Cozy Cottages

A good article from Builder Magazine featuring ten small cottage projects. It's gratifying to see in the past couple of years that the idea of building smaller houses is finally getting some attention from the mainstream shelter media. these projects have some great new ideas and reinforce some of the best ideas already out there.

Appliances at Lumenhaus

As I mentioned, the Lumenhaus website goes into exquisite detail regarding all aspects of the concept. This page describes the appliances in the kitchen and laundry. Notice the Fisher Paykiel Dishdrawer previously recommended in these pages.

Lumenhaus Kitchen

The photo on the left shows another great idea: natural light backsplash!

Concept Home Of The Future

Lumenhaus is the name of the house concept developed and built by a team at Virginia Tech for the Solar Decathlon-Europe competition held last June in Spain. They also built a great website explaining all of the ideas and methods used in the house.

Sound Control

Yesterday, I had a client ask me about sound control. (thanks Stow). Over the years I've done a few projects involving serious sound control including a Film/TV editing and recording suite. There are some new products and techniques out there that are covered in this video from JLC TV. The important thing to remember is that a wall assembly with drywall or plaster on each side acts like a drum and can actually amplify sound from one room to another. Eliminating this "drum effect" is the technical goal of all sound deadening efforts.

You can get much deeper into this topic if you're interested but here are some quick and easy tips:

Vinyl Sound Barrier Sheet Material

• Fill the wall with fiberglass or cellulose (duh)
• Split the studs with a saw kerf down the center (you can leave a few inches of attachment at the ends)
• Install vinyl sound barrier before drywall or gypsum lath, this is a very dense yet flexible material with extraordinary sound-deadening qualities. Can be expensive and hard to find.
• Use sound-attenuating drywall clips
• For a DIY solution install foam weatherstrpping  between the stud and the drywall or gypsum lath
• Use special soundproofing drywall (generally available at home centers)
• DON"T use metal studs!

There is more product information at any of the links above. One stop sourcing for a lot of products and sound-proofing information here.

Two Energy Efficiency Tools You Can Use Right Now

Green Building Advisor's Energy Efficiency Pyramid

At Next Step Living we're always thinking about how to communicate the important points of energy efficiency to homeowners without getting bogged down in technical details. Here's a great article from Green Building Advisor about the fundamentals of energy efficiency and an easy-to understand pyramid chart.

Green Building Advisor is an excellent free site incidentally. It's put together by Taunton Press,publishers of Fine Homebuilding. There is a pay version that goes into more technical depth and has lots of drawings and details. Professional builders may find the pay site worthwhile.

EnergySavvy Online Audit Tool

If, as you look at this pyramid, you get so excited you want to get started making your home more energy efficient right away, you can do an online energy audit . It's quick and informative.

The online energy audit tool is a story in itself: developed by EnergySavvy and initial roll-out by Next Step Living. More about it from TechCrunch.

After looking at all this you decide you want to get something done about it...fast...go here and book an audit.

Panasonic Energy Recovery Ventilator

Panasonic FV-04VE1

For years Panasonic has made the best bathroom fans. Ask anybody who owns one or who has installed one: they make all other bath fans look like cheap toys. Now Panasonic is offering an energy recovery ventilator or ERV : a fan that not only exhausts stale air and excess moisture but supplies fresh air and - this is the important part - keeps the heat from the warm exhaust air inside the house where it belongs. (simple bath fans just blow warm air out, wasting energy)

Like any other quality appliance, this unit is not cheap (online retailers are offering it at around $300.00), but before this unit came on the market most ERVs were about twice the price, bulky and difficult to install, and  hard to find.

Panasonic fans are VERY quiet. I once had a customer call me to say that her recently installed Panasonic bath fan wasn't working: it turned out it was so quiet she couldn't tell that it was on. They are also very well designed with a rough-in housing that allows the working part of the fan to be replaced if necessary without ripping the whole unit out. If you've ever had to replace a bath fan (and most other bath fans fail after a few years), you know what a pain it is.

This fan is designed for continuous use: at 40CFM (that's not much air flow) it would be appropriate for continuous use as mechanical ventilation for a very tight house or for intermittent use as a bath fan with a timer or moisture sensor.

There are many products like this that are not well known...maybe I should create an award of some kind for products like this. What do you think readers?

More for EE nerds: New Water-Blown Foam

The new water-blown "medium density" foam introduced by Icynene earlier this year has significanltly improved the performance of open cell foam insulation. Downloadable MSDS at this link.

1. Water blown, yep w-a-t-e-r...is that toxic?
2. R-value: 5.2 per inch, yep 5.2...change the tables guys.
3. Harder, stronger, stiffer..less onsite damage, stiffens flimsy roof and ceiling assemblies.
4. Recycled content qualifies for extra LEED credits

Warning: For Energy Nerds- Wall Energy Rating

All of us in the energy efficiency business know that building assemblies depending on fiberglass for insulating value almost never function at the nominal R value theoretically obtainable by a given thickness of fiberglass. We see a lot of attics with 5-1/2" fiberglass batts bearing a stamp on the label of R-19 that in fact function at R-5 or less. If you've never seen the BPI guidelines for the value of existing insulation, you might be surprised. (At least in an attic you can improve the situation pretty easily with blown-in cellulose.) But how about an existing stud wall? There's no room for any more insulation. Canadian building scientists are trying to develop a new thermal rating system for walls called, appropriately enough, wall energy rating. The purpose of this rating is to more realistically reflect the thermal resistance of wall assemblies subject to air infiltration.

Huge Impact Expected From Energy Innovation in US

Here's a report from the Whitehouse on the gains expected in the energy, transportation, and medical research sectors over the next few years as a result of economic stimulus. The section on energy makes for some pretty exciting reading!