Day to Day

End of a short era….Linda and I turned our Nissan Leaf back to the dealer, after 39 months of almost trouble-free commuting.  To our knowledge, it was the first Leaf, and perhaps the first all-electric car in North Dakota (since the early 20^th Century electric cars) when we picked it up in October 2012.  It chunked right through snow and cold, even at -20F.  My only complaint is that the heater consumed way too much electricity.  If we left off the climate control system, we typically got almost 5 miles per kilowatthour in the summer, and 2.5 or 3 miles in the winter.  Nothing about the experience has dissuaded us from getting a predominantly electric car for the Harriet house—if we can find one that 1) relieves range anxiety by having an auxiliary gas engine and 2) relieves doggie anxiety by having room for our two generously proportioned Labrador retrievers in the back.   No such vehicle in sight yet, alas.

Xcel has been in touch a couple times about running the wires to our house underground from the pole in the alley.  As usual, it is not cheap—a $1500 surcharge for working in winter.  But it seemed silly to do up a beautiful house only to have wires stuck to the outside of it.  The question is the route—our FloWells will be dug in the vicinity of their path.  Their supervisor Ben Werner offered to reroute the lines—kind of him.  In general, I am happy to work with Xcel.  I’d rather see them as partners helping us set new precedents than a big elephant that we try futilely to push out of the way.

Robert of J&R posted a note—before 7am—regretfully announcing that the tweaks we have asked for exceed what his Amish cabinetmakers can guarantee will be solid results in their construction, and graciously offers to let us go find another cabinetmaker.  I am somewhat surprised to learn that his shop is less ‘custom’ than I realize.   I circulate a note to Caleb and Marc, and accidentally to Robert as well.  But since the contract is between Morrissey and J&R, I sit out the resulting discussions.   Soon, I gather, Accent is back in the game.  They now have quite a bit to do over the next few months—build cabinets throughout the house, cut well over 4000 feet of millwork, stain and top coat it.  This is, I suspect, the outcome Caleb wanted from the beginning.  It must be a nuisance to deal with clients who have minds of their own.  (teacher humor)  My job, it has become increasingly clear, is to round up sponsors.  Not my preferred cup of tea, but I can see why it would not be appealing to builders and architects.

After a weekend to chill out—sometimes I just have to take a break from the multi-dimensional intensity of this house project.  For the same reason, I have become reluctant to email Caleb or Marc over the weekend, thinking they need to, too.  (The exception is Robert of J&R, upon whom I have unloaded a number of suggestions for cabinet design suggested by Marc.)  But now it is Monday, and I spend several hours catching up on details, which of course never end.  One surprise: the contract specifies radiant heating in the floor of the master bathroom.  Linda likes the idea—no surprise.  But will it complicate the installation of tile?  Have to talk with Caleb about that.  Marc is proposing that the interiors of the cabinets be melamine.  I’ve never liked the stuff, even if it is environmentally virtuous, relatively speaking.

Marc also passes me the long-awaited energy modelling report for Xcel. According to his modelling software, we are likely to generate 2800 more kilowatthours of electricity than we use, thanks to a solar system that will harvest 20,000 kilowatthours per year from its 17 kilowatt array.  That translates into about $250 more electricity than we pay Xcel for.  One of the big users would be an electric car, which he calculates would require about 4,000 kilowatthours per year.   If our design is accepted into Xcel’s Solar Rewards program, we would be paid 8 cents per kilowatthour that we feed into their system.  As Germany has shown, the flat-out purchasing of kilowatthours is the way to make solar energy grow—except, if I recall, the government there pays something like 25 cents.  In any case, the Xcel program is ground breaking.  We have to be careful not to produce more than 120% of what we consume, however.

Phil Holtan (master woodturner, pastor, and friend) came by in the late afternoon.  Marc has provided a full-scale drawing of the four columns needed (two in the entry, two between living room and dining room), and I asked his help in fabricating them.  He avidly took to the drawings, and figured out exactly how they could be done—all within a weekend, he says, during one of his woodturning workshops.  Phil helped me design and build a cradle for our daughters 25 years ago, and I have always had enormous respect for his technical skill—and generosity in sharing it with others.  I look forward to the collaboration, although in truth I am going to rely more on his skill than mine.  One slip of the chisel, and the turning column would be ruined.

Slept 11 hours (rare) in a Golden Valley motel before meeting Caleb and Marc at the house for what proved to be another 3-hour standup meeting.  (The chairs and table Sean had provided are long gone.)   The framing appears mostly done, as can be seen in this view from the living room through the dining room,  through the family room and to the sunroom at the very back of the house.

In the entry hall, the framing for the pocket door to the basement has been installed in what will become a triangular wall.  Note the use of reddish orange “LSL” lumber to strengthen the wall where a series of three windows will march up the stairs.  LSL is composed of strands of wood glued together, and should never warp.

