Framing progress

The Neuhaus framing is coming along and scheduled to finish next week. Next up - Water main, plumbing, electrical, and HVAC!

The Benefits of Deconstruction

We are pursuing "Deconstruction" on this project, rather than "Demolition", with our friends at The ReUse People of America. 

Deconstruction is a Win-Win-Win: 1) Where possible, materials will be re-used, and that means less material going to the landfill;  2) Re-Used materials go to both partner organizations such as Habitat For Humanity, and to a retail sales outlet where folks can buy used materials at great prices; 3) The homeowner gets a great Tax Deduction as a "Non-Cash Charitable Contribution" which greatly offsets the entire cost of deconstruction.

Remaining materials from deconstruction primarily go to recycling centers, such as the EDCO transfer station in Escondido, or to Moody's where demolished concrete gets recycled.  Very little is transported to a conventional landfill. 

This holds true also for materials generated from the construction portion of the project: We stockpile construction waste materials for hauling to the recycling centers.  We even keep conventional weekly trash pickup service to recycle smaller materials generated from worker's lunches and that sort of thing.

Blower Door Test Results for "Before" Remodel

We thought it would be a great idea to see just how "leaky" the home is before we began the process of remodeling the home.  A Blower Door Test pressurizes, and depressurizes, a home to see how much air infiltration there is ("leakiness" of a home to air.)  In our temperate, coastal San Diego climate zone we find that adding a higher level of thermal efficiency to a home is not going to make nearly as much difference to the thermal comfort and energy efficiency as making the home more airtight.  By improving thermal efficiency, think more insulation, thicker walls, and higher performance doors and windows.  Think expensive, also.

Well, the existing structure is so leaky that we couldn't even pressurize the home to the required standard of 50 Pascals in order to do the test (a Pascal is a unit of pressure.)  We could only get it up to 43 Pascals at the highest airflow rate that the Blower Door could provide, 3,175 cfm.  That means that we were blowing 3,175 cubic feet of air into the home and that same air was leaking out of the "envelope" (floors, walls, and ceiling/roof.)  Not up the chimney, not through the bathroom ventilation, etc., we sealed those areas off.  This home was like swiss cheese.  

All that air infiltration would have made for a far less comfortable home than we will be rebuilding it into.  And to make up for that lack of comfort in the heating season, a lot of heating was probably required.  And all that heat would have kept going out the holes of the swiss cheese structure. Wasted energy, wasted money.

We will be performing additional Blower Door Testing during certain phases of construction to see how much we improve the efficiency of the envelope.  Stay tuned!

Positive pressurization attempt results

Introduction to the Neuhaus

Welcome to Neuhaus! This project is a two story gut-remodel idyllically located half a mile from Swami’s beach in Encinitas, CA. The owner enjoys much of her time outdoors and intends to minimize the environmental impact of the project through energy-conscious building design and lifecycle-assessed material choices.

The goal of this blog is to monitor overall construction progress and to highlight the LEED methods taken into consideration when building this project. LEED, a rigorous green-building certification program through the U.S. Green Building Council, aims to help building owners and operators be environmentally responsible and use resources efficiently. We are extremely lucky to be working with the talented JLC Architecture, who are familiar with the LEED process and will help facilitate credits through sustainable design.

Here are some renderings for the project: