Insulating a Durisol ICF Foundation

Hey folks, sorry for the time span since the last post.  I have been concentrating on keeping my building journal up to date.

As I recently have had some free time due to yet another set of medical setbacks, I recently finished editing and uploading a video showing my process of adhering the Roxul ComfortBoardIS mineral wool insulation to my ICF foundation.


The Soprema Colphene Torch'N Stick membrane would typically be used on a site formed concrete foundation, but because I am using a ICF product from Durisol (made from mineralized wood fibre and cement slurry), I too could use this torch on membrane (a process that would destroy conventional EPS foam ICF forms).  The 'tacking' of the insulation to the membrane is only a light mechanical bond and is only suitable for a temporary support of the insulation (or dimple board and other protection sheets) until the backfill takes place.  You would not be able to use the method for a permanent attachment in an above grade assembly.

Once the insulation was attached, I then fastened dimple sheet to the insulation, installed a granular drainage plain, geotextile, and then compacted backfill.  You can read about these steps on my "coming out of the hole" journal entry.

The overall foundation assembly will have multiple layers of safety and will be very durable, but the installation is costly and very time consuming. I can understand why many of these steps are not incorporated into most residential construction. But then, most residential below grade basements are wet to some degree. As my friend Murray Frank often says "You never hear a comment 'It smells as good as a basement'".

Thanks for visiting folks. I will hopefully post a review of all the products I have used to create my foundation walls within the next few weeks. A majority of the products get a thumbs up from a technical standpoint, but one in particular is a two thumbs down with extreme prejudice.  I encourage you to subscribe if you want to be notified of when this review is posted.

Air Leakage of Old House - Does it matter?

*** Update - Upon further reflection of this topic, I do feel there is one additional reason to perform energy upgrades and discuss it in my project journal http://www.theenclosure.ca/windy-house ***
 
This blog entry will analyze the air leakage of a 1954 house and relate that to the energy use and durability of the house.

Before I started tearing down my 1954 single storey 1500 sq ft bungalow to make way for theEnclosure.ca, I decided to have the house tested for air leakage by Michael and Deborah from H&H small home solutions inc (hhsss at shaw dot ca).  H&H typically perform leakage testing to determine the EnerGuide rating for new construction, so this was going to be a new experience for them (and their blower door).

They came by in late March of 2014 after I had moved out but before I had completely emptied the house and before any deconstruction had been performed. The house was prepped by sealing the wood burning fireplace insert, range hood, and the through-wall mailbox before setting up the blower door.

We first ran the door in a B configuration and were unable to get up to the final test pressure of -50 Pa. But even in this configuration we got some scary results.  I had not really made any great attempts to air seal this house over the years.  There was weather stripping on 1 of the 3 doors, and the cedar siding had each coarse sealed to the next and the siding sealed to most of the window and door frames. But no attempts had been made to seal the interior interface with the attic plane and 1 of the doors had a cat door in it and the main door itself had very large gaps around it.

Prior to starting the test I had predicted an air leakage around 8-10 ACH (Air Changes per hour) @ -50 Pa, but early in the test we could tell it was going to be well above this. Deborah could tell just from the sound the fan was making (there previous worst house they tested was 11 ACH @ -50 Pa which was scary as it was new construction).

Right off the bat we reached 28 air exchanges at only -15 Pa!  To give you an idea, 15 Pa relates to a wind speed of only 11 MPH.  In the fall, I regularly recorded winds speeds on the property at this speed or higher so during those events all of that CONDITIONED air in the house was potentially changing over 28 times every hour. That is a lot of extra load on the heating plant and also explained the drafts my wife typically was feeling.


Over the next hour or so we tested at various configurations until we ran the fan at full open configuration (no restrictor plates). Only then could we get enough air volume to allow us to reach the target test pressure of -50 Pa.  AT the full test pressure we recorded an air leakage of 21.74 ACH -50Pa.

Now wait, some of you may have noticed that that is less air leakage than what we observed at only -15 Pa.  How is this possible you say?

Well, it is actually quite common.  As more and more negative pressure is placed on a dwelling, the two surfaces on each side of an air path (leak) can start to come together.  Eventually they can close up tight and stop that leak.  This why I have a bit of an issue (actually quite a bit), of testing dwellings at -50 Pa.  This relates to a wind speed of 20 Mph which is much higher than some locations would experience on a regular basis and much lower than other locations average wind speeds.  As such, it is my opinion that their should be a standard test pressure PER geographical region.  This could be a table much like the climate zone charts, but would be based on the average yearly mean wind speeds for a specific area.  Homes in higher wind speed regions should be tested at higher pressures than homes in lower wind speed regions.

(Side bar - the reason the wind speed is important is that it is this force that will effect the pressures on a dwelling.  Yes a house can depressurize under mechanical ventilation, but these are usually infrequent where wind depressurization or pressurization of the dwelling could occur for months at a time in windy locations).

So - these tests showed that the house was VERY leaky.  What does that mean in terms of heating bills, comfort, and building durability.

Heating Bills

The truth is, this air leakage did not really make a huge difference in energy costs.  My heating bills (for space and domestic hot water) were typically well under $2000 a year (We are under $2000 for both gas AND electrical use).  As I am a heavy bath user, it is safe to say aprox 40% of this was domestic hot water use.  This leaves an estimated $1000 in annual space heating costs.  That works out to less than $100 a month, or well less than the cost of a weekend dinner out.

We typically had the heat set for 72-73F in the wintertime and basically did not tough the thermostat all year.  It was not uncommon for the heat to come on during cold late spring and early fall evenings.  We did however use a programmable thermostat that was set to come on at 7 AM, step down to about 65F at 8:30 AM, come back to temp at 4 PM, and step back down to about 68F at 11:30 PM.  This was only partially for energy savings.  The night time set backs were used because we had hydronic heating through large built-in wall registers (1-2 per room) via a 1980's gas boiler.  The pipes went through and rubbed on the wood sub-floor assembly, so if the heat came on during the night the 'clicking' would wake me up.  So we partially closed the bedroom door (so cats could still get in and out and not cause another source of nighttime wake-ups) and used an electric oil heater to maintain a comfortable temp in the bedroom.

While air tightness is important, it will not make a huge difference to your pocket book unless you have a very large and leaky house.

Comfort

The air leakage did however make a big difference in occupant comfort and should, in my opinion, be the biggest (and probably only) reason to upgrade an older home.  The house was uncomfortable to sit in near any exterior wall in the winter months due to the drafts present.  I was quite surprised when I saw how leaky the fixed, but home made, windows in the living room were.  The builder had just placed the single pane of window glass against a wood surface and clamped it with a second wood component.  At -15Pa, the wind just whistled through these locations.  There is no question, that making the house more air tight would have made the house more comfortable.

Durability

Normally when one discusses the reasons for making a dwelling air tight, it is in the context of a 'modern' home with current levels of code required insulation.  With modern levels of insulation, it is critical to ensure that air leakage does not occur, in order to prevent interior air leaking into the wall or roof assembly and condensing on cold sheathing.  Left unchecked, this will often lead to mold and rot within the assembly.

The key here is the qty and location of the insulation.  As soon as enough insulation is placed inside of the sheathing to allow the sheathing to cool down below the dew point of the interior air, you now have an assembly with a very high liability should any appreciable amount of air leak into that assembly from the conditioned interior. This is because air currents are the #1 mover of moisture next to bulk water leaks caused by plumbing leaks or incorrectly detailed cladding or roofs that permit bulk rain water entry into the assembly.

But in older houses like the one I took down (which had ZERO insulation in the walls), there is not enough insulation present to block the heat loss from the house enough to allow the sheathing to get to the dangerous dew point conditions.  If you never reach the dew point, you can have huge amounts of moisture moving into the wall via air leakage and never have to worry about it because it stays in vapour form and just moves on through either to the outside of the dwelling or back into the inside. There is never liquid water that results from this air leakage. This is the reason why older homes have performed so well over many decades without the presence of air barriers, vapour barriers, or even effective water shedding surfaces.  The heat loss has always been enough to 'cook' any accumulated moisture out of the assembly.

Conclusion

We have identified in this article that there is not a huge financial penalty for a leaky house.  In my case, the costs per month for space heating were under $100/month in what is considered a cold-heating-dominated climate.  This $1200 annual investment would not get very far in paying for a deep energy retrofit which typically would cost 10's of thousands of dollars.  Lets say you could reduce the heating load even as much as 75% (purely speculative and most likely could not meet), this would represent $900 annual contribution to renovation costs.

A REALLY cheap stud level renovation for my home (including new windows and doors) would have been at least $60K (going to need to rip out parts of bathrooms and kitchens so most likely will totally renovate those rooms - my budget of $60 assumes very low end cabinets for these rooms).

A very intensive attic floor plane sealing regime would have been at least $15K (not going to do this process without bringing attic up to current insulation levels when done).

At a highly inflated $900 annual savings, these two projects would have a 66 and 17 year payback respectively. The attic plane sealing payback would most likely be much longer as only sealing this plane would probably represent only 50-70% of all air leakage present and therefore there would be reduced energy savings.

And my house did not represent an unusual annual energy bill. This US Energy Summary shows that for the West, the average annual winter heating bill per household varies between $1300 and $800 depending on year.

In the end, due to our really low energy costs, and the likely hood that they will not appreciably escalate for many decades due to Government interference, it makes very little sense to upgrade an existing homes energy performance for personal financial savings.  Therefore the type of renovation needed to reduce air leakage or increase thermal performance, only makes sense if the home is being renovated anyway for cosmetic or occupant comfort reasons.

On a separate track - this logic also holds true when analyzing extreme new construction programs like Passive House.  The costs to reach passive house levels of energy reduction will not be paid back over the lifespan of the dwelling in most cases. The added detriment of these programs is that the embodied energy of the insulation products built into these dwellings also do not have a pay back within the lifespan of the dwelling.  Instead for new construction, it makes more sense to build a "Pretty Good House" (coined by Joe Lstiburek) and then use the excess capital available to either contribute to distributed or on-site energy generation.

It is however critical that air leakage be reduced down to a minimum (experts do not agree how little is adequate - but the number is somewhere between 1ACH+/-50 and 3ACH+/-50) for new construction or energy retrofits IF, you have built an assembly with enough insulation inboard of the sheathing to cause the sheathing to cool down to the dew point potential of any leaking interior air.   If you build a safer assembly with the insulation outboard of the sheathing (or enough outboard to maintain the sheathing above the dew point potential), then while air leakage is still important to address from an energy loss standpoint (the costs to get it right during construction are minimal and will be paid back by reduced energy usage), it usually will not cause a durability concern for the assembly.  This of course is all from the perspective of a heating dominated climate.  The direction of flow and order of layers for the assembly are different in a cooling dominated or mixed climate.

Choosing Materials

The green building movement makes a big deal about choosing the right materials to ensure a product can be reused or returned to the raw material market at the end of the life-cycle.  The end goal is of course to reduce the embodied energy of the project.

While this is a lofty ideal and worth pursuing, a reality check often shows that while a material is technically recyclable, there often (usually) not programs in place to actually process the used material.  During the deconstruction of my house, I ran into two good examples.

My kitchen floor was pure linoleum tiles (essentially linseed oil).  This is a product that can be composted or used as fuel for large scale heating boilers.  But in my region, there was no program set up to process the product and I ended up taking it to the landfill (I did not have the facilities to grind up and compost myself).

The second product I failed to recycle was all of the plastic pipe I salvaged from below grade.  This included PVC drainage pipe, PVC irrigation pipe, and ABS sewer pipe.  For this commodity, there was a program in place to recycle the material, but only if it was VERY clean (think like new).  The process available could not handle pipe with any dirt or other sediment on it.  SO in the end, it too had to go to the landfill.

Misc Pipe and Plastic that was not accepted at recycling facility.

While we should endeavour to reduce our footprint on the planet and choose materials with lower embodied energy, we should also ensure that the materials we do choose are the most suited to the application.

I see too many 'green' building designs that choose a 'green' product due to a promised carbon footprint as the primary focus, without ensuring the product will be durable long term in service. This often will result in the need to replace the product after a very short life cycles.  Even if the product can be returned back to the raw material supply chain, this still represents an increased burden on the planet compared to a competitive product that while being less 'green', is more durable in service.  And if the 'green' product cannot be returned to the supply chain, you are just that much further behind.

Instead, my focus is to start at the most durable end of the spectrum and then try to pick products with lower embodied energy characteristics from the high performance candidates, AND install the products per best practices to ensure they are as useful and durable as possible.

My long term hope is that the cost of new materials becomes so high that even the main stream players in the market see recycling as a no-brainer.  This would address the fact that right now, recycling often does not make sense from strictly a financial platform.  However part of the problem is also the technical challenges in recycling a product.

Fortunately, there is some visionaries that have been working for many years to solve some of these hurdles. Mike Biddle has been working on a system that can separate bulk shredded plastics into the different colours and materials solving one of the biggest stumbling blocks to mass recycling of plastics (read PopSci article for full storey).  The beauty of his system is that this is all done in N.A., saving the need to ship offshore, via an automated process (no high labour costs). By keeping the product on our shores, we reduce the pollution our society is creating within poorer countries.

Lets hope others are working on the myriad of other materials we as a society currently just discard.

Mike Biddle has developed an automated (IE cheap - labour free) method of allowing plastic materials to be ground up on mass and then separated into the individual colour and materials making up that mass.

Does PassiveHaus make sense?

Just a short update to showcase an article at Green Building Adviser that perfectly sums up the conclusions I made about the Passive House program and why I cancelled my plans to build to that standard.

The author of the article, found at www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/it-s-not-about-space-heating, tracked the actual energy use of several homes in Massachusetts and has determined that even a modest investment in insulation and air tightness (termed a pretty good house by Joe Lstiburek) is more than enough to reduce the heating and cooling loads to the point where it makes more sense to concentrate on plug and domestic hot water loads as is shown in the below graphic.


Extracted from http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/sites/default/files/images/Rosenbaum%20-%20Graph%20of%20Eliakims%20Way%20data%20copy.preview.jpg

The real world data monitoring has also shown that the assumptions made in the PHPP (the modelling system for PassiveHaus) are often wrong.  The author states, “PHPP assumes 6.6 gallons [25 liters] of hot water a day per person, but that’s not enough for normal Americans.”

I jumped on board the PassiveHaus train for about a year in the early design stages of my upcoming build.  It was easy to be swept up in the well polished program and fall in love with the projected savings.  But as I became better and better educated on building science, source energy, and embodied energy, I felt their were huge holes in the program.  The underlying principles of air tightness and thermal bridge free construction were sound, but in my view the chase for heating and cooling reductions bypassed the sweet spot where it made much more sense, from an embodied energy and a cost point of view, to look at on site production than further reduction. The biggest stumbling block was the claimed 10-15% added build cost to reach PH when in reality it is much closer to 200% on average when comparing to a code min house (which after all is what the majority of homes in North America are built to).

In the end I decided to build a "pretty good house" and will monitor energy loads once occupied and then model whether or not I reached the sweet spot between reduction and production.

Thanks for visiting.  For the current status of the build please visit http://www.theenclosure.ca/project-journal/

PS: For an excellent article on why  more insulation is not always better, read http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/building-science/diminishing-returns-adding-insulation

Sub Slab Insulation - EPS vs XPS

Update November 2017

Since first writing this posting, my viewpoints have updated based on additional gained knowledge.  While I still believe that XPS wets up slower than EPS, I now know that both will wet up in the long run in damp environments. So drainage below (sub-slab) or along (vertical foundation) is key to keeping these products performing well. 

When choosing between the two products, I also agree with the recommendation by some to just increase the thickness of EPS by  20% to account for R value loss when wet.  This is based on the fact that EPS currently has a much better environmental footprint over XPS.

And indeed this was the direction I had planned to take on the house I am building.  But then I found out that ROXUL had approved its mineral wool insulation for sub slab installations.  This represents an even better alternative to rigid foams.  Mineral wool is free draining, has a smaller environmental footprint (especially ROXUL that is produced using electricity from a nearby Hydro Electric dam), and is hated by insects and rodents (relevant for vertical installation on the outside of a foundation).   ROXUL recommends their ComfortBoard 110 product for this application. 

While I now plan to use this product below my slab, I still feel that long term unbiased testing of the typical sub slab insulation options would still be of value to the building industry.  This is why my house currently under construction will now include a sub-slab lab comparing XPS, EPS, and ROXUL.  We will look at wet-up, R value loss, and compression of these insulation's over many years under real world conditions.  The slab will include removable panels allowing access to the insulation below.  Details for the lab can be viewed at theEnclosure.ca


 
Original Post

As some of my regular readers know, I tested samples of EPS and XPS in an underground wet environment to see which over time absorbed more moisture.

I described the experiment design in my blog posting of Aug 22, 2013 and describe the start of the experiment in my posting of October 6, 2013.

Fig 1: Samples at beginning of experiment.  These were buried below aprox 4 ft of dirt in a wet environment subjected to regular/constant ground water.

 I dug up the samples March 25, 2014 and the results do not look good for EPS.

Table 1: Weight of buried samples at end of 9 months.

As you can see in table 1, over the same period of time and in the same conditions, EPS absorbed an average of 258% of its original mass in additional water compared to only 31% for XPS.

Once I finished my on-site testing of the samples, I then took them all down to Fitsum Tariku, an instructor at BCIT and Director of Building Science Centre of Excellence (to name just some of his many accomplishments and titles). Fitsum offered to have some of his Masters students in the Master of Engineering in Building Science program run some experiments to determine the total moisture take-up potential of both products as well as the thermal resistance once saturated.

Unfortunately they were unable to use my buried samples because they were too damaged (I should have bed them in a thicker layer of sand both below and above to protect the integrity of the samples - however it was still a very revealing test based on my results in table 1 above).  Instead they used samples I had submerged in a tub of water and others I had on a shelf during the experiment.

In the following tables, you can see that EPS also does poorly from a R-Value retention point of view when saturated compared to XPS.

Table 2: Dry weight of samples measured by BCIT

Table 3: Measured R-Value (using Hot Box) of both dry and wet samples

Table 4: Difference in R-Value between two insulation types both when dry and wet.

Table 5: Loss of thermal resistance when saturated.

The last graphic tells it all - EPS looses 15.7% of its thermal resistance when in a wet environment and saturated compared to only 3% for XPS.

So why is EPS used in many 'green' projects.  This stems from the EPS industries claims that it represents a lower Global Warming Potential vs XPS due to its use of Pentane as a blowing agent compared to the traditional HCFC agent used by the XPS industry.  But XPS manufacturers like Owens Corning have already replaced their blowing agent with a Zero Ozone Depleting formula.

Finally, one positive recorded result is that both products met or exceeded their published thermal resistance per inch of R4.27 for EPS and R5 for XPS (as shown in table 3 - dry state). 

The outcome in our view is pretty clear cut - over the extended period representing the lifespan of a dwelling (50+ Years), the lower initial thermal resistance, and then the significant deteriorating of R value if EPS gets wet and stays wet, far out-way any environmental benefits claimed for EPS.  The obvious choice for below slab insulation applications is clearly XPS when all factors are taken into consideration.

Sample Specifications:
XPS - Owens Corning Foamular C-300 (30 psi) 
EPS - Plasti-Fab PlastiSpan 30 (30 psi) 

SENWiEco concludes testing of DURISOL ICF Block

When choosing a foundation your options are typically a site formed and poured concrete wall or some form of insulated concrete form (ICF) wall.  Early on in the process I gravitated to an ICF wall because it would eliminate the need to hire forming crews and rent and fabricate forms.

When looking at ICF, the traditional product is made from some form of EPS foam which has a very high embodied energy, lots of off-gassing, and is made from non-renewable components. The foam industry (EPS and XPS) will try to 'green-wash' this by stating the foam, as an insulation, reduces heat loss and reduces carbon output over the lifespan of the dwelling.  Yes this is true for ANY insulation, so choosing an insulation with a starting lower embodied energy will put you that much further ahead on your reduction goals. So again, early in the process I looked for a product that on the surface was friendlier to the planet.

One of the benefits of all ICF walls is that they typically require a smaller concrete core than a standard foundation.  The code allows for a 5.5" core on ICF walls where a standard site formed wall generally start at 8".  The reason for this escapes me because the ICF product itself is not considered structural so why would all walls not be allowed to be only 5.5" regardless of forming method.  If someone knows the answer to this please post a comment.  The smaller core of the ICF significantly reduces the concrete needed and therefore the cost and embodied energy of the overall wall.

One of the other downsides to a typical ICF forming material (foam), is that you end up with too much insulation on the inboard face of the core.  This decouples the core from the interior environment and can lead to condensation in some isolated cases, but more importantly it limits the walls ability to be a moderating force to the homes inside environment. An exposed concrete wall can buffer the temperatures by acting as a thermal mass.

The further downside to foam style ICF blocks is that just about everyone loves them from rats to ants.  They burrow and nest in the product creating holes in your thermal blanket.  They are also quite fragile and can be easily damaged during construction and require significant blocking during pouring to prevent blow-out.

My quest for the perfect block led me to the Durisol product.  It is made with virgin but scrap wood (manufacturing waste and tree tops).  This wood is chipped and then through a patented process, the organics are removed to create a mineralized wood fibre (think petrified wood).  This is then added to a cement slurry and formed into the ICF block.  This process and product would help meet my goals to dramatically reduce the embodied energy of the foundation.

There is another similar product made by Faswall, but my research indicated that this product utilized non-virgin wood sources like used pallets and had a lot more dimensional tolerance issues with the block itself.  I also was informed that Faswall was initially going to be a licensee of Durisol but ended up swiping the formulation and heading out n their own.  This did not sound like the right fit for me so I focused on Durisol even though it meant I would have to freight them from back east.

Once I decided to seriously consider Durisol, I then wanted to ensure it was suitable for the task. My immediate concern was that the blocks would rot.  But the product has been used for decades as sound abatement walls on highways (where some of the wall is always buried) and I received a letter from the Ontario Ministry of Transport advising that they have never had to repair a wall due to decay (just traffic accident damage).

My next concern was how would this wall act from the point of view of air and moisture movement.  It was made clear from the beginning, that I would need a independent air barrier as this product was air permeable (it has webs that penetrate through the concrete core so the core is not continuous).   So this was a negative against the product when compared to foam, but as I wanted a bullet proof building enclosure, I had always planned on an robust WRB (water resistant barrier) on the exterior of the foundation.  I think the idea of 'damp-proofing' a foundation wall in a rain forest climate is ludicrous and had always planned on Water Proofing my wall.  And a waterproof membrane is almost always also an air barrier.

My next concern was how the blocks would act if subjected to regular wetting.  The manufacturer claimed the product was unable to support capillary action and had some university testing to support.  But I was not satisfied and so set out to torture test the product over 16 months.  I started the experiment in Jan of 2013 (Begin experiment).  At the eight month mark I posted the status) Status at 8 months) and then altered the block to also contain the concrete core.  The experiment concluded on June 1, 2014.




All off my testing supported the manufactures claims.  This was a free draining assembly that did not support moisture movement from the outboard to inboard face.   I will also be preventing moisture movement through the footings via a FastFoot mebrane and also using a touch-on or self-adhered AB/WRB mebrane on the outside face of the foundation and so will have a very durable and forgiving assembly.  I now felt confident using this product on my project and have now received the product on site.  Once the excavation is complete, I will post some videos on the installation of the product (visit my project journal for the tribulations in getting these goods to site).

As I have time (may be at end of construction, I will also try to post some cost comparisons between the various options and the embodied energy numbers).

Thanks for visiting.

Batt Insulation - Not all are poor!

Gregory La Vardera posted this excellent primer over at Green Building Adviser on the differences between fibreglass and mineral wool batts.

As Gregory points out, ROXUL Mineral Wool batts are not associated with the typical failings of a fibreglass batt installation. This is due to the density of the product and the ease of cutting and trimming. The product also sheds water and is fireproof.

My only critique of his article is is statement "I don't need my insulation to make an air seal, because I used that good ol' housewrap on the outside. Nope, nothing wrong with housewrap — but it provides no help with the air sealing you need at your vapor retarder. The air seal in this case wants to be on the warm side of the wall, to prevent interior moisture from entering the wall cavity and condensing during the winter heating season."

This is actually incorrect, an air barrier ANYWHERE in the assembly will block air flow through the assembly.  I will talk more about this in an upcoming blog entry.  For now, I did not want to detract away from the rest of the posters review of ROXUL mineral wool insulation.

Variance Approved and Website Launched!

Wow, a lot has happened since my last update. 

For starters, we have moved.  You can read about the first few days of the move over on my journal at theEnclosure.ca It was a tiring and stressful time that I am very happy is behind me. Of course this was followed up by a week of sickness and a computer data loss that was the worst I have had ever experienced but fortunately I have been very lucky in this regard and so this was not crippling for me (just expensive - the whole affair cost over $1000 for data retrieval and the purchase of a second battery backup so both my Raid servers are protected).

The next piece of big news is that our Development Variance permit was approved last Monday night.  This was such a relieve after months of back and forth with the District.  They accepted my originally proposed upper to lower floor ratio of 87% (vs. the 75% required by the bylaw), but I had to redesign the roof so that I could lower it 12" and now only be 8" above the requirement of 26'.  This has resulted in the loss of my air barrier design utilizing a torch on membrane, so I will have to come up with a new game plan for creating a durable and effective air barrier at the ceiling location. Ideas anyone?

We have also been approved for our Construction Mortgage and I am thankful for the hard work put in by Tetyana Thomas at the Royal Bank.  They have really stepped up compared to most banks that would not loan to an owner builder. The challenge will now be to get to the first draw.  They will not advance funds until the foundation is complete.  This will cost well over $100K to get to with all of the permit and engineering costs built into this phase. I am still not sure where this money will all come from and we are going to need to do some MacGyving to get through this stage.  The ironic part is that they are then willing to advance 40% of the land value at the first draw which is ALL of the funds I will need to finish the project.  The appraised value for the finished structure is over $2M in today's market and they felt I should be spending over $800K to build.  I expect to spend less than half this due to my own sweat equity, salvaged materials, sponsorship, and a lower importance that both my wife and I share towards the 'lipstick' of a house.

Yesterday, I also received the final sealed drawings from the Structural Engineer and the GeoTech report.  This is the last part of the puzzle needed to apply for the Building Permit which I will do next week. Unfortunately the first appointment available was Thursday as I will be at a THERM training course all day Monday and Tuesday.

The gas/storm/sani/water services should all be disconnected next week and I will have Hydro swing the electrical service over to the new temp pole as soon as I finish installing it and call for inspection.  I hope to get this done this weekend.

But the greatest achievement was the launch of the project's website theEnclosure.ca I cannot thank Honeycomb Creative enough for their work on this site.  It is first rate just like all of the other work they have done for me.  I invite you to stop by and browse through the information that is available including a full copy of the plans, building assembly descriptions, and lets not forget the 'live' (actually snapshots updating every 3-5 seconds) video of the build site.

As I get caught up, I will post more information on the Varriance process for those that may need to go through a similar process.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Durisol ICF lowers the embodied energy of a dwelling.

Stuart Staniford at the Early Warning blogspot discusses the reduction in Embodied Energy a Durisol Foundaiton represents in a low embodied energy dwelling.  In his case study, the use of a Durisol ICF foundation over a conventional concrete foundation improved the "net carbon emissions" by 100%.

His analysis showed the the original carbon emissions associated with the foundation in the dwelling he modeled dropped from aprox 7.5 tons with no opportunity for sequestered carbon to just under 7 tons but now with the ability to also sequester close to 1.75 Tons.

Baseline with standard concrete foundations (http://earlywarn.blogspot.ca)

Utilizing Durisol ICF Block (http://earlywarn.blogspot.ca)

Rotting OSB - Why I refuse to perform rough-in construction during the winter!

I regularly go by a construction site where a friend of my neighbor is the G.C.   This house in out by the ferry terminal in West Vancouver and when done will be a very high cost home.

My latest visit reminded me of why I really do not want to expose my build to the winter rains.  In fact, I will try to keep all rain of the structure until closed in by installing a 60ft x 100ft tarp over a metal cable strung between two large trees.

But back to the visit, I have been visiting this property since before the old house got taken down, and in fact this is where I salvaged very nice cabinetry to use in the walk in closet, master bath, and family entrance as well as a new wall oven and a like new drawer dishwasher.  I also was able to salvage a lot of plant material from the property but so much more got left behind with the thinking it was out of the way, when in reality - they have just been trashed, such a shame.

Cabinet salvaged to be used in Master Bath

Gorgeous drawers and storage for Master Walk-In-Closet

Base cabinets to be used for family entrance

Wall cabinets to be used for family entrance

 But again I digress.  The new house has been under construction since the middle of May 2013.  The roof was installed sometime in December, but as of yesterday the majority of windows still have not been placed, and as the main floor living areas is 100% windows, the structure is very much NOT waterproof and has been subjected to many storm events leading to total saturation.  And the structure is starting to show its distress accordingly.  I noticed these symptoms a couple of weeks ago when there but was only able to return with a camera yesterday.

This dwelling is still at the rough in stage and is showing rather significant surface mould and rot fungi.  These OSB webs are now compromised **A conversation with someone much smarter than me indicated the webs should still be OK as long as this is dried out and cleaned off **.  Not only do I want to prevent this wetting with a tarped site, this is a perfect example of how poorly OSB stands up in wet environments.

 In the end, this will probably get cleaned up as the G.C. is quite conscientious, but normally, this would just get closed in and the occupants would wonder why their floors bounce a little more than they should.

January Update - Slowly we are proceeding.

I am getting a few questions as to where I am at on the build and so will provide this short update.

We are getting there! OK, that may have been too short.

Currently, we are waiting to hear if our development variance will be approved.  The notice went out to the neighbours between Christmas and New Years (Many Thanks to Erik at the District of North Vancouver for getting this out so quickly).  The neighbours had till Wednesday to respond with only one neighbour providing official comment (positive).  The next step is for staff to write the report to Council and for Council to deliberate on the application at the next available meeting.  This currently is scheduled for Feb 17 (I today found out it is too tight to make the Feb 3 meeting which is disappointing but totally understandable).

