Finishing Details

Hello again,
The Blue2 is down to a slow dribble of finishing details- it is complete enough to occupy. The new tenants had their baby but have not moved in yet. The house-building story will end when they spend their first night in Blue2. The landscaping is yet to be finished. Nancy Stein said the landscaping is always the last thing in line to be funded and so it is often squeezed out of the equation as most of the funding has been used up for the house. As you can see in pic #5, the stage is set but the plants and irrigation are yet to be purchased or planted. I suspect if CLAM does not dig up the money for landscaping- pic #5 will be a run-a-way bed of weeds and grass in a year- is this a solicitation for help?.......yes it is.
I suspect next Friday report will be the last.
It has been more than fun and enlightening.............Terry
BTW- How about we call it the Banana House? or Mellow Yellow or Old Yeller or........?

Van Van der Maten and Colleen King volunteered to paint the Banana House.

Mixing paint.

Four chips off the new block-the executive branch of Mellow Yellow.

View from the living room. House is "baby ready" for new tenants.

Landscaping by Jim Campe and Nancy Stein. There is a wireless solar light mounted on each wood post for the path lights. They are motion activated and turn off after one minute.They are low and face down so as not to light up the "night sky" or shine in peoples faces. Rich Redimix donated all of the base rock for the parking area as well as the big chunks of rocks for landscaping and Judy Roberson of PG&E personally made and donated the beautiful mosaic tiles you can see faintly at the beginning of the path.

Bedroom. All of the wood we used for interior trim was reclaimed from construction wood donated to us by local artist Anne Francis. The two closet doors were also salvaged doors from a job I did ten years ago. The upper door on left is for access and storage to mini-attic space. the ERV service door is on right.

Completion Celebrations

Hello again,
This was another action packed week of details. The end of most projects seem to go in slow motion and the days turn into weeks.

The interior trim and door details and built-ins are finished. We got our new water meter three days ago and completed the hook up to both houses. Most of the solar thermal (solar hot water) is complete. Next week we will fill the tanks and let the sun take over and Blue2 will enter a 90% fossil fuel free hot water mode for the next 50 years. On Tuesday the 5th we had an Open House to celebrate the completion of Blue2, at least that was the plan a month ago, instead it was the near completion of Blue2. The event was so moving and cool that no one seemed to care we were not yet done. I am intending to go on holiday for a week starting next Friday, assuming it will be finished enough for me to leave, so the race to finish is still on. See you next Thursday.
Enjoy .... Terry

Here Rae Levine is giving her final blessings and praise to the ~100 people who came to celebrate Blue 2's completion. Two days later Rae left West Marin to her new home in Seattle. How sweet and perfect that her last act after leaving her position of executive director of CLAM was to celebrate the vision and wisdom of CLAM, it's board members- now and past, and the dozens of other dreamers and volunteers who birthed Blue2 into West Marin. Thank you, Rae, for your years of holding onto the vision. You were the Pied Piper and we followed your enthusiasm. Blue2 will always be one of yours. CLAM's new executive director, Sam Leguizamon Grant (not pictured), officiated the July 5 Celebration event.

Daniel, on right, and Derick of Sebastopol Heat and Cool doing the final balancing of the ERV's fresh air and exhaust. Below them (sorry no face shot) is Aran Collier of Sun First who's crew did the solar thermal system. The first Passive House in California required a lot of fine tuning to synchronize all the systems. We had some of the best minds and skills in the Bay Area to bring it all together. They assembled out here at the Blue2 house not because it was lucrative (many donated time and materials), but because they wanted to be part of something that was cutting edge, smart and ultimately good for the planet. Blue2 could not have happen with out their belief, heartfelt contributions, and skills. Thank you all for your efforts and trust.

On Thursday after the workers went home we set up for the last tour. Here James Bill and I are fielding technical questions from the attendees. This crowd of 75 was from the green building, energy performance, professionals, sector. Our keynote guest speaker was Cathleen Fogel from the California Public Utility Commission, an energy efficiency planning analyst. She understands the potential of the Passive House for mitigating climate change.

