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OSU_Matthew posted:One thing to consider with the great room, is that they're awfully expensive to heat and cool, so you're kind of paying a penalty for that throughout the life of the house. If your cathedral ceiling is well insulated (which, to be fair, is much more difficult than with open attic spaces), you don't pay more of an efficiency penalty than any other feature that increases the exterior surface area of your home. You do pay a comfort penalty, in that greater stratification makes it harder to maintain at a comfortable temperature, but all you need to negate that is some sort of fan to mix the air.
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Mar 7, 2016 05:44
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dreesemonkey posted:Is this going to be your forever home? You may want to look for something that has a suite on the 1st floor, could be used as a office for your wife in the meantime w/ some sort of exterior entrance (you could have the builder frame for a patio door but install an exterior door for a entryway, for instance). And/or design in a location where you could retrofit an elevator (and in general, consider accessibility). Not too long after I moved into my house I realized that it is pretty unfriendly to people with mobility issues; if I should develop one I will likely have to move. Gounads posted:From the road to the build plot is a 21' drop, so we'll have an "interesting" driveway, especially in New England winter. I took a closer look at that... that's pretty rough. North facing, and part of that is quite steep. I would seriously consider a snow melt system - just two 2' wide tire tracks, so you can get traction. It's not particularly cheap, but I think it's worth it as a safety investment. Gounads posted:Speaking of insulation, our current home was built in the 20's. It had a lovely refit with blown in insulation, but whatever we build is surely going to be more energy efficient than this. Will you have natural gas available?
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Mar 7, 2016 16:21
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Gounads posted:No poo poo, huh? The good part is that flat area by the road, we own and there's been about 12 yards of crushed stone dumped that's not on those plans to help regrade a bit. Our current thinking is to build the house up a bit, so gain 4 feet or so there, and then regrade from the street. We figure we can get something like a 8% grade with a bit of work and maybe a bend in the driveway. Legally, it has to be 10% or under for the easement. Any way we do it, there is going to involve some significant earth moving. If you can get it <=10% the whole way, then that's not so bad (although that looks like a challenge); snow tires or 4WD could get you through even when it does ice up (visitors will not be happy, though). My driveway is 10% overall, but 25% at the steepest point and that is sadness in the winter (south facing, though, so it at least melts quickly when the sun comes out) Gounads posted:We aren't sure what we're doing for heat yet. Oil+baseboards is the usual around here. We do want a propane range and central a/c so that will likely affect what we choose. Wife wants radiant heating in bathroom. Very little research done on this front so far and compromises will likely be made. Fuel Oil is pretty cheap in New England this year (using EIA retail prices $2/gal - $17/MMBtu, compared to $31/MMBtu propane; 1 MMBtu is 10 therms if you want to compare to current natural gas bills, or for context my 2500sqft WI home needs 70-80 MMBtu a year). But I'm not a fan of it - higher maintenance, the tank takes up conditioned space, and you're more or less stuck with non-condensing equipment (which means a flue running all the way up through the roof, and backdrafting concerns). A standard approach would be a condensing propane furnace with a heat pump - a high end heat pump (such as the Carrier Greenspeed) would likely be able to cover 95%+ of your heating load at ~$20-25/MMBtu with $0.19/kWh electricity. There are a ton of other options depending on your priorities, though. Your wife is right to want heated bathroom floors. They are wonderful. It's easily handled by electric resistance heating though, so it shouldn't constrain your HVAC options. galahan posted:Make sure your drainage and foundation are over engineered. I had an old neighbor who's house perpetually flooded, you don't want sump pumps running all day. On a hill, this is pretty easy - run a drain pipe downhill to the surface (aka 'drain to daylight') and let gravity do the work for you, relegating your sump pump to an emergency backup. (This is one of the few things the guy who designed & built my home screwed up - instead of just draining down hill into an existing swale, I've got a sump pump turning a section of my lawn to swamp every spring)
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Mar 8, 2016 20:58
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The $150/sqft number you've heard almost certainly includes site work/driveway/utility costs (though your driveway cost will probably be above average). It may even include the lot.
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Mar 24, 2016 17:25
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$150/sqft is kind of expensive. In a lot of the country, middle of nowhere somewhere rural can be under $100/sqft.
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Mar 24, 2016 23:54
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Baronjutter posted:So you could build a big ol' 2,000 ft house for about 300k ? But how much is the land? Another 300-400k ? Around here, a 12,000sqf lot in the suburbs runs around $80k-$100k. My 2 acre lot just a couple miles outside of the suburbs is worth around $150k unimproved (and I'm guessing Gounad's is similar). Drive 50 miles north to the City of RacistHicksville and you can get lots for under $25k.