Back in November when I was discussing this Variance with staff, I was under the impression that they would allow me to apply for the building permit in advance of the Variance permit approval and proceed on the condition the variance is approved.  I found out this week, that I had it wrong, and that I cannot apply for the building permit until after, and if,  the variance has been accepted.  This news filled me with disappointment as I was budgeting 8-10 weeks for building permit approval based on previous conversations.  However, the kind District Plan Checker has advised they will do their best to fast track the application and could complete the process in as little as 2-4 weeks.  This would end up putting me slightly ahead of schedule.

The District staff have also confirmed I can apply for the demolition permit at any time.  This will again help, as regular readers remember, I plan to dismantle the existing dwelling by hand and reuse, sell, give away, or recycle/salvage as much of the materials as possible.  I estimated this process was going to take a month to complete.  Current plans are to move out the first few days in March, spend a couple of weeks dealing with all of 'my stuff' in the garage and attic and storage shed, and then start tackling the dismantling of items like flooring, cabinets, end the like, all stuff not controlled by a permit.  I would then schedule the services to be cut near the end of March and then start on the official 'demolition'.  These efforts would all take place in advance of the building permit and further improve my schedule.

I am also nearing completion with Tacoma, the structural engineers I hired.  This process has gone on longer than I believe both Tacoma and I expected, but we have made excellent progress and I believe are getting to the final drawing edits, having been through all the drawings at least once to date.  There has been a struggle with my desire for a thermal bridge free envelope and Tacoma's desire to ensure the dwelling stays standing for decades to come, that has been worked out with lots of 1 and 0's flying through the internet email pathways, and I am grateful for Tacoma and specifically Heather's patience through this process.  In the end, it is difficult (impossible?) to build a thermal bridge free structure utilizing 2x4 wall construction, and while complying with zoning requirements, and I have had to compromise in several areas in order to allow us to proceed with permit drawings in any reasonable time frame.  There are a few areas I will try to 'upgrade' after the permit process, but will only be able to do so if ROXUL is able to provide some compressive strength testing results for their insulation in a 6" wide configuration (what I will have as continuous insulation on the exterior of the sheathing).

As you recall I recently completed a proposed plumbing waste pipe design and am now waiting for the licensed plumber to approve or adjust as required.

I also recently commissioned EcoLighten Energy Solutions to complete a room by room heat loss calculation that I will then use to design my radiant panels.  I will speak to this a lot more in the future, but it is my feeling that the method I was taught as part of the TECA Residential Hydronic Designer course, is too crude for high performance homes.  I plan on doing a comparison between that which EcoLighten provides and that completed using the TECA method, and will post the differences here.  The preliminary model from EcoLighten shows that I will use around 50% of the energy used by a 'code built' home.  With the levels of insulation and air tightness I planned, this is actually a disappointing result, as I was hoping for something closer to a 70%+ reduction. I will go over the model in the upcoming weeks and see if there are any assumptions that can be tweaked to represent what I believe will be the final reality.

I have also commissioned HoneyComb Creative to build the project website.  HoneyComb created my home inspection website and were an obvious choice to approach for my build needs.  The website www.theEnclosure.ca should be 'live' in approximately 4-8 weeks with at least the basic functionality, and then will be fleshed out as the project proceeds.  The site will include 'live' video, time laps photographs,  a link to this blog, a daily project diary, special component installation videos, dwelling design details, sponsorship links with promotional literature for sponsored products, and finally information and basic instrument readings for the science lab (once the dwelling is complete).  I am looking forward to the site launch and have been very pleased with the initial artwork provided.

Well, I believe you are caught up.   I will be posting documents pertaining to the variance application and the permit application, including all drawings, as I get through those hurdles.

As always, thanks for reading!  Please drop me a line if you have any questions or comments.

  

SENWiEco adds a weather station.

As part of the instrument package for the new build, I have installed a Vantage Pro2 Plus weather station.  I have had this recording weather since September of 2013, but only setup the web based access today.

My blog will show the current conditions, but clicking on the icon will take you to the station on the Weather Underground website where you will be able to look at historical data.

The station is currently uploading saved data and should be 'live' by tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Thank-you Readers!

You are all awesome!

I am now over 650 hits per month on this blog and I cannot thank you enough.

First, it shows a strong interest in the subject matter. Second, it keeps me very motivated to continue posting, and obviously I need to actually keep making progress on the project if I am to have something to post, so you are helping keep the project moving along.

Finally, it shows potential sponsors of the project, that there really will be great exposure for any products that I showcase in the blog and official building site (to be launched early spring).  And any sponsorship received, will ensure an even better and educational website and building lab.

Click to enlarge

Determining Lifespan - Updated to 50+ yrs

Back in June (previous post), I wrote about the need to determine the probable lifespan of a building in order to determine the backpack for energy efficiency upgrades and determining the embodied energy of the dwelling.

I wrote that unfortunately, I suspected that the life span for my new dwelling could be as little as 20 years and that I would use 25 years as my expected horizon.

Well I am pleased to advise that I have now significantly extended the time line based on conversations I have had with the outgoing and new District planners for my area.  The following factors weighed in on the discusion:

• The neighbourhood has limited vehicle access with two 'exits' for approximately 700 homes and as such would not be suitable for densification.
• The current owners in the neighborhood are VERY active and vocal and would not support the addition of multifamily into the neighbourhood.
• District is considering allowing for Lane Way and Carriage houses for our neighbourhood instead.
• The real estate values in our neighbourhood are just too high (lots start at $800K and quickly climb.  My lot, at just over 10K sqft, is assessed at over $1M for just the dirt).

So it appears I may have underestimated the 'bastion' mentality and reality of my neighbourhood, and it is going to stay pretty much as it is now for some time to come. I actually welcome this news, as it was a bit disheartening thinking the dwelling may be torn down in aas little as 20 years.

Is this revised time line going to change the way I build? Probably not, the reality is that determining the sweet spot for say insulation levels, requires modelling that I just do not have the experience, time, or money to do right now.  I am instead, going to go with my gut based on research I have done over the last 1-5 years, and on recommendations done by bodies like Building Science Corp.  Once the house is built, and I am able to determine energy use by actual consumption, and learn to use various modelling programs, I will then crunch the number and report back at how close I got to the sweet spot (the sweet spot for me is when the cost of adding site energy generation is cheaper than further reducing energy use).

Stay tuned!

We have an engineer!

As regular readers will know (previous discussion on the topic), I have struggled to find the right structural engineer for my project for a very long time now.  