It got pretty tight in the mechanical room trying to fit in all the hot water production stuff. The two large tanks linked together with copper piping are 80 gallon storage tanks. They have over 2" of foam insulation around each tank, so they will retain the hot water longer than a typical tank. We are expecting to get up to 90% of the hot water requirements from this system. It will also produce most of the space heating for the house. In the right corner is a conventional electric hot water heater that will go on when the houses tap water is lower than 120 degrees. For full explanation of solar thermal system, see description at end of post by James Bill.

Nancy Stein and Jim Campe are formulating a landscaping plan that will use native and drought resistance plants. This view it is about to be transformed with designated parking and plants and paths and lights.

Seldom Seem Lowell Moulton. (Up until this photograph, many people were not sure if he really existed.) This is the guy that did Blue 2's passive house energy modeling(PHPP). He is one of the the kingpins of this project.
He was in on hundreds of emails and spent hundreds of hours with a keyboard in some undisclosed location or at a conference in Dresden gathering PHPP technology. So far all he has required for payment was some Menghai Beencha Puer tea and possibly a backpacking trip in Point Reyes.
Thank you Lowell.........

BLUE2's INTEGRATED SOLAR THERMAL SPACE AND HOT WATER HEATING SYSTEM
By James Bill, Licensed Architect, LEED™ AP, CGBP
(see 4th photo of mechanical room for reference)

Most solar thermal systems are used to heat domestic hot water, and they use a closed plumbing loop filled with glycol. The glycol captures the heat in the solar panels and brings that heat down to heat the water in the solar storage tanks. But glycol breaks down when it gets hot. To keep the glycol from getting too hot, most closed loop systems use energy consuming methods to cool the glycol.

Instead of a typical system, we used a drain back water loop system. These are filled with water, not glycol. The water only flows through the panels when the sun is providing heat and the solar storage tanks can absorb more heat. So when the panels get sunshine, even if the sun is behind a thin layer of fog, and the solar storage tank water is colder than the solar panel temperature, a pump turns on, filling the pipes and panels with water that is circulated to the heat exchangers at the bottoms of the solar storage tanks, thus heating the water in those storage tanks. When the pump turns off, the water drains out of the panels into a small drain back tank.

We have two 80 gallon solar storage tanks. The number of gallons is determined by the amount of heat that needs to be stored for the periods of time there is little or no solar radiation. The solar storage tanks have heat exchange coils at the bottom and at the top. The bottom heat exchangers are hooked up to the solar panel loop, and provide the heat from those solar panels.

The heat exchanger at the top of tanks is for heating the air in the ducts, thus supplying space heating. The water at the top of the solar storage tanks is hotter than the water at the bottom, as hot water rises. There is a loop of water that goes through the top heat exchangers and up to a radiator located in the ventilation supply duct. When the thermostat calls for more space heat, and there is sufficient heat in the top of the solar storage tanks, then a pump will turn on and run water from the heat exchanger up though the radiator heat exchanger, delivering heat from the storage tank to the air in the duct. If there is a need for heat, and the top of the tank is less than 100 degrees, then an electric resistance heating element in the duct will turn on to add heat when there is no solar heat stored up. This duct element is the backup source of heat for the space heating.

Also at the top of the solar storage tanks, there are plumbing lines coming out that go to a small 20 gallon domestic hot water heater. It is small as it is just meant to top off the domestic hot water temperature to 120 degrees, not create vast amounts of hot water. As the occupants use hot water, it will pull water out of this hot water heater. The water that refills this water heater comes from the top of the solar storage tanks. If it is greater than 120 degrees, as it will be much of the year, the water heater element will not come on. If it is colder, the element will come on. But as the water coming in will always be somewhat hot, it will use less electricity than a regular water heater. The water that is removed from the solar storage tanks will be replaced at the bottom of those storage tanks from the cold water supply line.

As you can see in the photo, all of the plumbing seems to have been equally spaced between the two solar storage tanks. This is because the two storage tanks are plumbed parallel. This means that there are equal lengths of plumbing to each tank so that the pressures are equalized. Thus, each tank will get the same heat from the solar panels at the bottom, draw the same amount of water from each tank for the water heating tank, and will have the same draw for the duct heating loop.

