The beast in the basement

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We are renting an old house. No heat. No hot water. The stairs creak and the air smells musty as we descend into the furnace room. Chris opens a cracked green door, shines a flashlight into the blackness and reaches up to pull a string cord. In the glare of a bare bulb we stand and regard The Beast in the Basement. It is silent. It has consumed a tank of oil in less than four summer months: 250 gallons at a cost of $1,099 when filled last June. It is Sunday night and the kids need to clean up before school, so we pile into the car and drive to their grandparents’ house for hot showers – pajamas in hand.

In the morning, I meet Walt, the oil guy, who feeds the beast and hands me a bill for $923. “You could throw a cat through the gap around those windows,” he tells me, talking about how to use less oil this winter.  First frost is due any day and we are motivated to winterize. Meanwhile, one of the best building scientists in the country is studying the plans for our Passive House, the super-snug, oil-free opposite of this rambling old rental.

Cracked frame on the John Deere 3020

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I think it happened while I was pushing a large pile of logs with the bucket. New side frame parts can be purchased to replace the cracked parts. Replacement parts are available for any John Deere tractor, no matter how old it is. Luckily, Ted has another 3020 in the barn. However, the loader bucket is out of action until this tractor can be repaired.

Across the field and into the woods

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Ted preparing the road surface for the next load of stone.

Ted is my in-law and the farmer of the land. The road to the house site is 1,400 feet in length. It also crosses two culverts. I am building this road myself, with a great deal of help from Ted. His generosity of time, labor, knowledge and equipment is making this project possible. He is an artist with the backhoe. This photo was taken on his 75th birthday.

We are inspired by this house

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Our source of inspiration for building for super extra mega energy efficiency is the Hudson Passive Project, featured in these stories:

First Green, Passive House in New York State Constructed in Claverak, NY
“An architect committed to sustainable living designs an extremely green home that almost heats itself”
Hudson Valley Magazine, by Lynn Hazlewood

House Tour: Claverack, NY
New York Times, by Bethany Lyttle

Passive House, Aggressive Idea
“The house uses no geothermal power, no wind power, yet it uses 10 percent the energy of a normal house, simply by the way it’s built.”
New York HOUSE magazine, by Vicki Distefano

And more examples of Passive Houses

The heating system: Sunshine and jumping jacks

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Our source of heat rises and sets at a distance of 92,951,640 miles (149,590,787 km).

Six enormous windows will open our house to the sun. It will be heated by passive solar gain from windows and glass doors, along with heat from people and the everyday use of electrical appliances.

We explain this concept at a recent dinner party. A skeptical guest asks, “No furnace? What happens when it hits zero outside?” Suggestions for how to generate heat are offered around the table: invite the neighbors over, get a big dog, make the kids do jumping jacks.  The skeptical guest claps his hands above his head in a modified jack and jokes, “Can I stop now, Mommy, can I stop now?” We are taking some heat.

Here in the Hudson Valley, heating bills can be high. In our last house, the heat source roared beneath the floor boards, puffing fumes and making the iron radiators clank and groan. Oil deliveries excited the children, who liked to watch a man in navy coveralls drag a hose from his truck to our fill pipe. Oil bills excited Mommy and Daddy, adding up to nearly $5,000 a year for a 1,600 sq ft house. The new house, 2,800 sq ft, should cost less than $400 a year to heat. The dinner guests are impressed.

Estimates for super-insulated windows are coming in now. The brands we are exploring include Serious Windows, Thermotech, Inline and Intus.

Considering certification

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Brian, Dennis and Susan - August 18, 2011

AUGUST 18, 2011: We met today with Dennis Wedlick and Brian Marsh to review highly satisfying sketches for a high-performance house. It’s a dream to work with architects after years of online shopping for plans that never seemed to fit. But there is more than the delight of good design going on here. Building a house that reduces heating demands by 90 percent takes science and engineering. Dennis and Brian built the first certified Passive House in New York State and have studied the solar gain (yes) and thermal bridging (no) issues for more than three years. My question of the day was, “Should we get certified?” It seems there is no simple “yes” or “no” answer.