The process started last March when I chose someone who had a structural issue with 2x4 framing and wanted to put an 8" concrete core inside an ICF.  On the first rear day of activity, he thankfully advised this was not the job for him, something I was in total agreement with.  But this left me in a real pickle, as I initially had planned on starting construction this last spring.  After frantic calls to other engineers showed that no one would be available on short notice, my wife and I discussed and decided that putting the project off a year made the most sense (I did not want to start any later than May 1 in order to get the roof on before the October rains).  And in hindsight, I was no where near ready to start this year anyway and had a lot of technical challenges that still needed to be worked through. So all in all, the delay has been for the best.

Because, I had been 'full tilt' for several months up to the March debacle, I used the decision to delay a year as an excuse to 'take a break'.  The problem is that a break becomes far too comfortable and weeks very soon turn into months.  The last 'break' I had been on took a year!  Fortunately I was a bit more disciplined this time and started the design engine up again in late May.  I received a list of ICF friendly engineers through my good buddy Murray Frank, and started contacting each of them to see if they had the time to fit in my project.  I was finding that between people that did not do ICF anymore, were totally out of business, did not do residential, were not interested, or just did not have the time, my options were limited.

I settled on fellow recommended by people on my first list, who promised a 2-3 week turnaround when I met in his office, but after 6 weeks, not only had we not started, but he had never returned a call or email.  I thought, if we start out this way, how long is it going to take to finish the task and decided to cut my losses before I wasted any more time.

I then contacted some of the people that were previously too busy and some new names I had been given.  I was left with 3 or 4 people willing to take on the work, but based on their own terms.  This generally meant they wanted to take over complete control of the design and move all structure out of Part 9 of the BC Building Code (A prescriptive path to construction) and into Part 4 (An engineered path for all structure).  I just needed assistance on items I could not meet prescriptively like beam sizing and engineered floor and roof trusses, and of course the ICF foundations (and only those because I am a bit higher than the prescriptive code allows for).  The all encompassing engineers wanted to do up pages of detail drawings and in some cases even choose the products I was to use.  And they wanted to charge me $15K+ for the privileged! (my original engineer from March quoted $2500).  This was my design, I had already drawn it up in both 2D AND 3D.  I had already drawn up many of the details I wanted to figure out before building to ensure they worked and were buildable.  I knew what I wanted to build and knew how to build it.

The problem with Part 4 is also that it was going to cost me a lot more money to build. For instance, the Part 9 prescriptive approach requires very little if any manufactured anchors for braced wall panels.  As long as you have the right volume of panels per floor, you can use conventional framing with plywood and everyday nails to build these panels, whereas the Part 4 system often make exclusive use of the Simpson StongTie anchors and rods.  These can add thousands to a typical build.   I had already designed the dwelling to the Part 9 Seismic requirements and did not need any assistance in this regard.

I DID NOT NEED THIS PREMIUM SERVICE and in fact most of this effort would have just been wasted!  I could also tell, that preserving the integrity of my design and my ideas for thermal bridge reduction was going to be difficult with several of the individuals.

So at the end of August I threw a 'Hail Mary' and contacted a name I had received from Durisol (ICF block manufacturer) back in March.  I had originally dismissed the name because they worked out of Guelph Ontario and I thought how is this ever going to work?.  But I was desperate and so contacted Nathan Proper of Tacoma Engineers and was thrilled in his responses.  He advised that he had a BC stamp and that we could arrange any Building Official required inspections with a local engineer at a very reasonable cost.

He further advised "We would be happy to be involved with your house and to help you out by designing the components which need our design. The approach we normally take with these items is to design only the specific items which the owner asks us to --- these are commonly the items which are not covered by Part 9 of the building code.  This is more cost-effective for the owner than checking every little item." 

I thought I had died on gone to heaven, and my neighbour came out to ask why I was running around the front yard hooping and hollering.  The news literally brought me a few tears as I was so relieved after the conversations I had had with others over the last 6 months.  I had hit the jackpot!  There apears to be a dramatic difference in how the design professionals here operate compared to back east (I have often seen this with other construction related items as well).  The best part - they would charge $5K for the basic design package!

Nathan and his team have been responsive, approachable, and co-operative with my goals and ideals.  They approach the tasks in a straightforward, logical, AND practical matter.  They are also sensitive to my budget constraints and have already made suggestions where I can provide input (drawing) instead of utilizing staff in their office.  We only started the real work on  Tuesday, but I feel we have already made great progress.  I came up with a concept for supporting my sun shade assemblies, and a lot of people I am sure would just ignored my suggestions and done their own thing (often at my increased cost).  But they ran with it and advised it should work and that they had done something similar previously.  I can now be a constructive part of the team instead of a bystander, which is what I had always been looking for.

So, it goes to show, trust your gut.  If something does not feel right, it probably isn't and should be fixed or past over. It took a long time, but I KNOW I have found the right person for the project and will be enhanced by their involvement.

And is that not what you are looking for when you are hiring someone to help you build your house?  

AutoCad 2D model of a 3 level single family home.

Ever wonder what a completed model of a 2D three level home prepared in AutoCAD 2002 with all 43 layers turned on at once looked like?

Thought so!

Finished 2D model ready to send to the engineer.  Kind of frightening knowing each line had to be created manually.

A comparison of electricity prices around the world.

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-electricity-prices-kwh

This is one of the reasons why energy efficient dwellings are not as popular in North America than say Germany.  When power is cheap, we love to waste it.

Will we ever see 30¢/kWh electricity?  Probably not in my lifetime.

Designing walls that are not vapour permeable - A good idea?

I have been having a discussion on a LinkedIn Passive House forum regarding the choices one can make in regards to insulation and the effects of these choices.

http://goo.gl/1vGTyI


The poster was asking for experiences within the building community with Wood Fiber vs. Cellulose insulation and I suggested that neither may be desirable depending on your climate conditions and instead suggested continuous exterior mineral wool fibre insulation.  This then morphed the conversation towards what constitutes a durable high performance wall.