The solar system modelers predict the sun will provide almost 90% of the space heating and the domestic water heat. When there is not enough stored solar heat, we have two backups. The domestic water backup heat is supplied by the 20 gallon electric water heater, and the electric resistance element inside the supply air duct supplies the backup space heat. Because we have separated the space heating backup from the domestic hot water backup heating tank, and because we can use cooler temperature water for space heating than we need for domestic hot water, we can use the stored solar heat more efficiently.

There you have it, the integrated solar thermal space and domestic water heating system.

Ready for July 5 Open House to Celebrate 1st Passive House in CA

Hi all,
This was another action packed week. Trim, electrical, plumbing, cabinets, roof patching, HRV finishing details and clean up of site. Sebastian sanded and ripped miles of the resawn lumber that Steve Potts milled up for us last week. My plan was to complete the grounds clean up and the interior this week but I missed the mark by a few days.
Hope to see you all on Monday, July 5 at the Open House, 11am - 2pm, and you can see for yourself..........Terry

Jorge and Bill glueing and clamping the mitered corner of a formica counter top.

Since last week we dug about forty feet of new trenches for water, electrical and waste lines.

Joel making the final connection of Blue 2s waste lines to the septic. Dennis Rodoni donated a 1.2 gallon low flush toilet with a dual flush mode- low volume for yellow and higher volume (1.2) for other stuff. We now have a working toilet.

This guy Ken from Nayak, New York responded to my free Craig's listing and took apart and hauled away the tea room/office/tool shed.

Monday teaser.

Components for space ship to be revealed on Monday.

The blue shroud seals up around the exhaust duct in the kitchen while the ERV is running. Here Rudy of Sebastopol Heat and Cool is reading the digital balometer which measures the CFM (cu ft minute) being sucked into the exhaust. Each of the six registers, 3 intake and 3 exhausts, are measured and then tuned so the the entire delivery and exhaust of air is balanced for each room. This room is set for around 25 CFM of exhaust. Most "old school" heating and cooling delivery systems are calculated by intuition or habit or something like what you did in the last house. Note the LED light above Rudy's head.

Rudy is using a Duct Blaster, a mini version of the Blower Door we used to test the house for air leakage. With all the ducts sealed off in the house, the fan at the bottom of the silver duct pressurizes all the ducts inside the house. Here Derek is reading the monometer which shows just how much the ducts are leaking inside the house. His first test number revealed too much leakage. He had to go around each joint and connection with a smoke pencil to find and seal the leaks and bring the maximum leakage down to 5% volume of air flow.

Roger Lippman donated his time and test equipment to set up a monitoring system for each electrical circuit of the house. This will enable precise calculation for each of fifteen different uses of electricity in the house. The data will then be downloaded onto a computer each month and posted on the Passive House website so other people can learn how one passive house uses electricity/energy.

The last dump run. Bob here looking at the pile of metal for recycle.

Open House to Celebrate Completion of CLAM's Blue2 Passive House

O p e n H o u s e
Come CELEBRATE! Blue2 is built!
It is the first certified Passive House in California,
uses 540 watts to heat itself on the coldest day,
creates permanently affordable housing,
provides superior health and comfort,
and addresses climate change!

Monday July 5th 2010, 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Words of Celebration begin at 11:30 a.m.

Please park next door at West Marin School
This is a home. No random visits outside the Open House date.

For event information call CLAM at 415.663.1005 or email info@clam-ptreyes.org

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT
CLAM: www.clam-ptreyes.org,
Passive House: www.passivehouse.us and www.passivehouseca.org

The Iron Lung Arrives

Hello again,
This week we finished all the interior- secondary framing and most of the rough in wiring, plumbing and mechanical system as well as the soar thermal panels on the roof. There were two carpenters and three solar installers working outside plus six subcontractors inside that small space. I had to make sure they all synchronized their jobs and tools and not bump elbows or fight for ladder space. We were on a deadline to finish this week and start sheetrock next monday. We did not make it. One of the great lessons you have to take in as a contractor is to let go of failed goals and expectations. We worked a half day on friday to make ready for the twelve o'clock tour of "See the Machine" We had two tours on Friday and two on Saturday.
See you next week...........Terry

Arrival of.......... "The Black Box". AKA-The Iron Lung. AKA-HRV - heat recovery ventilator.

