White Hawk is growing

White Hawk Ecovillage has a fairly new blog called White Hawk Talk up and running.  Because Rob, Kerrie and Rod are doing much of the building work out there, stop by their blog for more pictures of the work and insights on how the village is growing, changing, and shaping up.  

Here are Rob and Kerrie beginning work on the radiant heat concrete flooring at the newest White Hawk house.

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!

White Hawk house #3

For the past several months, Rob, Rod, and Kerrie have been building the third house at White Hawk ecovillage in Danby.  They braved working out in the winter weather framing, roofing, putting in windows, and doing the electric work.  With spring finally here the team is currently completing the siding and porch while the home owner does the interior trim and finish himself.  It won't be long before there is another family living at White Hawk. 

stick framing vs SIPs in White Hawk

Well, we're up to our wintertime building tricks again, putting together a new home in the fledging intentional community known as White Hawk.  Located in Danby New York, just 10 minutes south of Ithaca, White Hawk is an "ecovillage" that has been in the hearts and minds of many dedicated folks for several years but has now officially become a place where nice folks live.  And yes, there is an amazing hawk or two -all white- that soar over the land!
 It's a very big decision to choose to build a home, and an even bigger one to do that in a upstart intentional community.  None the less, several families have recently made the leap and we're enjoying the pleasure of building some of these beautifuly simple, energy efficient, custom homes for them.

  The approximately 1,000 sq. ft. house we are currently working on is for the Italiano-Boerst family.  As you can see from the photos it is fully framed with windows and roofing in place-  We completed the rough electric work this week in temperatures that felt as if  we were at the south pole.  Next week we will be insulating both the walls and ceiling with  blown cellulous.  Typically we Creative Constructions only need blow cellulous into the ceiling area -because we generally construct walls with SIPs or (structually Insulated pannels).  We love the R-value performance and ease of construction of SIPS.  However, in the case of this buildng the family just didn't like the idea of using a material whose main ingredient is eps foam-- 5 and 1/2" of cozy foam to be exact.  Derived from petroleum, the eps foam in SIPs does turn some folks off as being not a green enough choice. That's cool, but to be fair, "greeness" should be measured in more than one dimention and if the reason you dismiss SIPs is becasue it is in-part made from oil, there is more to consider.  Infact the long view looks much greener!  SIPS are recommened by most green building resources as a good choice for walls and ceilings because when one looks at the energy saving performance acheived year after year with SIPs compared to more traditional 2x6 stick framing ..SIPs shine-- Simply stated, the superior insulation performance SIPs provides cuts energy use, i.e. the amount of natural gas needed for heating- and that is green.  Additionaly, the osb panels used in SIPS are made from small diameter, fast growing, often farm grown trees- like aspen, this reduces the need for dimentional lumber in a new home, lumber that must be cut from larger, slower growing trees.  Finally the labor savings acheived with SIPs means less work/labor needed to build the house --which we consider a green merit in and of itself

On the other hand...The home we are building this month utilizes a smart unique stick framing/blown insulation strategy that maximize the R-value performance of the walls very nicely with out any petroleum based products --just more labor and more wood.

 Here is how we are doing it.  The walls are first framed using 2x6s, 16" on center,  then they are strapped horizontally 2' on center on the outside using approx.  2-1/2" lumber (2x6s ripped legnthwise).

 To this grid, we then attatch our OSB sheathing, add house wrap, do careful air sealing of all joints, seams, and perimeters using expanding foam GreatStuff  from a hand held gun and finally install the siding, which in this case is locally milled board and bat hemlock. 

The horizontal strapping step addresses the issue of "thermal bridging", an issue from which SIPS are mostly exempt.  Thermal bridging, is a term that desrcibes the action of heat or cold transfering/moving through a solid object and is a significant cause of heat loss in the winter in residential construction.  By adding the narrow horizontal strapping on the outside of the framing, thermal bridging is reduced to only the small locations where each horizonal strap crosses each 1 & 1/2 " wide vertical stud.   The added benefit of this framing technique is a thicker than typical wall (7" in this case) that can hold more insulation producing an R-value around 26.  It's all more laborious than building walls with SIP panels which provide structure, insulation, and sheathing all in one, but is a good choice if for what ever reason you nix the SIPs.