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Mar 25, 2016 02:07
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peanut posted:I forgot basements exist. You might be happier without one. This is ridiculous! Basements are wonderful things. They give you a place to put all your stuff, they're always cool and comfortable in the summer, and you can put all of your mechanicals in there. They're wonderful! And speaking of mechanicals, that plan does a great job of clustering plumbing fixtures. For HVAC, you should give the bonus room it's own dedicated ductless mini split. It'll be impossible to balance with the rest of the house on a centralized system. Gounads posted:The bonus room will be the wife's studio space. I need to understand the ceiling heights there more, but one of the modifications we're looking into is skylights there. Your lot is east-west oriented, right? So the garage will be on the south side of the house?
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Mar 29, 2016 17:32
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Yeah, it's unfortunate though - combined with your hill, you won't get a whole lot of natural light in the morning, or in winter, and in shoulder seasons you'll get too much early evening light on the west side of the house. You should probably consider additional skylights, or solar tubes, for other rooms. In particular, I'd suggest a solar tube on the east slope of the roof to bring some morning light into the master bedroom. (You could also consider solar tubes rather than skylights for the studio space - they're easier to close off when there is too much light, and they avoid the thermal challenges of skylights (also, the $$$ of good performance skylights). For the west facing windows, you should totally put in sweet exterior shades to cut the heat in warmer months.
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Mar 29, 2016 18:56
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His Divine Shadow posted:One key difference might be rain screen facades, basically a universal form of facades here and a superb design that prevents moisture build up. For wood facades anything but a rain screen design is basically unheard of and those that try to use anything else usually wind up with mold and rot. This probably is a major factor. Rain screens are starting to get more common in the US (particularly with EIFS) but I think it's still pretty far from standard practice. Most of the wood siding on my house is great, but there are a couple sections with cedar shake protected by small overhangs. Woodpeckers have been going at them, gotta figure that out this spring...
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Mar 30, 2016 15:11
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froward posted:Personally I prefer lots of small rooms. But, one can always make smaller rooms with partition walls, the reverse is more difficult. Well, IMO there's the problem with that setup - it's not two small rooms, but it's not a larger room either. The two sides aren't separated enough to be two separate rooms; you'll always be seeing & hearing what's in the other half, but they're too separated to comfortably interact across them. froward posted:Also larger rooms are more expensive to heat/cool. Heat loss/gain is a function of the size & characteristics of the exterior building envelope. It doesn't matter how you partition the interior, except that it takes a little more effort to counter stratification the more freely air can travel between multiple stories.
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Apr 1, 2016 02:58
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poo poo, the even '70s home I grew up in was always cold upstairs in winter until a neighbor told us about the wonders of attic insulation.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:26
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The Gardenator posted:Are you required to have fire sprinklers in your home? You can expect average of $10,000 more for that to be installed, but if it saves your life it is worth it. I would presume that Gounads is going to be on well water, so the cost would likely be closer to double that. But I agree that it's still well worth considering.
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Apr 1, 2016 21:38
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Gounads posted:edit: City Water - YAY City water sucks, wells are awesome (except for fire sprinkler systems). Now, sewage on the other hand...
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Apr 4, 2016 20:16
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You only think that's a problem because the MTBE hasn't yet oxygenated your brain enough to understand the benefits!
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Apr 4, 2016 21:53
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OSU_Matthew posted:They even sell auto shutoff valves you can add in, so, for instance, if your laundry hose bursts (as they tend to do) your water is immediately shut off before the room floods. They make ones that don't need to tie in to "smart" home systems. But it's still cheaper to just buy laundry hoses that don't tend to burst.
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Apr 7, 2016 03:02
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Gounads posted:Overall this doesn't inspire confidence. But I do want to see a third bid. If we go with him, we'll need to be double-sure that timeliness is built into the contract. Speaking of which, need to find a lawyer to go over that eventual contract. Protip: it's a lot easier to get parties to accept a contract with a penalty for completing too far behind schedule if you also include a bonus for completing ahead of schedule (don't worry, you won't have to pay the bonus, because that never happens). Comments on the estimate: Two separate trenches for water & electric? Is the 2x6 wall construction 16" or 24" OC? (You want 24"). The insulation plan is garbage. U0.30 windows are decent-ish 50 gallon water heater may not be enough to fill a fancy whirlpool tub HVAC doesn't look totally awful. But I sense he's going to find a way to cram one of the two air handlers into an attic space. And it's going to be expensive to run if propane prices go back up to normal. If you're going to spend that much on an open fireplace, get a Rumford. This is the plan you're going with, right? edit: wait, does that estimate include two tankless water heaters on top of a 50 gallon tank??? Zhentar fucked around with this message at 20:27 on May 12, 2016 |
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May 12, 2016 20:24
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Safety Dance posted:
The draft is much stronger, but it's paired with a smaller throat, so there is net much less air flow. You also get a higher combustion temperature, which means more complete combustion of the fuel (more heat generated) and better radiant transfer (more heat makes it into the room instead of directly up the flue). Overall, the efficiency is more than double a standard fireplace (which means it can even manage to be a net gain in a centrally heated home!). The brand I linked also includes a pull down ceramic front which brings the combustion efficiency all the way up on par with a woodburning insert.
