ICF foundation by King Brothers Concrete Specialist, our favorite subs!

Recent work putting together the ICF foundation for the Scherer family residence near Trumansburg NY

 back breaking work

How many more of these things to go..

straighter than an arrow!

This eps foam form foundation filled with 6 inches of reinforced concrete has an R- factor of  22.  It makes an excellent, strong and comfortable concrete foundation/basement but it takes some skill to set it up properly and have it come out straight and plumb like the King brothers always do! 

Steve, John and Charley--you guys rock!

BTW,  The home owner saved $500 on this job by putting together the Eco Block forms himself!

On with the framing and SIP walls!

framing for cellulose in the walls

As you may know from reading some of our previous posts, we are pretty into using the SIP wall building system for it's excellent r-value performance, greatly reduced thermal bridging & air infiltration issues--- as well as the relative ease and speed it facilitates when we're " framing the walls". But it's not always the best choice for a client.- For a variety of reasons including clients that want to use "all natual materials" we sometimes end up using an altrante 2x6 framing method instead of the SIPS. This alternate framing approach means we have to work a lot harder to achieve the same high r-values and energy saving performance in our walls. We recently applied this approach to a house in the White Hawk co-housing community in Danby New york. Here's how it all went together.

FRAMING: Once we had the exterior walls framed up with typical 2x6 stock 16 inches on center, we added a 2"x2" strap horizontally, 2 foot on center to the out side of the walls. Having done that, The exterior was ready to be sheathed with OSB. With that all done, we were then able to seal all the seams and edges of the exterior walls with expanding foam, and finally apply our wind wrap (tyvec) to the outside of the house. ON this particular house the final siding was to be locally milled, rough cut board and bat Hemlock.

INSULATION: During this work the air temps were hovering in the mid teens ...yes 15-20 degrees below freezing. Spaying wet stick cellulose was not an option. Instead we attached a breathable but not streachable fabric product called Insulweb to the inside of the framed walls (to support the insulation) stapled it heavily to the studs and cut a 5" or so slit cross about 12"-18" from the ceiling, and at around 36" from the floor in each stud bay. These access holes allowed us to easily blow dry cellulose into the wall cavities until they were full- and firm when pushed against with by hand. The insulweb fabric does tend to bulge out a bit as the wall are filled and that can be a problem for drywallers, so using 5/8" drywall board is strongly recommended. When it was all said and done we had a minumum of an R-26, 7" dense packed cellulose wall, with greatly reduced thermal bridging and the added benefit for these clients of reduced use of petroleum products- and we all can feel good about supporting a green product like recycled cellulose insulation!

eco friendly concrete floor staining and sealing

Recently in the process of staining a new concrete floor for clients in the trumansburg area, we had the opportunity to use a great new- new to us - green product, part of a line of eco friendly staining and sealing products that are sold under the brand name Eco-procote.   Soycrete "espresso" is the name of the stain we used on this new 1,000 square foot floor, the sealer was labled Acri-soy.  Both were completely benign to use with basically zero V.O.C.s and no acids. That's a big switch from what we have been using. Typically when staining a floor we are forced to protect ourselves from the acid meant to react with a the lime in the concrete chemically changing it's color as well as the volatile solvents in the wax and poly finishes.

Eco-Procote products get the job done with out these harmful ingredients, you can read about how on their website. As well, we found the Soycrete stain more forgiving to use than acid stains-- If you feel the color is to dark, you can actually wipe off the stain with a wet rag up to 6 hours after your initial application --or you can add more stain as you like once you have had some time to let the surface dry and consider the depth of color you have applied.

The Soy-crete stain, Acri-soy sealer, and Eco-Tuff -high traffic top coats were all very easy to apply and with out the noxious off gassing typical of floor finishes and sealers. The clients loved the finished product, and we loved the lack of exposure to potentially harmful materials. Check em out!

shades of green

There's a lot of buzz these days about being green, and for the most part that's a good thing. But defining what's green and what's not is a pretty subjective task. With all the noise and claims of Eco friendliness out there, it can get difficult to see the trees for the forest.

When it comes to "green building" in progressive Ithaca, there are many shades to choose from. Living roofs, straw bale walls, local lumber, low VOC paints and finishes, residential solar and wind installations, and more. As I look around me at what other folks in the green building business are doing to reduce their impact on the environment, I can't help but wonder if we ourselves are doing enough?

This is the question that lead to this post... My first thought is, hmm well, maybe not, after all we've never created an earthen floor for a customer and we frequently use materials produced from far away.... But with further consideration I think, well, it depends on who we are building for. Not every customer is willing to make the aesthetic leap to rough cut siding with no paint, regardless of the benefits. It's true, what clients are willing to spend their hard earned dollars on is as big a factor as any in what green materials and methods we are able to utilize on a given project. And then I think, ...hang on a second there buddy, maybe we're doing just fine, and perhaps our part on the Ithaca green building pallet is just as important as all the others.

So, what is it that we are actually doing, you ask?

Well our unique shade of green building comes from knowing how to design, and build lower Eco-footprint, highly energy efficient, affordable homes. Homes that require less material and energy to create up front, and therefore less energy and money to operate or maintain over the long haul. Point in fact, we recently we were involved in the construction of an Energy Star rated 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with around 1,200 sq' of interior living space. That's less than half the size of the average new home built in the Northeast these days. This particular design, dubbed "Habitat" by it's designer, Ithaca resident Rod Lambert, is all about getting more home out of less resources. Utilizing proven design elements such as window placement that optimizes winter solar gain while reducing summer heat build up, exterior walls built of SIP panels, as well as a floating slab with radiant heat are just some of the ways we get the green effect going.

The family that moved into this house we recently worked on, told me that the Energy Star assessment team came by recently. Apparently during the process of checking out the house's energy saving characteristics, the technician who did the "blower door test" (the test that checks for air infiltration) said that she had never had a house rate so well . That made me smile.

It's true that sometimes I feel a little guilty that we are not doing more obviously green projects like building living roofs and such (though we have in the past!), but then I remember what we are doing for the cause, and I feel pretty good about our part. After all there are many shades of green that make up the forest and each one is integral to the whole.

rob