A brief lull
Whew!! The main construction was finally over, and I could have just a
little bit of my life back. The crew hadn't entirely moved out yet;
they still had a big stack of scaffolding stuff in the backyard and the
brake was still in the basement. They came back a few days later with
the trailer to pick that up.
They had really provided an inspiration of sorts, encouraging me to keep going on my own followup side projects and and pay more attention to the quality of work I was doing. What they left me was really well done -- excellent fit and finish over solid assembly, albeit maybe not perfect in every way as all the theory I'd been reading about. As you consider that, remember that I'll be the first to admit that I'm fussy. Possibly the hardest part for me, besides chasing the guys all over the premises with the camera, had been riding that delicate balance between calling out points I thought were genuinely missing versus being a pain in the ass. I really tried to stay out of the way as much as they wanted, but every so often I'd pop out of the house for more photos and catch a couple of rolled eyeballs and averted glances. Being watched clearly made some of the guys nervous at times, which puzzled me because they should all be really proud of the work they're doing as well as having an appreciative, albeit critical at times, audience. Frankly I think a lot of the shots I grabbed tells a great story about *them* and what they do best even if there were one or two low points along the way. It's apparently impossible to get everything absolutely 100% on these jobs simply due to human factors and a few bits of mis- or non-communication, and I simply have to accept some amount of that. What's important is for everyone involved to learn from those things. An amusing observation was that it seemed to be the *more* experienced guys who could have done without my hovering around, and the ones lower on the totem pole were more personable, willing to talk and joke about the ongoing work. I would have expected it the other way around, with the long-time crew having greater self-confidence and the new guys being the nervous ones. It was all an interesting dynamic to observe and become a small part of for a while. | |
Therefore, the obvious Angie's-list question: would I hire them again? Sure, if I needed the same type of work done. [And assuming they'd take someone like me on again as a client.] They're one of the very few crews getting into the energy-retrofit game in the earlier stages with a good understanding of the benefits, and are driving a lot of everyone else's learning process. They taught me a ton of stuff, much of it simply by example. Various ups and downs aside, that is why this writeup is here. Now I know many more of the expectations to have and the right questions to ask. | |
The high-performance building field and its construction techniques are
rapidly evolving, not to mention turning the building code on its ear,
and it takes time for everybody to get up to speed on all the subtleties
involved. Air and water management has to be one of the foremost
big-picture things in mind, and not everyone is necessarily used to
all the details yet. Would having real *drawings* to work from on my
fairly ordinary house have helped us and smoothed over some of the
indecisive points? No idea -- some other jobs come with complete sets
of drawings that rarely get looked at.
The crew had been trained up on the somewhat unusual techniques where
the foaming and "energy stuff" is concerned, and with several go-rounds
worth of experience on it by then knew in principle what to do for every
retrofit and how to adapt to every building's quirks. But stuff can
and does get missed and sometimes it takes the picky and recently
building-science-self-educated homeowner to catch some of this too.
The interval of calm was punctuated by the arrival of my replacement camera. I had taken advantage of the fairly good "loyalty discount" pricing that Canon was offering to upgrade from the shorted-out G9 to a newer G12 at a somewhat discounted price, and early playing around with it discovered that the smaller-megapixel sensor is *far* cleaner at higher ISO and would thus have much better low-light performance without the noise. Yay. When I wasn't playing with that I also made some time to research finding a different HVAC tech to come out and give the Daikin the once-over I still wanted done. It's surprising how long it takes to find someone to reply in the positive or even at all, let alone actually schedule a visit. Well, maybe not so surprising from a far more jaded view I have of that particular industry now, but it still sucks for the customer base. |
One problem still persisted: every time it rained, water would dribble down the walls and windows. I had *overhangs* by now FFS, that were supposed to be keeping water away from the house. |
This is what some mischievous kid looking for the breaker would find.
Access DENIED!
For those who would immediately counterargue "but what if there's a fire",
in the unlikely event it comes down to that kind of emergency [remember,
no more combustion appliances here!] then responders can just do what they
usually do |
Roofing, day 0
The roofer was there to oversee delivery but wasn't going to start work
until the next day. He set up his hook ladder over the ridge just to have
it out of the way. The builders had left him a fairly clean slate front
and back, albeit a bit dusty here and there.
He was another Synergy subcontractor who knew how to work with
standing-seam metal, but when had come by to survey things he admitted that
it had "been a while" since he'd done metal at all. We also had a discussion
about underlayments, or more accurately something to go under the long metal
panels that lets them slide a little with thermal expansion. He figured he
was going to just plop 'em down right on top of the Grace HT
and not worry about it. Well, remember all that sticky stuff in back where
the membrane had rolled away? Last thing you want a metal panel grinding
over that, slowly sawing its way down through the waterproofing layer.
So I had called ATAS in the interim, and asked them. They were *adamant* that a standing-seam installation needed an extra layer called a slip sheet, either rosin paper or yet another Grace product called Tri-flex, and should *not* go straight onto regular old ice & water shield. Okay, so maybe my roofer was a little out of date on proper materials usage -- I'd give him that, but note that it wasn't him double-checking the manufacturer's recommendation, it was that nitpicky building-scientist-wannabe homeowner again. I had relayed all this through the GC and on delivery day, the roofer assured me he'd bring and use Triflex. A little math around aluminum's coefficient of thermal expansion shows that over the extremes of temperature a roof is likely to see, a 20-foot panel can shrink or grow up to half an inch. That's quite a lot, and even with less movement over years of cycles it can definitely affect whatever's underneath if it presents excessive friction. The oddest thing about standing-seam metal is how *uncommon* it was at the time in the residential market around the immediate Boston metro area. Commercial, sure; the typical green mansard-style facades of many gas stations or red on the fast-food chains was almost an institution. It was therefore perplexing that around most of New England, even nearby like NH and VT and even western MA, standing-seam is all over the place -- barns and houses alike, but not right here. I touched on this in the intro, and at this point still didn't have a good explanation after talking to several construction folks. I mean, we get the same kind of weather as they do a little farther north and west, so wouldn't a roof that nicely sheds snow and is durable be desirable? Things were slowly starting to change in this regard as more local roofers seemed to be including some metal offerings in their skillsets, but mostly of the shingle-lookalike type that nails down similarly to shingles anyway. Standing seam was a bit of a different beast but would be the right solution for a roof that would probably outlive me. |
Roofing, day 1
Then he tried to attach the first panel, but began to realize that there wasn't any good way to hook it to his gable piece. Strike one. |
Getting the edge cleat on was pretty straightforward; almost like it had been designed for the purpose, eh? |
Now the panel had to be painstakingly slid endwise up under every clip in turn, requiring careful assistance from below as he went up with it to guide the end in. |
The front wasn't finished by the end of the day, but the house already had a rather Max Headroom look about it. In the fading daylight, the siding and roofing almost seemed the same color. |
Water management
_H* 121208