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May 12, 2016 22:04
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Can't speak to the R values you'd want from your insulation, but wider spacing of studs does indeed confer better insulation. Every stud acts as a "heat bridge" because they're made out of solid wood, which conducts heat much better than insulation does. Wider spacing also means lighter walls and less material used, which is good for the environment, cheaper, etc. Exactly. Wider spacing means more insulation, less materials, less labor. A 24" OC 2x6 stud wall is stronger than a 16" OC 2x4 stud wall, so you're not compromising on structural strength (although 2x6 24" is in some case not sufficient with very high ceilings). Gounads posted:Everyone around here does blacktop driveways. Concrete doesn't survive the winters. Pavers are too expensive. After 23 years of freeze thaw cycles as harsh as you have, the concrete portion of my driveway is pristine and the blacktop is on its last legs. It's mostly just cost (though melting snow & ice faster in sun is a nice bonus). Unconditioned attic air handlers are awful in hot climates. In cold climates, they're just bad; you lose a lot of heat out your attic, it promotes ice damming, it's harder on your equipment (and you have to worry about things like condensate drains freezing). Two tankless heaters seems pretty overkill unless you're pairing them to fill your tub... which still seems like a cost ineffective approach. As far as insulation... generally, I'd want around double whats in your plan - I'll run some numbers tonight and give you something more specific. The basement insulation plan is just hosed, and doesn't even meet code minimums (though apparently he thinks he can get rescheck to say it's good enough). Zhentar fucked around with this message at 22:53 on May 12, 2016 |
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May 12, 2016 22:24
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Okay, insulation numbers. I stuck something as close as I could get to your house into BEopt (which isn't as close as I'd like because it can't handle garages over basements or walkout basements correctly. The numbers I'm getting out of it pass the sniff test, but as a disclaimer, I have limited experience using BEopt and I may have screwed something up. I'm using $2.70/gallon for your propane prices, because it's what BEopt pulled in automatically for MA, and I'm using Worcester, MA climate data. Base case, with the unconditioned basement your builder apparently intends, and you need about 1300 gallons of propane a year for space heating, coming out to $3,600/yr. If you heat the basement (it's probably going to be in the 50s if you don't, maybe even 40s), the annual cost goes up to around $3,900/yr. * The R-38 batts for the flat attic bugs me as "wrong" but bumping it up to R-60 cellulose only saves $40 on heating and $20 on cooling, which was less than I expected (note: from what I could see on the site, I guessed at giving the master bedroom & bedroom 2 cathedral ceilings, but bedroom 3, the hall, and master bath flat ceilings) * Increasing the wall R-Value by using ZIP R Sheathing saves about $300/yr * Insulating the basement wall with R-10 XPS saves $700/yr, if you're heating it. * Dropping the air leakage from the code minimum 3 ACH50 to 1 ACH50 saves almost $900/yr on heating * I ran the simulations with the all of the ductwork in the basement, with 15% leakage (which is a mediocre but realistic value). If we move all of that ductwork into to the attic, heating costs increase by $600/yr. * I didn't test under slab insulation, because BEopt doesn't support it. 2 inches of EPS (R-8) is probably reasonably cost effective, and will leave your basement floor a bit warmer (making it more comfortable to walk on and less susceptible to condensation) * I didn't test dual fuel heat pumps because BEopt doesn't support that either.
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May 13, 2016 05:21
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His Divine Shadow posted:I'll just say scandinavian kakelugn. Yeah, a Rumford isn't a good way to heat your home, it's just a way you can get the fireplace ambiance without being awful at heating.
