with the guys here: http://ecorenovator.org/forum/conser...s-drywall.html



http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1351616735

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1351616865

The next bit of work was done on the in wall entertainment cabinet that I'm making. I sized it, cut the hole in the wall, and framed it all in.



http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1351616937

After that was done, I could finally put up the two remaining wall joists that I had not nailed down. I wanted to be sure I'd have room to get the cabinet in.


So, I'm pretty much down to adding power outlets on the wall, taking care of a few switches that were by the old door, and then putting in the concrete board so that it can be insulated. Then, this project will sit on the back burner until I get the outside work done on the solar panels. Thats the plan at least...

When and how are you going to insulate?

The plan is to put the concrete board on the wall up to the dropped ceiling. Above that it'll be covered in insulation mesh. Then I'm having a guy come in and blow cellulose into the wall. I guess I might have to throw the drywall on top of it right away too. The concrete board is an odd size, 5'x3' so it doesn't really hit board centers all that great. Anybody know why?

I don't know why myself but it is a good question. It's for use on walls.
Is there a particular reason why you are not blowing behind netting? It's clear as day that when you blow behind netting you do a better job because you can kick the tires, so to speak. When blowing behind a wall of some kind you don't know where the soft spots are and you couldn't do anything about them even if you knew where they were.

That decision was based off what the insulation blower wanted to do. He didn't seem confident the mesh would hold up to the pressure. I tried to assure him that that is what it is made for and I've seen it done (online). I could have him blow behind mesh and I might talk him into it with the cracks and crevices that are in this wall. I'd feel better if I could see and feel how well things were going.

Are you set on this contractor? It is standard practice to blow behind netting. That's the SOLE purpose of Insulweb. Net and blow is the default method for new construction simply because you can see what's happening. Even with a machine with a dual blower you won't blow the netting out. You could make a hammock out of the stuff. One layer of it. I do this all the time. I did an 8" wall the other day. I have done 12' and 14" walls with netting and the absolute most powerful double blower machines on the market. The only catch with a really powerful blower is that you've gotta be vigilant to not clog the hose. If you let it back up for too long you can quite literally dense pack 100' of hose. Then you're screwed. Nothing anyone with a little experience can't avoid. If you can rent a good machine and hook up a webcam with Skype or something I'll help you do it yourself. It's not difficult but it really does take some guidance at first. He probably only really has experience with drill 'n fill style dense packing, which is a sub optimal method. I have done this for, probably, thousands of bays and still when I fill a test box or test bay I don't do as good a job as when I blow behind netting. There are always some soft spots. Maybe it all equals out in the end because some parts are more than 3.5 Lbs. / ". I don't know. But all I can say is that after several months of drill 'n fill style blowing, the first time I blew behind netting I was shocked by all the voids. I mentioned to my co worker/teacher how this method is vastly superior to the drill 'n fill. All he had to say was "Oooohhhhh yeah". He'd worked as a cellulose blower exclusively for years. He's much better/faster than me and knows the score.

I wish you lived closer. I'd do it for you and show you how in the process.

I believe that concrete board is smaller due to weight. 3x5 I'd assume has to do with around tubs? The surround on my tub is 5' long by just under 3' wide. and 5' tall all the way around.

Yes sir. But neither 3' or 5' makes sense with 16" or 24" O/C studs. It's a quandry for sure.

Thanks S-F. I'll talk to the guy. I'm pretty sure I can convince him to blow behind the mesh.

BTW, how do you recommend fixing it to the wall, staples? I hear they must be closely spaced?

You hang it with a T50 stapler making sure to stretch it tight and flat. Then you side staple to the studs with an air stapler. It's like a machine gun and can blow through thousands of staples an hour. Don't face staple to the stud or the bay will bulge out so much it will be hard to get the sheet rock on, even after rolling it. Staple the netting to the sides of the studs. You could do it with a T50 if you had enough time. I've done it, one day when two machine guns died on me and I had not other choice. Any installer should have a staple machine gun though. Putting up the netting is part of the bid.

Rolling: Usually done by the rockers is a process were a pole with a roller at the end is run up and down the bulging bay to flatten it for the installation of sheetrock. You know the stands for a table saw that have a roller on the top to allow lumber to remain at the level of the table but still move freely? Same thing. In fact I often use one of them for rolling cellulose. You could probably also just use a rolling pin.

Alright, Let me just verify. You wrap the mesh around the side of the stud ~1/4" and then staple it?

