Posts under ‘4. Components and Systems’

Ice Dams in Snow Country

February 17th, 2010 by KTU | 1 Comment | Filed in 4. Components and Systems, Park City Mountain Modern

On a recent visit to my house site, I saw huge accumulations of icicles and lots of evidence of ice damming. Many neighbors have installed heat tape on their eaves, an affront to elegant design in my opinion. I vowed to design and build a house that skirts the ice damming problem without resorting to active heating of the roof, a colossal waste of energy.

Here is a typical roof in the neighborhood. Icicles more than 10 ft. long hang from the eaves. There is probably significant ice damming at the roof edge. Dangerous, ugly, and a potential source of leaking and water damage.

Icicles (and likely ice damming) on brand new construction in Park City.

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Walls are only about 60% insulated.

February 20th, 2010 by KTU | 2 Comments | Filed in 4. Components and Systems, Notes on Approaches

Many of us have a mental model of insulation as the nice fluffy stuff sandwiched between the inner and outer layers of our walls. The (thermally) ugly reality is that most walls contain lots of doors and windows, and that the wall area that is not doors and windows is full of wood and steel.

Here is a sketch (thanks to my newly acquired skills in Google Sketchup) of a typical section of wall for my Park City house.

Typical wall system in a U.S. stick-built house.

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Traffic Jam in the Joist Bays

September 4th, 2010 by KTU | No Comments | Filed in 4. Components and Systems, Park City Mountain Modern

We mostly passed our “four way” inspection on Thursday. The four-way includes structure, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing. We were still waiting on some ducting to be finished, but the inspectors were impressed and gave us the go-ahead to insulate.

The traffic in the joist bays has been just awful the past week; a bunch of trades trying to fit conduits of various kinds into too little space between and across the floor joists. The traffic is especially bad just upstream of the mechanical room.

Here are a few pix.

Power, ground, heat, water, alarm, thermostats, ventilation...all trying to fit in the same space. Near the mechanical room they basically have no choice but to drop down below the joists, which will require some "drops" (soffits) in some little-used areas.

The Fantech 2400 heat-recovery ventilator, which substitutes for bathroom fans. It recovers a significant fraction of the energy in the air when ventilating a warm house in winter.

Oh yeah...fire sprinklers too...the orange pipe with the protruding red cap covering the sprinkler head.

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