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May 13, 2016 06:18
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Gounads posted:It's flat ceilings everywhere except the photo studio over the garage. Switching to flat ceilings over the bedrooms bumps the savings from switching to R-60 loose fill cellulose up to $90/yr (also note that's compared to perfect installation of the fiberglass batts, which basically does not ever happen). Another benefit of the loose fill insulation is that if you really must have ducts in the attic, you can significantly improve the insulation of the ducts for free by burying them in the loose fill. What's specified in the quote is standard/regular ZIP sheathing - just 1/2" OSB with a WRB coating applied to one surface. ZIP R Sheathing bonds the other surface to polyiso insulation, putting 1/2" or 1" of continuous rigid insulation in between the sheathing and the studs (the numbers I ran used the thicker, 1" insulation). Polyiso wouldn't be my first choice (its cold weather performance is on par with cheap EPS insulation, and inferior to XPS), but the ZIP R sheathing is a good approach from a moisture perspective, and more importantly, there's little change to your builder's workflow, which can make the builder more receptive to it and avoids added labor costs (basically, you just have to use shank nails instead of standard framing nails to preserve shear strength, and you need longer jamb extensions. Jamb extension costs can be cut by using drywall window returns and wood trim just for the sill, which IMO can look quite nice on top of being cheaper). If you're planning on finishing the basement some day, then that's an extra argument for insulating the basement. Now is pretty much your only shot to put rigid insulation on the exterior of the foundation wall and under the slab, and doing so basically eliminates any concerns about moisture from condensation on the concrete. Combined with the good moisture management described in the estimate, it would pretty much mean you could forget about the "basement" part of finishing your basement and just finish it however you wanted, without worrying about water/mold at all. Reducing air leakage is definitely a big win area, which is why efficiency folks keep making a big deal out of it. But the way I said it there makes it sound like a much easier thing than it is. Even hitting 3 ACH50 isn't a sure thing (I do believe it is code minimum in your area but it may not be enforced); it's generally not hard for builders to hit with some basic attention and avoiding common issues, but making the basement a semi-insulated, unconditioned space makes it harder, and there's a lot of room to screw up details with the studio over the garage. 1 ACH50 is probably impossible without getting your HVAC out of the attic, bringing the basement completely into the conditioned envelope, and a whole lot of work on the part of your builder (possibly even modifications to the blueprints); it also reasonably requires an active, mechanical ventilation system. At this point, I'd suggest asking for two commitments from your builder: 1. That they will commit to testing & meeting the 3 ACH50 minimum even if the AHJ does not enforce it, and 2. That while doing said testing, they perform blower door directed air sealing even if 3 ACH50 is already met (IMO, the best way to do this is with a fog machine - smoke pouring out of a hole makes it clear that there is a quality problem that needs to be fixed. This video is an example of the testing, although it should really be performed before the siding goes on so that you have access to seal any leaks in the sheathing).
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May 13, 2016 19:53
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galahan posted:I just wanted to comment on earlier about adding timeframe constraints on the contract, yeah you want it on time and bonuses for early completion can be cool, but do you really want them rushing any aspect of a the build? Integrity aside, a nice juicy early completion bonus could put pressure on the low level grunt workers when the main contractors back is turned. The extra push to try to get it done for the early completion bonus is what gets them to finish on schedule  galahan posted:Taping exterior sheeting gaps with tyvek tape or caulking can help with your air leakage, hardly anyone would like to do that for you though probably. The ZIP system Gounad's builder requires taping the seams to form a continuous WRB, so that part is already covered. (And if a builder that thinks taping seams is such an unreasonable burden that they refuse to do it, hiring them is probably not a good idea)
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May 13, 2016 22:11
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Filling your stud cavities with spray foam is a great way to blow a lot of money on insulation but only get mediocre performance out of it.
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May 16, 2016 00:43
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Gounads posted:Builder picked up building permit application and is going through it. As part of that, needs to get a hersch (sp?) rating for insulation / energy, apparently the town is an energy star town and has higher requirements than most. So we're going to get that report then go through the insulation plan again. He's going to the conservation committee today to get an affidavit signed for the permit. He's hoping to have everything together for the building permit by Wednesday. HERS. I believe you are required to get a HERS under 70 (maybe 65), where 100 is 2006 IECC code minimum energy usage. 2012 IECC code minimums (which you otherwise would have been required to meet) should generally come in around a 70 HERS rating anyway, so it doesn't add any significant requirements other than an extra audit to make sure you actually met the requirements (and also you have to pass the "thermal bypass" checklist I linked earlier).
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May 18, 2016 18:02
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Go ahead and get a quote, but don't replace it (unless it's unsafe). That's poo poo realtors tell you because it's your money to make their job easier. The vast majority of buyers won't care and your money will be wasted. If they do care, then you can credit them for the amount of the quote or get it replaced then.
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Jun 9, 2016 01:59
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Yeah I think I'd pick my 25% grade over that.
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Jul 29, 2016 23:01
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Your understanding is correct, a sump pump would only help if the 'drain to daylight' becomes clogged.
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Nov 23, 2016 17:57
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