Phase II work is finally beginning

Let's start off with a few pictures of the Barn. The insurance company thinks the work is acceptable, so they have agreed to continue to insure our old house. I did a second coat on the door, and trimmed with white around the windows. I tried to do a fake window on the one that is boarded up, and it's all right, but you can definitely tell it's a fake. I think if someday I have the time or inclination, I'll paint the fake "panes" a dark blue to blend in better. The two windows to the right were all fixed up for my new chicken coop. Sometime soon, I have to build a run for the chickens (a wired area so they can come out and be safe from predators) so I 'll need a door through the wall to the coop. But that's for another blog discussion. :)

Shawn started off our next phase of the building project by doing some foam around the interior of the windows when it was raining and cold couple of weeks ago. This is a picture of the basement window with the over-sized buck. He is using pieces of scrap DOW blue board insulation to fill in the gap, and foaming around the blue board to seal it good. You can also see the bead of foam between the window and the wood framing.

This next picture shows the same technique being used between the wood I-joists in the floor. Shawn, again. is using scrap pieces of foam, sealed with some expanding foam to seal the rim joist and minimize the heat loss through this spot. This is to ensure a super-tight air infiltration seal, which will all pay off when it is time to heat and cool the home. The greatest loss of heat (or gain in summertime) occurs because of the air infiltrating into the house. It takes energy to heat that air that then leaks out, while it takes more energy to heat the cool air that filters in through gaps (or vice-versa in the summertime). Our goal is to do our best super-insulation, super-airtight construction. This, of course, will mean that we will need an air exchanger to mechanically supply the house with fresh air for proper ventilation. But it also means that our heating and cooling loads will be much smaller than typical for a house this size, which in turn will mean we won't need as big of mechanical equipment. Thus we hope to gain some savings. But those nifty details will have to wait.

Right now we will be focusing on the siding. In the original plan, we were going to be running the water line from the meter to the house, the electric line from the meter to the house, and tying the sewer line into the septic. Then we were going to finish shaping up the grading, then do the siding. For this work, we needed to rent a mini-excavator, a skid loader, and all of the supplies for the job. Not to mention that because of the new Iowa electrical law, we have to hire someone to do the electrical part of it. After quoting the price of the electric cable the we need to run underground between the house and meter box, we realized that we do not have enough money in the current budget to do everything. So, scrap that idea.

We already bought the siding, so the money in our budget is now going to the siding rpoject. Once the siding is done, we'll save up the money to run the utilities. This will probably mean that our goal to move in before November may have to be pushed until next year.

So we started prepping the outside to accept the siding. The first step was to seal the gap between the main floor wood framing and the ICF basement wall with some foam. Then after the foam cured, Shawn went around with this neat little saw to cut the foam flush with the wall. In this picture you can see the housewrap (white) and the foam sheathing on the first floor (under the white). The orange is the polyurethane foam sealing the gap.

The Tyvek housewrap is an air-infiltration barrier that allows vapor to pass through. It also serves the purpose of a drainage plain so that if water gets behind the siding, is will slide down the Tyvek and drain to the exterior helping to keep the moisture out of the walls. This is why the flashing on the windows was very important, and it needs to be integrated with the housewrap so that they all work together as a system to reduce the potential water damage. It is impossible to completely seal a house against water intrusion. Which is why the flashing and drainage plane are designed so that if water does get in there, it has a way to get out, instead of becoming trapped and entering the house. The ICF in itself is a drainage plane, so it does not need to have Tyvek on it.

I do not like the fact that the Tyvek ends right at the joint between the framing and the basement wall. So as an extra measure of protection, we decided to add a couple more feet of Tyvek to cover that joint. Also, the windows located in the walkout basement are flashed to kingdom-come. Still, we are being overtly cautious, and decided to cover the window buck with Tyvek that is slipped under the Tyvek of the main floor. Hopefully the water will drain over the Tyvek and not have a chance to find a crack between the wood buck and the basement wall.

To begin prepping the windows, we first need to clean the foam on the wall so that the flashing tape will stick. In this picture you see the window buck (in blue) and the window that has been already installed. The white tape surrounding the window is the flashing tape. We added flashing tape to the joint between the window buck (blue) and the basement ICF foam wall.

