Cutting through
Permits are in hand! No more excuses — it’s time to start making some progress on our 78 Main St renovation!
Since this house is on the Mascoma River, and we want to add a garage, a driveway and a solar storage tank (excavation required), we needed a bunch of permits including the NH Shoreland Protection Permit, NH Heritage Bureau report, NH Energy Code, as well as Enfield town building and garage permits. I finally have them all in hand… and with a General Contractor officially starting this week.
In the meantime we have repaired foundation: repointing, filling in the windows, removing old crumbly mortar and adding new. But the majority of the work on the house and the solar heating system has been waiting for the permits.
Some of the next steps include:
* prepping the area for the garage slab
* excavating for the solar storage tank; building the tank on site (maybe as soon as next week!)
* shoring up the basement and first floor
* shoring up other floors and roof
One of the issues we are discussing right now is how to work with and around the water table. Looking at the elevation plans and noticing standing water in the basement floor (dirt floor) from time to time, it is clear that we will have to deal with it both in the basement and in the hole we want for the storage tank — that was planned to go down 10-12′. If there is 5′ of standing water in that hole, we’ll have to think about ways to drain it or work around it.
For the basement… since we are not interested in using it for any living space, we can consider filling it in another 12-18″ with dirt/gravel and then foam it in. The basement will only have access through a hatch in the closet of the first floor. It will house only a few pieces of equipment associated with the solar heating system as we want most of the utility components to be viewable from the first floor retail/showroom.
For the solar storage tank, we have to think of other options since we want to go to about 12′ deep. The vertical depth of the tank is important in stratification of the hot and cold water. What we DON’T want to do is to add any kind of sump pumps. They would probably have to be on 24hours a day, 7 days a week. Not only is that a waste of electricity, but we don’t want to affect the water table either.
The tank is 15′ x 18′ x 8′ height. It needs to be a few feet below the surface, so we probably have to dig to 11-12′. It will have materials in it that are heavier than water (rocks, sand), but it will also have r100 equivalent foam insulation. Thoughts, comments, ideas on how to make this tank system work if the water table is half of this depth are very much welcome!
Congrats! I am so excited to see this happening. I used to live over on Well St., and know this area well. If this is the house I think it is, thank you! You are not only doing yourself a great service here, but the community as well. Plus, by documenting it here, you are doing an even bigger service by showing the world how it can be done!
I’m also working with Ed and John on a converting my Wilder Cape into a ZEB, but in a less formal way. I’m doing most of the work for now as my young family is fairly cash scrapped. I’m happy to say I finally got started on insulating my basement this fall (I’ve been taking videos along in the hopes of starting a video blog/guide this winter), which brings my to my first bit of food for thought for you.
I am developing a spread sheet for materials comparison and it currently includes a number of different insulation materials. It can be found online at https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgzgN6te-h93cFBMNUFPMzhMV0ZQU2hwUlBBNXd3QlE&hl=en The most useful column is $/(sq’R) as this is the basic unit of cost comparison. There are certainly other factors to consider, such as R/inch, compression strength, application, safety, environmental factors, etc., but that mostly narrows you down to a category, and then you look at price.
For example, I found reclaimed foam board that can be purchased by the pallet which is about 1/3 the cost of new stuff from home depot. I bought 9 pallets of closed cell polyiso foam board for my basement, garage, and the slant ceilings of my 2nd floor. This gives me the best R/” (other than very expensive and complicated spray foams) which is important in all of these spaces, and being closed cell, it should keep any water out of my basement if I ever get any. (I’m on top of a hill, so water is a limited issue.)
Now, I expected some rough edges and even a few cracked boards, but what I did not expect were holes from fasteners, a lot of itchy dust from the backing (not aluminum like most new polyiso I have seen, but some kind of fiberglass paper or something), and uneven thickness. All of this is understandable with reclaimed materials for sure.
A shop vac took care of most of the dust and itch, but took a full day to make a good pass at all of the foam board. The fastener holes are easily address with a quick squirt from a foam gun. However, if I had it to do over again, I think i would spend extra money on new boards for my basement floor so that it would be more even. I’ve made due by matching up board edges that are close in width, but it is still not ideal since we are planning to finish this space eventually.
All that said, it sounds like this material would make a lot of sense for your basement. Jeff at Insulation Depot is a great help in picking product from their inventory and in following up on questions that come up along they way. You can find his contact info on the spread sheet.
My other thought was for your water table issue. Have you thought about putting the TSS under the garage? I know there are limits to the functional dimensions of Ed’s tank, but perhaps he can design 1 or more shallower tanks to use that larger footprint and save you from having to dig so deep in a second spot. One of the advantages of his design is that it can take a lot of weight on top, so it should hold up fine under a garage.
Looked forward to watching how it all works out!
Thanks for your advice! Very helpful. We are looking into foam board now so we’ll check out your suggestions.
The original idea was to put the tank under the garage. Then a few of us (myself included) were concerned about getting access if anything went wrong. I have a good background in product testing and customer support so I know things can go wrong in many ways. So a few weeks ago we decided to keep the tank separate from the garage. I think it is time to revisit that decision — maybe we’ll end up with the tank mostly under the garage.
Changing the dimensions or making more than one tank might be possible — but I think it would take some time to get new models to ensure that we can heat the house through the winter.
Thanks for your comments!