18 February 2016

Ty Zimmerman joined Sonny and Doug in the dry walling mission today.  The three geese made excellent progress towards finishing much of the main level interior walls by quitting time.  Tom Hobbs was here most of the day finishing the ductwork.  He was joined for a couple of hours this afternoon by Logan and Marc.  Steve continued building his copper pipe matrix that is the heart of the heating water distribution system.  Tom Morrissey and I installed the doorbell wiring and transformer and tested to ensure that the video doorbell would ring the doorbell chimes.  Then we tackled the job of getting power to the woodshed from the mechanical room electrical panel.  As you may remember, currently the woodshed is powered from a temporary subpanel on the electric meter pedestal.  We quickly discovered that pulling two AWG 12-3 and an AWG 12-2 wire through a ¾″ conduit just wasn’t going to happen.  With much difficulty (had to bring in strongman Ty to help pull) we managed to get the 12-2 and one of the 12-3 wires through the pipe.  Assuming I can pull those Romex wires back into the cellar again, we’re going to have to switch to THHN wire to get all the circuits I want out to the woodshed.  C’est la vie!!!!  Sean got here just before 4:30 and spotted several spots where outside air could leak into the house, e.g., the chimney thimble.  Used duct tape to seal off the culprits.  Matt Sargent from Efficiency Vermont arrived shortly before 5 and did the inspection required at this stage in the construction process.  He also did a blower door test on the house to determine the air tightness of the structure.  Obviously, the less air leaking in or out, the more energy efficient the house.  Efficiency Vermont has a tiered set of standards: the top tier requires a leakage rate of no more than .6 air exchanges per hour (ACH) at 50 Pascals pressure difference between the inside and the outside; their Gold Standard requires that there be no more than 1 ACH; their Silver Standard (to which we’re building) requires that there be no more than 3 ACH.  (In the picture on the left, the left hand number is the inside/outside pressure difference [54 Pascals] and the number on the right is the number of cubic feet per minute (CFM) that the blower fan is moving [543].  To get ACH, multiply the CFM number by 60 and divide by the air volume of the house [~ 26,040].)  To the full credit of everyone who has had a hand in building a very tight house for us, we currently are at 1.25 ACH, and expect that number to decline substantially as construction continues.  J!!!!