That joint between buck and wall was sealed with spray foam, then we cut the foam flush with the wall. You can see here where we used a brush to clean the foam around the buck to reveal the white foam under all that dust. Next, we flashed the joint with flashing tape. This is done in a shingle style, meaning the bottom piece goes first (which was already in place before the windows were installed). Then the vertical sides get flashed, and finally the top horizontal joint gets flashed overlapping the sides. Again, this is so that water running on the surface will drain down. Here you can see me installing the flashing tape on the side joint between buck and wall.

We are using left-over Tyvek housewrap that we have from the carpenter. The first window and the sliding door, we covered it with Tyvek and then we cut out the hole for the window/door. Here you can see Shawn nailing the Tyvek to the ICF. We slid the pieces of Tyvek under the Tyvek that is covering the upstairs, then taped it with some Tyvek tape.

To maximize what little Tyvek we had, we decided to cut two strips for the sides and then cut a horizontal piece for the top overlapped over the sides and using Tyvek tape to seal the joints. The Tyvek is installed using ring shank button nails.

So here is what the progress looks like. The idea here is that if water gets behind the siding, like in wind-driven rain, it will hit the Tyvek and run down over the Tyvek in one continuous plane.

We finished cleaning the foam around the windows, and installing the flashing tape around the bucks for all of the back windows. We don't have enough left over Tyvek to do all of the windows, so we bought a 3 ft x 100 ft roll of Tyvek to finish the windows and to go around the house covering the joint between main floor and basement.

The windows in the window wells will probably be trickier to do, but we'll see. Once this tyveking is done, we will start installing the siding trim.

You cannot imagine the ridiculous amount of time that we have spent searching for the right fastener for the siding. Finally, we settled on stainless steel ring shank nails. So as to not pound every single nail by hand, we bought an air framing nailer. The model that we ordered off Amazon.com that should be arriving next week is the Porter Cable FR350A. My father-in-law will let us borrow his air compressor, bless his heart. No one around here stocks stainless steel nails that are collated to be used with an air gun, so we will have to special order them from Lowes. We need a 3" nail to go through the foam upstairs and nail at least 1 1/4" into the wood framing. For the basement, we will be buying 2 3/8" Stainless steel nails. The foam in the ICF basement is 2 1/2" deep, so we don't want to be hitting the concrete. Shawn is all excited about his new toy... I mean tool.

We will be ordering 4000 of the 3" nails, and probably another 2000 of the 2 3/8". Doesn't sound ridiculous that nails alone will cost 1/5 of the siding materials cost? For the same amount of money, we could have probably gone to the Caribbean for a weekend.

I have also been looking into mount boxes for the outdoor lights and outlets, and decided to buy the ones at Lowes. Since we won't be doing electrical, I needed something that will facilitate the installation of the electrical boxes after the siding is done. These mount boxes make the job look better, and the nice thing is that the mount box covers can be snapped off so that the electrician has access to the wall behind without tearing holes in the siding. Then the covers can be snapped back on once he is done.

Another part of the siding is to cover the exposed ICF basement since the siding has to be installed at least 8 inches away from the ground. We have opted to use PVC coated aluminum flashing, and we are hunting for stainless steel screws to use. I think we will have to make a trip to Menards to get them, since they stock those. Or the other option is to order them online.

It seems like progress is going slow, but at least we have now officially started working on it.

Oh, and guess who thinks our safe room is a safe place to nest? There seems to be a sparrow that flies out of there every time we go in. I guess until we can seal off the eaves, we'll have to deal with birds nesting in the house.

Here's a picture of a nice surprise this spring. In all the years that we've lived here, I've never seen this tree bloom! Shawn has complained about this ugly tree a few times in the last five years, and has made the off-comment that he should chop it down. I've always liked this tree, and I have had a vision of a little bench on a small paved floor under it. I even told Shawn he could not cut it so that the circle drive could go there when we first began to think about building the house. Now I am pleased that we didn't cut it down (though Shawn still thinks it looks a little worse for wear).

Perhaps the old oak that died (and is becoming firewood as you can see) used to take too many nutrients or light from this tree, or something. I was just telling Shawn last week that I'd like to have one of those nice pink flowering trees that have started to bloom around here, and see how God provides?