Dennis described the certification process and, in particular, the benefits of working with a building science engineer. An engineer can solve problems and open up possibilities that could, for example, enable us to add another window to capture a view. In a Passive House, glass is part of a larger equation with an impact on how the heating and cooling system will function. There is an equation, literally. We are going to enter data into a computer software program about the thickness of our insulation, how the walls are attached to the foundation, windows, doors and dozens of details. The computer software is German and it will give us at least one clear answer in this process. It will tell us if our house plan meets a specific target for energy efficiency — “jah” oder “nein”.

Why am I craving a stamp of approval on my house? First, I think it may help me as a writer when I pitch articles or book ideas about the house. Second, I want to be sure that this house is really working the way it is supposed to. Additional insight came today from Dennis, who talked about storytelling.

One story strikes me as a tale of people with passion. Chris and I want to build something beautiful, smart and enduring. He wants to avoid oil bills in old age and I want to enjoy the energy irony inherent in our building site, once the proposed site of a nuclear power plant. We are building a state-of-the-art, high performance, energy-efficient house with architects who believe that this approach can and should influence the way houses are built from here on out. Dennis said he has learned more about building in the past three years than in the past two decades because to design a Passive House you need to know how it functions. He and his team at DWA are passionate about applying all they have learned while building their first Passive House to building their second, for us.

The other story is more technical. Certification in the United States is relatively recent, led by the Passive House Institute US. Do I want to delve into the who, what and why of it all? Building science is another story, with construction methods that are perhaps threatening to the building industry status quo. A great deal of conversation needs to take place among those interested in the passive house concept: different ways of doing things, experiences and new materials and technologies (more of which exist off-the-shelf in Europe than in the US). I would need to engage in the certification process in order to write about many of these issues in any depth. I would need to be an objective voice in the midst of different agendas.

Certified or not, this house starts a new chapter in our lives. Building this home is also about constructing a new life for our family here in the Hudson Valley. We are going to have a lot of stories to share.

Brian, Dennis and Susan

But what about the view?

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AUGUST 30, 2011: Today we walked out to the clear patch in the woods that will be our building site. We pulled a line North / South and considered how the house might sit. I squinted at the orange tape strung between two stakes and squinted at the house plan. My conclusion: The machine doesn’t care about the view. A wall of windows faces South and all other walls have few if any windows. But, but, but, our big view is West South-West. Should we abandon the Passive House concept in favor of a more traditional house with a picture window and the pleasure of watching herds of deer graze in a wide-open hayfield?

We could go for a normal energy-efficient house. It seems easier. The Passive House feels smart and special but I am constrained by the PHPP equation. Glass is a carefully controlled part of the math that makes all the difference in energy use. To make a long story short, we have decided to go for the Passive House and do whatever it takes to make the machine work at its best. That means we need to set aside our worries about West-facing windows and keep the house on a North-South axis. So – to elevations.

Clay and a country song

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“My muddy boots, my city shoes, I found the note I wrote to you.” My life sounds like a country song. I am on a train from Hudson to New York City, calling Chris on my cell phone. “I found Dad’s tractor directions in my papers. Got a pen? Slip the clutch on the power take off, use the big hole on the hook up, and don’t pound the auger,” I say, relaying my father’s tips to my husband, who was recently granted permission to drive the John Deere on his own. Chris is digging yet more holes for a septic system percolation test.

We are mired in mud. The soil is saturated from a month of record rainfall, including Hurricane Irene. The first set of perc test pits failed to drain fast enough for us to bury a septic system in the field. The next option, far less attractive both visually and financially, is a raised bed. Columbia County said we can use 18” of the soil and add several feet of sand and gravel to create a big mound. An excavator tells us we can fill and grade and make it blend; an architect warns our hillside will never look natural again. Septic systems range from $8,000 to $35,000 and may or may not involve pumps, sprayers and alarms – including the most unattractive idea of a receptacle in the basement that grinds solids and pumps fluids up and out.

Today Chris will make a last-ditch effort to see if we can bury a system in an alternate location. I will attend meetings and eat lunch at a Japanese restaurant, so I have slipped on my pumps instead of my boots, now coated and cracking clumps of clay.