Mill Creek NetZero Home, December 15, 2009, 14:00.
As we approach the winter solstice and the three-month anniversary of our moving in, we continue to learn about our new house. These observations are mostly qualitative, because we don’t have the rest of our solar modules up, and we haven’t set up monitoring equipment yet. We are tentatively planning to remove the door of our wood stove on July 1st, 2010 and then monitor the house’s energy use for a year. read more... »
Mill Creek NetZero Home Heat Recovery Ventilator
I heard a story once about a man who built a house using insulated concrete forms (ICFs). While I don't advocate their use in general, ICFs have some distinct advantages (certainly over conventional construction). The primary of these advantages is supreme air tightness. ICF homes (those that are built with ICFs from top to bottom) can achieve hourly air change rates of 0.2. In contrast, the Mill Creek NetZero Home has an airtightness measurement of 0.36 ACH, which is really amazing for a wood-framed house.
So back to this guy who built the ICF house. He apparently wasn't aware of how air tight his house was, or at least the consequence of that air tightness. Six months after he moved in, he had to rip all of the drywall out because it had rotted. He had built a house as tight as a plastic bag, and forgotten a critical aspect: ventilation. read more... »
The best way that I can think of to add a large amount (20+ tonnes) of thermal mass to a solar home is by adding concrete floors. By doing this, one can get two uses, thermal storage and a finished floor, out of the same investment. Furthermore, since the mass of a concrete floor is so spread out around the home, thereby giving it a large surface area with which to absorb and release heat, it really is the ideal thermal storage medium for a house with large solar gains.
So we added a 2.5 inch topcoat of concrete over the subfloor. In order to support the extra weight we had to add (recycled!) beams that run the length of the house (north to south). After it was poured, the concrete was simply trowelled as a preliminary finish.
pouring concrete floors over a regular subfloors (the walls had to be made 2.5 inches higher to compensate for the depth of the floors)
a freshly trowelled concrete floor
For the final finish, we were partial to an acid-stain because we've seen some gorgeous stained finishes. Peter Amerongen convinced us to go for a water-based dye for environmental reasons. Man those green types can get in the way sometimes!
A talented man named Skip from Desco Coatings did the final finish. Peter describes the finish as such:
”We sealed the concrete with lithium silicate, then dyed it with water-based dye. The final coat was an epoxy coating, 2-part , 100% solids (so no offgassing because the soldis do not evaporate)."
The finished product is wonderful – a bit different at first, with an organic, charactery type of feel to it (yes, I just made up the word charactery).
The floor has been growing on me by the day.
we love the saw cuts in this floor read more... »
Mill Creek NetZero Home Living Room - finally some autumn sunshine!
Have you ever noticed that as soon as you move in to a solar house the sun stops shining? It’s been overcast since the beginning of October here in Edmonton – since just after we moved into the Mill Creek NetZero Home – and the fact that Edmonton has as many hours of sunshine as Miami has seemed hard to believe at times. Finally we have the return of sunny days, and the house is great to be in right now.
So what have we learned so far?
the library area on the second floor is bathed in sunlight on a sunny day – luxurious at times, and to be avoided at others read more... »
