These shelves were designed to house books and items while maintaining the apartment's contemporary feel. The client wanted the shelves to appear as though they traveled throughout the apartment, rather than featuring themselves neatly in one plane. The added third dimension provided by having the cabinets turn against the right-hand wall and sweep away up high presented interesting detail challenges, but accomplished the goal.
The client preferred a slight industrial look, selecting fir plywood as the main building component. They will be stained with a tinted urethane to provide color while exposing the unique grain.
Careful placement of the cabinets while working from one side to the other ensured the right reveal against bulkheads and walls.
face frame
The face-frame has a step in the middle, created by plowing out the center third. At all rail/stile intersections a raised area of face-frame is removed to create continuity in the plow
This video shows our method of installing replacement windows in the new-construction style while increasing the insulation levels in the wall and taking care of a few other technical problems.
One benefit of the system is that you can pause for as long as you like between installing the window and insulating/re-siding the walls. This opportunity arises through the installation of a window buck which provides a finished window edge that extends far enough out to become the trim line for the future deepened wall assembly. During the period between installing the windows and residing, the trim will appear to extend out further than necessary since it is allowing for the addition of future layers of foam insulation, siding and a ventilation cavity known as the rain-screen cavity. Once these layers have been installed, the trim line will revert to a normal appearance.
The rain-screen cavity is a ventilation chamber that sits on the outside of the thermal boundary (foam) and in this instance is created by installing vertical 3/4" strips as a siding backer. It drains against the weather-tight foam to the bottom of the assembly and allows the back of the siding to air-dry and maintain a temperature consistent with the front of the siding. These improvements benefit the owner by seriously extending the life of the paint and consequently extending the life of the siding. In traditional methods, this chamber did not exist, resulting in siding that remained permanently wet on the inside surface. This moisture would be driven through to the outside surface of the siding where it would gradually break the bond between the paint and the wood.
In order to complete the assembly, the foam needs to be carefully taped at all seams with a weather-barrier tape such as 'Tyvek' or 'Dow' brand. It is important to remember that the extruded polystyrene is the weather barrier in this assembly, that all flashing needs to be adhered to this layer with bitumenous membrane and taped at the top to avoid sagging.
One of the most complicated issues for homeowners is determining whether or not to make a change to their 1) heating system efficiency, or 2) heating fuel type. There are a multitude of factors that could go into making this decision, including:
Current system efficiency,
Proposed system efficiency,
Current cost of heating fuel,
Future cost of fuel,
Cost of change to fuel type, system efficiency, or both,
Effect of shell upgrades performed concurrent with change (as is commonly the case in NJ Home Performance with Energy Star projects) or in future,
Fortunately, the US Energy Information Administration has this handy Heating Fuel Comparison Calculator. If you're considering changing fuel types but are uncertain of the efficiency of the proposed system you can always download the proposed equipment AHRI certificate here.
I suspect that natural gas prices may currently be artificially low. However, the rough analysis I use doesn't predict variable fuel price increases. Here's my approach:
Check existing system efficiency and current fuel cost,
Estimate last year's heating cost. This can be done using the 12 month usage graph on most gas or electric bills (deducting base-load), or totaling oil usage (with a possible deduction for indirect-fired hot water).
Predict savings for efficiency improvements and fuel changes using the spreadsheet above.
Admittedly, there's a fair bit of guesswork involved. If you're extraordinarily intelligent, you can improve the accuracy of your estimate by incorporating Heating Degree Days.
Fuel prices vary around the country. Rough prices for the bills in my market are:
Gas $1.30/therm. Gas is ridiculously cheap right now.
Electricity $.18/kWh. Central NJ has moderately high electricity prices.
Oil $3.75/gallon. Ouch.
[A sidebar: Basic shell upgrades such as air-sealing and insulating attics should usually be prioritized over equipment upgrades. In most cases shell upgrades:
Are more cost-effective,
Improve comfort, sometimes dramatically. On the other hand, converting to a ducted heat pump often diminishes comfort.
Improve building durability.]
Here are some general lessons from home performance work we've done in central New Jersey:
Gas furnaces are cheap to replace and operate.
The marginal cost to upgrade furnaces from moderate (78%-84%) to high (90% +) efficiency is very small. Once you factor state, performance and/or utility company rebates, high efficiency systems may be roughly equal to the cost of mid-efficiency. Thus, installing mid-efficiency residential furnaces is generally not very sensible.
Heat pumps must have really high efficiencies to compete with high efficiency gas. On the basis of operating costs, it's difficult to justify installing heat pumps as a primary heat source in areas where gas is available. This is especially true of most residential ground-source heat pumps. Generally the cost to install ground-source heat pumps is high and the real-world coefficient of performance for residential systems is probably not great (see here). On the other hand, for people running gas boilers in houses without any cooling, there may be some justification for installing ductless minisplit heat pumps for cooling, dehumidification, and as a potential hedge against rising gas prices.
Really high-efficiency (94%+) gas boilers are expensive, frequently more than double the cost of furnaces of comparable efficiency. In instances where the building has low requirements for heat, it may make sense to install 91% AFUE boilers instead of 95%, and prioritize shell upgrades instead (or nice shoes).
A common building geek truism is that shell upgrades have shorter payback periods than equipment upgrades. However, the marginal cost of installing larger equipment is low. Therefore houses that require a lot of heat (e.g. really big houses) or houses that are costly to upgrade (e.g. houses with complex geometry) benefit even more by upgrading to very high efficiency equipment.
Assuming comparable efficiencies, oil heat is >2x the cost of gas. Furthermore, gas furnaces and boilers can readily achieve efficiency levels much higher than oil. Although there are some high efficiency oil appliances, the current cost of these systems is pretty high.
If you'd like to frivolously offset the savings you should obtain by converting from oil to gas, put your duct-work somewhere dumb, like your attic. I've spoken with several people who switched from oil boilers and window units to gas furnace and a/c ducts in their attic, and claim to have saved virtually nothing for their efforts.
Fine Homebuilding has this obituary for Larry Haun. An icon of carpentry, I was inspired to switch to gang-cutting rafters by watching his videos and reading his books. One of the building construction greats.
Here's some more feedback we received on a job completed last year in the NJ Home Performance with Energy Star program:
"Jesse and Abel Smith of Tay River completed the insulation of my 2500 sqft house according to the NJ energy saving program. We found their level of competence extremely high to give valuable advice while completing the work agreed in the assessment. The outcome was impressive, realizing a 40% cost reduction on the PSE&G bills on a year to year basis during last winter. I highly recommend Tay River to undergo such a project in compliance with the NJ state energy saving program.
Also the NJ state refund for the work came without delay thanks to Tay River experience dealing the NJ administration."
Here are the blower door results from one of the NJ Home Performance with Energy Star jobs we did this week.
In most houses we anticipate 30%-40% leakage reductions, which is generally considered pretty good. But 55% leakage reduction is pretty awesome! I'll try to find time over the weekend to elaborate on our evolving techniques for sealing buildings.
Here's the pre-work shot of the blower door manometer:
After work completion. (For geeks: The "config" settings are correct in both photos. Testing out required the use of the A ring, whereas testing in was done with the fan open. Also note that the manometer is in "CFM@50Pa", so the 1.1 Pa difference on channel A results in a negligible difference in CFM.)