Guys and trucks on Thursday. The next day the place was cleaned up pretty and ready for the tour.

This is a fan coil-heat exchanger. The two red lines circulate hot water through a radiator exactly like the one in your car. The hot water is generated at the solar panels on the roof or in the hot water heater in the house or both. This fan coil box is set into the fresh air supply duct of the HRV and the cooler outside air is heated as it passes over the radiator. The heated air continues on to three heat/ fresh air ducts in the house. This is the primary heating system!! This replaces the need for wood stoves, furnaces, wall heaters or any other kind of heating device.

And.........up to 90% of the hot water required to heat the house will be captured from the sun. This is one of the key elements of a passive house. A passive house is called a passive house because it does not have an "active" heating system such as a furnace or a boiler. In the end, the passive house winds up with a drastically lower heating demand and a heating system with a few moving parts. Here the only moving parts are the 100 watts or so needed to run the fan for the HRV and the pump for the hot water circulation. But in a passive house even those 100 watts will recycle as heat back into the system. For that 10-15% of the time when the solar panels do not make and store enough hot water, the hot water heater elements will kick on to make hot water.

We used this furred out wall to run most of our electrical and plumbing lines. Behind the new framing is our precious air sealed, insulated sheetrock wall. This new kitchen wall and utility room at left and all the other new interior walls will get sheetrock after the wiring and plumbing is completed.

Sun First setting the mounting brackets for the solar thermal panels. Sun First donated all their labor and materials and sold us the panels at cost.

Hot water production.

Because we did all the insulation after sheetrock we needed a certified Thermographer to inspect the insulation behind the sheetrock. We did so by creating a twenty degree temp difference between inside and out. Andy Wahl of AC Home Performance Inc. came in with his ten thousand dollar camera and documented each and every wall cavity. Infrared cameras read surface temps. A 20 degree indoor/ outdoor difference dramatize outside cold air migrating in through the wall, floor and roof assembly and the camera will read the infiltration of cold air.

This is Andy Wahl's report: "On 5/21/2010 at 8 AM I did the Infrared Thermography on the second CLAM house. I would like to commend 'Mr. Insulation' for such an excellent installation of the insulation for CLAM Blue 2. This is the first QII I’ve ever passed on the first site visit. The outside temperature was 50.8 degrees and the inside temperature was 70.3 degrees. 211 pictures were taken inside, nearly every square foot of the walls and ceilings were photographed. This did not include several outside pictures on the North side or the ones of construction crew.

The level of insulation installation quality far exceeds any of the thousands of pictures I’ve taken. There were no signs of any missing insulation anywhere.

My thanks to Terry and his crew for making the thermal envelope possible to insulate and to Charles for his diligence of getting it install correctly (the first time). If all jobs were like this I’d be out of work.:) I would also like to thank those who allowed Cara and I to be part of this historic event."

Editor's note: CLAM thanks Andy and Cara for providing this service for Blue2 pro bono. Their contribution, along with many other donations of time, money, materials, and expertise is making this project possible. See list in right column.

Here we are looking at the viewfinder of the infrared camera. This camera is what is known as picture on picture. The center colored frame shows the temperature in degrees (65.2) in a pinpointed area (the star). The outer black and white frame shows the rest of the room as a reference. The colored scale on the right shows temps in degrees and color- 71.2 being the hottest surface in this frame. The light blue area between floor and window is an insulated wall cavity which is VERY uniform. The dark blue streak at the floor is the cold coming through the bottom plate of the wall assembly. The red (hot spots) are where the sun has already heated the window sill and frame.

James Bill on left and Peter Waring explaining the HRV system on tour number one.

Tour number four- Andy Blake and James Bill (hidden) explaining mechanical system.

The passive house interior shell has now reached its final air seal.

Hello again,
It was another action packed week. The first shell of sheetrock was finished as well as all the insulation and we finished most of the interior framing and I did a final blower door test today on the current shell. Next week we begin the second round of rough in plumbing, electrical, sprinkler, solar and the mechanical HRV system.