Close. You take the top corner of the insulation web and staple it to the top corner of your wall (SECURELY). Then you stretch it to the other top corner and securely staple it. Stretch to the bottom of one side and repeat on the other bottom corner. So you have a flat and tight sheet attached at four corners. Then you staple each bay. You staple to the sides of the studs. The reason you do this is to stretch the netting tight over each bay so so the cell doesn't make it bulge out so much you can't rock it. You "side staple" the sides, top and bottom. You push the stapler in against the netting as far as a reasonable amount of pressure allows and then staple to the side of the stud. The important part really is the hanging. Hang it tight and flat. If there is a loose fold somewhere, take it down and start over. Hanging the quicker part but the part that takes more attention to detail. Once it's up, staple the s*&t out of it. Just not so many that it tears the netting. You'll figure that part out in about one minute. And it probably wouldn't be an issue at all any way if you aren't using an air stapler that can shoot 7 - 10 staples in the same place if you don't keep it moving. You want the netting to be trampoline like. Nothing loose at all. not even remotely. Otherwise you'll be in hell when you try to put up sheetrock. I actually once had some rockers cut my netting and claw cell out because they didn't know what they were doing. Not only did I not use them again, I made the kind gesture of showing them how to roll cellulose. They took close to a bag out of a small addition I was working on. It took me all day to blow that!

Hang it tight. Start to side staple at one side and work over. As you side staple each side of the bay you will see it getting tighter. Keep it tight. Think drum head.

I wish I had known this would come up a week ago. On Friday one of the other crew leaders at my company did a net and blow job about a mile from my house and I could have snuck away from my job to make a video of this. When are you planning on doing this? If I can I'll make a priority of taking a net and blow video.

I hate writing. Can I record myself talking with all of my input and attach the audio file? I find myself withholding details because I don't' want to write.

On the builditsolar site he has an entry on the netting. If I remember correctly they put it up tight then went out and rolled glue on each stud using a small paint roller to glue the netting down tight and help prevent bulging that will mess up the board. the glue just sucked through the netting so it was probably a quick thing to do and pretty inexpensive.

Yeah, but it was an unnecessary expense.

You could always just make a few notes and film yourself and upload it to youtube.

I thought up a couple more questions:

How do you handle electrical boxes?

The netting I've seen on BIS is an 8ft wide sheet. The stuff we have at the home improvement store here is only 5ft wide. Do you hang it vertically or horizontally? I'd imagine it would have to be vertical so you can seal the ends with staples in the studs.

I'm hoping to insulate sometime this week btw.

You hang it horizontally. Just overlap it a foot or so. Otherwise you will have too much waste. As noted earlier, 5' doesn't meet up with 16" O/C. It's unappealing to have big folds of fabric flapping in the breeze. As for electrical boxes, you just net over them. When you're done you cut an X over them and fold the netting back.
I'll try to get on a net and blow job to get some footage this week, but no promises. I'm not usually on those jobs these days and when I am it's usually in an awkward situation. Like insulating the slopes of a kneewall crawl space in a cape or something like that.

The only thing different about my setup is instead of my outlet boxes sticking out ~1/2" they're going to have to stick out ~1" because of the added wall thickness. Do you think that this will cause a problem? Or do I just staple around it as well as I can?

Don't worry about it at all. Just net over it really tight and cut it open once blowing is done. The only place that gets face stapled is right next to the boxes. You can't staple to the side of the stud because there's a box there. All will be well.

One more point. If your install guy hasn't done this before (and if so you should just do it yourself) remember that the feel should be "mattress firm". If it's hard (like an aged futon or so) you are only making money for your cell manufacturer. If it's soft it will eventually settle.

EDIT:

Daox, where the hell do you live?! I'm going to call lumber yards out there to find you a rental machine.

Haha, Germantown, WI just like it says under my name.

I did email my insulation guy. He said he could do the mesh wall.

Now I just need to go buy a stapler so I can put up the mesh. I thought my cousin had one but he just had a manual one.

So, updates for today. Well, I decided to replace the hot water line going to the upstairs bathroom while I have the wall mostly open. Just adjacent to the exterior wall is the wall which runs the plumbing to the 2nd floor. It currently has 3/4" copper line running the whole way. The upstairs bath is just a shower stall, toilet, and sink. I think that 3/4" line is quite overkill and getting hot water takes roughly a minute (50 seconds to warm, 55 seconds to hot). To improve this, I was thinking that I would run 1/2" pex the whole way (or at least as far as I can get. This should significantly reduce the time to get hot water and the amount of wasted water. Since I use a 1.25gpm low flow shower head (Niagara Conservation Earth 1.25gpm, love it, and its cheap!), I don't think shower pressure should be effected much. I don't really care if the toilet fills a little slower or water doesn't blast out of the sink as hard.

