the commons

Today Dad and I also welded up the brackets for our street-side bench that is built into the retaining wall that surrounds our (~10,000GAL) rainwater cistern. We plan on using recycled pallet wood for the sitting surface.

A catwalk with a bridge of course! Today Dad and I did some initial tack welding of the catwalk posts to their top plates.

This is what we’ll be working on in the coming days – as the painters are painting and the wood floors are installed. Stay tuned for more pictures…

Among the numerous daily tasks of keeping the house project running, my dad and I have begun to construct the railings for the main stairway in the house.

We chose to use pre-made glass table tops for the upper rail:

The rest of the photos (and more to come) can be found here.

We poured the upstairs concrete floors today. We’d originally planned on using poured earth (the “dirt floors” mentioned in prior media coverage), but the installation cost proved to be much higher than concrete and therefore prohibitive. They both serve the function of thermal mass – storing the sun’s heat from the day and releasing it slowly. From an embodied energy standpoint the concrete is less desirable than the earthen floors, but on the other hand concrete is a more durable surface (because it is harder, which some will say makes it harder on the feet than earthen floors). There have been a few things throughout the project where cost has forced us to compromise on our ideals—it’s definitely a bitter pill to swallow.

We received two bidets in the mail the other day from Thom at USABidet (Thank you!). This is just an un-boxing photo – we’ll post again as we install and test it out.

Below is a silly video I made a year or two ago of my first DIY bidet. It’s not as cool (nor adjustable) as the one from USA Bidet, but I’ve been installing it in all the bathrooms I’ve lived in for the past few years. I first became aware of using water instead of toilet paper when traveling SE Asia, in fact, much of the world uses bidets or water instead of toilet paper. It’s much cleaner (think about it – one analogy that was given to me was eating blackberry pie, getting it on your face and then using a dry napkin to clean up—not too effective), it saves resources (yes it uses water, but so does paper processing and it saves the transport fuel associated too). Many folks don’t believe me at first, but once they try it going back to TP is a real bummer…

ps: the etymology of bidet is interesting, it comes from French, literally meaning ‘pony’, describing the way one squats over a normal bidet in France, etc.

I can’t believe I didn’t think to do this earlier, I’ve started a set of photos on our flickr account that will track the various injuries I’ve managed to inflict upon myself. I also posted some pictures I’ve taken in the past, but it’s not nearly a complete set—not sure if I should be proud, as though they’re ‘war wounds’ or if I should feel the fool for not wearing gloves. The idea occurred to me as I was examining my foot (see below) after I dropped 13 Vika Glasholms on it and my leg (each one weights 68lbs, plus I estimate about 2 lbs of cardboard ea., bringing the grand total to be about 910 lbs, needless to say it was uncomfortable).

We did our preliminary blower door test today and the house did great—.291 ACH50, which is half the .6 ACH50 required by the passivhaus standard (lower is better). There are a few doors that need to be caulked underneath and I hope to get that number even lower. To do any better (Google says a Swedish house got it down to .03 ACH50) we’d need better doors and windows (think European – we’re less than satisfied with the build quality of our Serious Materials windows and this has been echoed by numerous architects and building professionals I’ve spoken to), since these are the only places our building can leak based on our sealing detail (wrapping the entire envelope with Protecto Wrap and no penetrations in the roof or walls—everything goes under the foundation). Below is a video starring Kent, from the Energy Trust of Oregon, and a photo of the setup.

And so I thought I had managed to keep the awl-beaked bird at bay by backing all the knotholes in the siding with metal. He proved me wrong with diligence (and a curious nasal squeak that sounds like a dog toy and rodent hybridized) that’s hard to come by in the construction trade—he’s started to widen the gap between the siding boards. This is obviously unacceptable, so I’ve resorted to deterrent measures, hopefully they work…

I’ll be honest, in a moment of rage and weakness, I started investigating killing the sucker, but it takes a permit, they’re protected, and it’s not a permanent solution and it really doesn’t sit well with my ethics.

If you’ve been following the progress of the house you know the siding on the house is made from old 2×4 lumber from the original house (which we deconstructed by hand), so it has knotholes and knob and tube wiring holes. Well we have a local woodpecker that seems to think these holes represent a rotten tree with worms or some other food source behind. In actuality right behind these holes is our foam insulation, which for the past few days the woodpecker has been making a mess of. The solution has been to screw sheet metal (painted black) to the backside of the boards over the holes. So far this has proven effective, the bird still pounds on the house, but without any damage to our insulation. Silly woodpecker.

and here is the hole he put in the foam:

and here it is patched:

I’ve been wanting to write about Skander for quite a while. Skander is a rare bird, not because of his goofy eccentricities (he has them), but because of his constant self-evaluation, crazy *work ethic* and enormous heart. Skander has generously donated numerous weekends and hours of his time putting in some serious manual labor. He’s a wicked smart engineer (he helped us with the heat loss calcs too), but no job is beneath him – he’s a walking lesson of humility. We wish him the best on his travels (and hope he’ll come back to portland)!

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