We now have the "See the Machine" Tour scheduled for Friday, May 21, 12:00 and 4:00pm, and Saturday, May 22, 10:00am and 12:00pm. See the integrated solar and heat recovery ventilator (HRV) mechanical system. The solar hot water system supplies 80% or more of the space and water heating requirements.

Space is limited. To register, please sign up at http://CLAM.eventbee.com/event?eid=722734342. CLAM is requesting a $10 donation to the project, and no one will be turned away (for scholarship contact CLAM at 415.663.1005, info@clam-ptreyes.org).
Enjoy ... Terry

Here Charles is blowing in cellulose behind the sheetrock. Ordinarily, the sheetrock is applied over the insulation whatever it may be, but we wanted to pack the stuff into closed cavities. The challenge was to get a consistent tightly packed fill. It had to be done by "feel" and later by calculating the volume of the cavities by the pounds of bags used as well as drilling random sample test holes and "feel" the density by touch. In the end Charles estimated he blew over 4lbs per cubic foot which exceeds the required 3.5lbs per cf.
The wood blocks are to prevent blow outs and or bulging of the sheet rock, the rag is to slow down the backflow of cellulose into the room. Another worry was that if the blow in got too dense, it would blow out or bulge the sheet rock. The rock hangers put in extra screws to ward that off and we had no blowouts and very little bulging.

Messy business. the holes get plugged.

After the sheet rock was taped we are able to begin the interior walls. The passive house interior shell has now reached it's final air seal. As long as we don't puncture the air seal, all the remaining assemblies and walls can be built wild and crazy without concern for air sealing.We keep our 24" on center layouts to conserve lumber. All the future water and electrical lines have been stubbed and sealed into this shell where they will be picked up again to complete interior requirements.

Jorge standing where the washing machine will go. Bill and Sebastian are back in the bathroom.

Plywood section is a structural shear wall,not yet finished at
right. All the other walls will get sheetrock only.

End of day. here I am setting up the blower door for a test of the final shell. We got a 24 CFM air leakage. 24 CFMs @ 50 pascals, translates to a 0.21 ACH (air changes per hour) which is almost three times lower than 0.6 ACH- the passive house allowable air leakage. Moving right along toward Passive House certification!

Now we are back to old fashioned leaky electrical wiring and boxes. Now the heat and cool has no where to go except the next room.

March 19
We poured the perimeter footing and stem wall yesterday and began stripping the forms today. It never ceases to amaze me- you spend a week making the mold, suspend steel bars in it, fill it with a liquid, next day pull off the mold and you have a monolithic cultured stone box onto which a house will stand for a century or more.
Too much fun........terry
Editor's note: Narrator is Terry Nordbye, West Marin contractor for over 30 years, who is newly fired up about reducing our carbon footprint in buildings with passive house renovation and construction.
Tuesday, March 16th- begin outside of forms

Friday, March 19th- foundation poured, forms partially taken off.

The house surrounded by the outside boards of the foundation boards with a ready pile of steel. The boards on the saw horses used for the forms will later be used for the roof rafters. The rest of the form boards we used were from the foundation of the Blue House.

Typically one uses Portland cement as the hardening agent in mixed concrete. Portland cement, derived mostly from heating limestone in a kiln is mined all over the U.S., Canada and Mexico. We used a 30% fly ash content to replace Portland cement in our cement mixture. The fly ash is a waste product from coal generated electricity plants. Turns out our fly ash comes from a coal fired generation plant in South Dakota, it is then trained down to a distribution plant in the bay area where it is then trucked to point reyes. Is fly ash more green than Portland cement? Depends on where the Portland cement was mined and manufactured and how it was delivered. Keep in mind the fly ash is waste where the Portland cement has to be made.

North east corner of foundation after forms are stripped off. Concrete will be back filled to just above line in concrete- 8" above finished grade. Bolts sticking up will attach to key wood members to anchor the house framing onto the concrete footing. Rock pile will be graded out flat as a bed for the next step- foam insulation for the slab.