Here is where the water lines come up. You can see that the hot water line does neck down to 1/2" copper after it splits off to the sink/shower. The remaining vertical run is all 3/4" and uninsulated in the wall.
http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1351959663



While digging around I also found these other possible issues. I have some drain lines running right on the exterior walls. It hasn't been an issue in the past, but I really never want it to be. I'd like some feedback on how bad this really is.

In this picture its hard to see, but you can see the bit of white pvc going up on the left side. I believe that is a vent pipe. I'm not sure if those are supposed to be in exterior walls.
http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1351959724



This is the sink drain. Right in the exterior wall. You can see they tried to insulate around it.
http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1351960329



Here is the toilet plumbing. It juts to the outside wall for a short section and comes back. I have no idea why this was done this way...
http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1351960322

The plumbing update is done. I replaced about 20ft of 3/4" copper with 1/2" pex. I timed things before and after. It used to take 50-55 seconds to get hot water upstairs. Now it takes 20-25s. So, it has been more than halfed. This makes sense because 1/2" PEX has under half the capacity as 3/4" copper pipe. In a 20ft length we're looking at .45 gallons for 3/4" vs .18 gallons for the 1/2" PEX.

Another side benefit is that I can now set my water heater to a lower temperature because the PEX (which I did insulate) is loosng less heat than the copper did. It used to be set to 140F, and now it is set at 130F. It is an on demand electric water heater and has a regulated output temperature.

I know 130F still sounds high, but I also found out this weekend while doing the plumbing that my shower head mixes in quite a bit of cold water on 'full hot'. So, I'll be looking into fixing that as well. Then I should be able to turn it down further.

Pictures to come soon.

Here are the pictures.

This is the connection downstairs. I threw in a ball valve so we could use hot water as I finished up the rest of the install which took two days total.

I didn't get any shots of everything totally finished, but it is all insulated except for the bit in the wall. I didn't cut the wall open, so I just insulated everything else that I could.

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352210232

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352210232



This is the setup on the opposite end. I had to cut the ceiling back a bit and cut a hole under the vertical plumbing run to the shower. The pex comes up from the basement through the wall just beyond the coiled up pex.

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352210371

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352210500




This is the first tee for the sink line.

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352210500

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352210575



And here we have the connection for the shower.

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352210575




I ran the pex as far as I could. The sink line I was able to bring all the way. The shower I was only able to bring it as far as the floor.

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352210575

Well its been a busy few days. I got the insulation mesh hung Monday night and Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon the insulation guy came out and dense packed the wall. Everything went very smoothly and he was impressed and liked blowing with the mesh on the wall.

The wall for the most part feels fairly firm. There is some differences in density. But, almost everything seems mattress hard like S-F suggested it should be.

Pictures:

This is the stapling around the windows. Yay for a million staples. There was absolutely no issues with any staples pulling up. The stapling method S-F suggested worked great. I have an Arrow electric stapler and used T20 staples spaced about 1.5 - 2" apart. I think I used almost a full four boxes of staples on the wall. In retrospect I think 2-2.5" spacing would probably be fine if not a little more.
http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352294673

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352294673



This is the finished meshed wall.
http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352294673



And of course the finished insulated wall.
http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352294673



Phew, I'm glad that is done. Now I can finish the rest of the room at a more leisurely pace.

looks good!! :thumbup: I want to do a full gut on the next house to insulate like this.

Yeah, very good job. I decided I also want to insulate the way you are doing it. I was going go with foam board on the inside but this looks cheaper, more effective, and easier. The only drawback I can see would be some bridging at the sill and top plate. Maybe not enough of a problem to worry about.

Yeah, its hard to eliminate all thermal bridging unless you're doing new construction. Passive house construction does focus on eliminating thermal bridging.

Today was electrical work day. The father in law arrived (electrician) and we went to work. I hadn't even thought about it, but he recommended adding some can lights in the room and we went ahead with it and I think it looks pretty good.

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...1&d=1352508166

that appears to be a junction box in the middle of the room. I hope you don't intent to hide that behind sheetrock.

Nope, but that is how it was. It has since been replaced by a fan box.

Your lowered ceiling construction looks similar to what I had to deal with on my old house. On my house all my ceilings have sagged and cracked the old plaster. It turned out to be caused by two problems. The strongbacks that were there were 2x6s and were too wimpy to support the 2x4 ceiling joists. The other problem is that the connections between the joists and the strongbacks were just nails. Over time gravity just pulled the nails loose. Gravity works slowly but it is very persistent.

Assuming you are using Sheetrock and not plastering I wouldn't feel safe from a sagging ceiling with anything less than a 2x6, preferably 2x8 if the joists are 2x4. I can't really tell from your photo what your strongback or joist dimensions are or if it's safely tied to stronger structure above but just thought I'd mention it. Also, I hope you used either screws or small hurricane clips to tie the joists to the strongback.