Category Archives: Friends and Family

ICFs are like Legos

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Nicholas is building a house with Legos. He wants to know if our real house will be the same size, so we measure using a Lego man — 5 men wide, 10 men long. Yes, it’s almost exactly to scale. Actual size is about 25′ X 50′. Nicholas didn’t build his foundation with white Legos but we might. 

Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs) are a lot like Legos. You stack foam blocks three high and pour concrete into their hollow interiors. Repeat three times for a 9′ foundation, fully insulated and ready for sheetrock. We’ve been talking to reps at Logix, Rastra and ARXX. The ARXX website is a good source of information: “ICF technology is a green and sustainable building system that delivers a foundation or wall that is highly energy efficient, structurally tough and has superior fire resistance and sound suppression. ICF construction is fast, easy and cost effective. ARXX ICF structures average 44% less energy to heat and 32% less energy to cool than conventional construction methods.”

The beast in the basement

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We are renting an old house. No heat. No hot water. The stairs creak and the air smells musty as we descend into the furnace room. Chris opens a cracked green door, shines a flashlight into the blackness and reaches up to pull a string cord. In the glare of a bare bulb we stand and regard The Beast in the Basement. It is silent. It has consumed a tank of oil in less than four summer months: 250 gallons at a cost of $1,099 when filled last June. It is Sunday night and the kids need to clean up before school, so we pile into the car and drive to their grandparents’ house for hot showers – pajamas in hand.

In the morning, I meet Walt, the oil guy, who feeds the beast and hands me a bill for $923. “You could throw a cat through the gap around those windows,” he tells me, talking about how to use less oil this winter.  First frost is due any day and we are motivated to winterize. Meanwhile, one of the best building scientists in the country is studying the plans for our Passive House, the super-snug, oil-free opposite of this rambling old rental.

Across the field and into the woods

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Ted preparing the road surface for the next load of stone.

Ted is my in-law and the farmer of the land. The road to the house site is 1,400 feet in length. It also crosses two culverts. I am building this road myself, with a great deal of help from Ted. His generosity of time, labor, knowledge and equipment is making this project possible. He is an artist with the backhoe. This photo was taken on his 75th birthday.

The heating system: Sunshine and jumping jacks

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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.

Reflections from the tipi

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AUGUST 2011, posted by Susan

I sit in a tipi as children chant my daughter’s nature camp name, “Sugar Maple, Sugar Maple”. She stands to receive a blue marble that looks like the Earth, a token of her week at Flying Deer Nature Center. I have just come from a meeting on the cost of building our new house and, for a moment, I wish for a simple plan of poles and canvas. I ask my son, who is spinning a stick against wood in hope of igniting fire, if he would like to live in a tipi. “Maybe not in winter,” he replies.

The kind of house we want to build will cut heating costs by 90 percent. It’s a Passive House, and winter in upstate New York makes this way of building both cozy and cost-effective. It will have thick walls, a very thick roof, triple-pane window and some technology to capture heat and keep the air clean. If we are going to build new, we might as well make the most of the investment.

Saying goodbye to the campers, we drive back to the “For Rent” house, as Sugar Maple calls it, where we will rent while we build. “We found someone to build our new house,” my husband tells the children. “It’s the kind that doesn’t use much energy,” I add. Fresh from the lessons of nature camp, our 8-year-old son says, “That should make the Earth smile.”