Given the advanced framing, we not surprisingly leap ahead and spend the entire time on ceiling moldings and other finish details.  As usual, we have to imagine what is not yet close to being visible.  I brought up my pet wish for alcoves built into the walls, and Marc took up the challenge—pulled out pencil and translucent paper, and sketched out a total of four niches—two on the north wall of the staircase in the entryway, and two flanking the dining room built-in.

Glorious idea!  We need somewhere to hang the “Komorebi” poem Elizabeth found (‘komorebi’ is Japanese for sunlight filtering through trees), and knickknacks from our travels.  The charm of this house will reside in the details.

The house is intended to be an educational resource as well.  Sean, the principal of Morrissey Builders, came by and we all resolved to pursue the installation of sensors to track heat and moisture flows—this is an engineering subspecialty at the U of Minnesota, and Sean has a contact there—Pat Huelman.  Then Caleb suggested Site Sage (?) for software to track electricity flows; we need very detailed monitoring for the Living Building Challenge.  Cost is uncertain, and I am leery of adding a monthly charge for monitoring, but we need to do it somehow.  Between the two kinds of monitoring, we should have a very clear idea of how our maximally insulated and renewably powered house functions.

Big serendipity after we adjourned the meeting at noon.  Marc put me on to Joe Knaeble, a genial salvage dealer on the point of retirement, who opened his garage of treasures.  We found enough locksets to accommodate all our new doors, and quite a few escutcheons needing to be stripped.   Then sped to Guilded Salvage, where I found, to a background of very laid-back crooning, enough hinges to fill all our needs, and yet more escutcheons.  Hooray!  We are well launched to having all “Japanned” (oxidized copper, in broad tiger striped) hardware.

On the 22nd trip to Minneapolis, I picked up a U-Haul trailer last night; loaded it this morning and raced (well, 60 mph into a stiff headwind—only 20 mpg) to New Hope, deposited a first load of household furniture and boxes of books, in order to join Caleb and Robert at the house, for what proved to be yet another 3-hour marathon standing in the relative cold—planning kitchen cabinetry.  Brrrr!  We all were frozen and stiff by the end. This extensive consultation—down to the 1/8”, in terms of cabinet design and placement, is necessary to avoid errors in construction.

Speaking of which, the house looks completely studded inside now—air ducts are in place, lots of plumbing visible as well.  Hurrah!  The air ducts below will be hidden behind ceiling plaster, in the soffit of the dropped ceiling.  Clever idea from the “Not so big” movement.

The outside is a different matter.  Could the front of this house possibly get any more derelict looking?  Within a few weeks hopefully the house will be ‘wrapped’ and then covered with a thick new wall.  The scaffolding is already up.

I capped off the very long day by driving to Burnsville, where I found a better porcelain tile for the entryway.  Can’t wait to see it in diagonal layout that Marc recommends.

Spending all day in the house made me pine for a warm space.  It has been so cold these past few weeks that the guys covered the north wall with plastic to keep out some of the breeze from this very drafty house.  No one will cheer more than they when the new walls go up and the house is sealed.

Lots of decisions piling up, few of which have much to do with the mission of the house to model sustainability.  Rather, they have to do with attractive livability—the other, equally important, purpose of the project!   Four months before actual installation, we have to imagine and plan for the smallest of details.  I have had to back down on a few of these ideas.  A) In the guest bathroom, I’d been hoping for a linear shower drain seated at the edge of a gently sloping plane, but have had to settle for a center drain, with all that awkward tile cuts that entails.  B) In the master bathroom, I’d been hoping to set a white-and-cobalt hexagonal tile pattern within a cobalt border, but that would require the use of tiles of three different thicknesses—a problem for the tile setter.

In other cases, thinking through details so far ahead of time has yielded some interesting changes.   Marc has suggested setting large porcelain floor tiles diagonally can make a space look larger, particularly when using a border.  I recall something of that effect from Hisham’s Palace near Jericho (which is at the root of my earlier passion to use a scalloped pattern).  In any case, we are using large porcelain tiles (12” by 24”) in the entryway and mudroom.  Hmmm….tempting to try a diagonal approach, although that will mean more cutting, and no doubt more expense.

A Ben Werner from Xcel Energy alerts me to the fact that our backyard will be drilled soon, to move our electricity supply from an overhead cable to underground.  We can also have Cat6 cable (internet) and coaxial cable (cable TV) run in at the same time.  I frankly am uncertain what cable we will need, and also wonder whether we ought to run in fiber optic at the same time—to be prepared for who knows what revolution in communications is next.

Oops, a miscommunication has come to light.  A few weeks ago I was presented with a tradeoff—have a full-depth refrigerator (about 30 inches deep) at the cost of a few inches of floor space in the kitchen, or retain the floor space by reducing the refrigerator to counter depth (about 18 inches).  I doubt there’s much difference in energy consumption—the Energy Star refrigerators I have been looking at typically consume $600-650 of electricity per year.   I didn’t mind settling for a smaller refrigerator, given the tendency of food at the back to be forgotten and turn into ‘science experiments’.  But today Marc informs me that we can have a full-depth refrigerator after all.   So be it.