With the Intus slider door installed, our house is dried in. The blower door test for passive house certification is scheduled for the end of the week.
Tag Archives: windows
Roughing-in the windows, South side
Preparing our window openings
Building the South end window frame
The rough opening for the four Intus windows that will frame our Southern exposure.
The heating system: Sunshine and jumping jacks
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.
But what about the view?
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.