I posted my thoughts on the perfect wall (which just happens to match my walls in my upcoming build) and other who are builders of PassivHaus (PH) structures posted their perfect wall details.  This led to a discusion about the merrits of designing a wall that is vapour open to the low pressure side, where one of the posters stated:

"I've been indoctrinated with the Bau-biology "Breathable Wall" idea with nearly 10 years now and spent many years preaching that gospel. But then I found the Spokane and Tsong studies where they opened the walls of 250 houses, that were built wrong in terms of 5:1 breathability but no decay was found.  The walls had no membranes, no decay was found, its the same for SIPs houses, ICF houses and most other construction methods, the walls don't breathe as per the 5:1 rule and the houses aren't falling down."

The two studies can be found here:
1) http://www.viking-house.ie/downloads/Tsong79.pdf
2) http://www.viking-house.ie/downloads/Spokane.pdf

I read the two studies the poster provided and was somewhat shocked at the jump in logic that is represented by the statement that we do not need to make walls permeable and that impermeable walls will not rot. This is such an important subject, I though I would reproduce my comments here to a larger readership.

The Tsong study is discussing the lack of VB, and not a wall that is vapour tight. A wall that does not have a VB is by definition VERY vapour open and in fact most of the assemblies studied were quite vapour open (poorly insulated wood frames).  It is also important to note that the study occurs in 1979 and the levels of insulation discussed are far below what we are talking about in today's high performance homes (the study does not state the R value but we are talking about poorly filled 2x4 walls, so probably an effective average of below R7). Therefore these walls all had a lot more drying potential due to thermal bridging than high performance homes of today and certainly a lot less drying potential compared to a PH. It is also important to note that these houses had an average ACH50 of 16.2, which is more than enough to also help dry the assembly when it was experiencing very high RH levels. I have been unable to locate the permeability of Urea Formaldehyde insulation so do not know how permeable those walls were if detailed perfectly – but per the study, these foam walls had a lot of air leakage due to foam shrinking and cracking. The average foam shrinkage was 8% and the report states that as a result of the shrinkage of this foam, there was a 70% increase in heat loss (heat loss dries walls, so even these walls could dry easily).

It should also be noted that areas of high moisture content were found at many locations on these homes where bulk water entry was occurring (in other words control layers regularly fail and you should design your assemblies for such to the extent possible).

What I do love about this study is their remark at how the mineral wool insulation had an ‘extremely low average moisture content’ when compared to the other insulation (in no case was the moisture content of the mineral wool above 2%). The study went on to say this is “probably attributable to the fact that mineral wool is not hygroscopic, whereas the cellulose and U-F foam both tend to retain moisture”. Go ROXUL!

I then went on to say that relying on this dated research to state that a wall should not be vapour permeable to the low pressure side is grossly flawed in my view, does not come close to lining up with the current recommendations of the building science community and their experience in repairing failed structures, and in my view also miss-interprets the studies results and compares conditions that are grossly miss-aligned with the high performance structures we are building today.

All this study can really claim is that there was no significant moisture damage associated with diffusion observed on any of the homes that generally had no or minimal insulation and high levels of thermal bridging. And as we know today, this results in assemblies with built in drying safety factors. The study was also was clear to specify that these results could not be related to colder climates.


The second study was by the same author but took place in a colder climate.  The same arguments above apply.  It should also be noted that colder climates generally have less problems with moisture damage to wall assemblies than milder climates.  In climates with cold winters and hot summers, the moisture typically exists as frost all winter and then quickly dries out in the late spring as the temps rise. In a location like the Pacific North West (3000 DD), moisture will stay in liquid form for months at a time as is able to cause a LOT more damage as the moulds take hold and flourish.

Can you build vapour tight assemblies that work in the Pacific North West?  Yes, but you then need to sweat the details.

An ICF IS a wall that works.  It is often quite vapour tight but because there is no air movement through it at any point in the structure, there is generally no opportunity for condensation to occur (I have heard of isolated events where condensation has occurred between the foam ICF and concrete core leading to mould build-up).  The typical foam materials of the ICF are also highly resistant to vapour diffusion, all but eliminating that risk as well. From a building science standpoint a typical foam ICF structure makes a lot of sense, but where it fails in my view is the very high embodied energy that it represents both in terms of the volume of concrete used in these homes and the foam used in the typical ICF blocks.

As far as SIP construction (structural insulated panels), which are typically fabricated with OSB sandwiched on each side of a foam block, I personally feel that the jury is still out.  There is a multitude of reports of SIPs failures across North America and once again, this style of construction represents a high embodied energy.

For me, I will stay true to my stick frame, plywood sheathed structure wrapped in a nice continuous warm blanket of highly vapour permeable and fire/rodent/bug proof Roxul mineral wool insulation thank you very much.

The Enclosure - Updated Exterior

I thought it might be time to provide an updated design photo showing the exterior of the dwelling as it is now modelled.  I will use the through cavity window sill and head flashing to create borders around the windows (and doors).  The infill will probably be simulated stucco cementitious panels.

Temporary Accommodation Road blocks!

As part of my desire to direct our budgeted monies toward a high performance home, I had always planned to request permission to live on site in a large vacation trailer (something like this).  Rent in my region is expensive, with 1 bedroom basement suites renting for $1100/month.  With an expected build time of 18 months, the avoidance of rent would allow $20k+ to be redirected to important components like windows and insulation. Instead, I could buy a trailer for $20k-$25K and then sell it when we were done for $5K less, resulting in a $5K living costs for the 18 months.

Two obstacles have been working against this plan from the beginning and it turns out both were insurmountable.

When I approached the District of North Vancouver in March, I was told this just was not done, with the manager citing safety concerns for the occupants of the trailer as well as the District services.  This lead to investigation with BC Safety Authority (advised no jurisdiction in North Van, but a pretty common situation in rural building lots) and WorkSafeBC (advised no concerns beyond siting trailer in area where debris could not fall of the dwelling under construction and onto the roof of the trailer.  The District manager had also sited concern for neighbour complaints, so I petitioned and received support for 4 of the 5 effected neighbours (three in writing) with no response from the 5th neighbour.  I went back recently to the District with all of this additional information only to now be told that "A zoning bylaw prohibition cannot be varied" which I am not sure I understand because many other aspects of the zoning bylaw like roof height, setbacks, etc, can be varied under special circumstances.  I tried to make a case for making this a test, because the District council are always looking for ways to make building more affordable in the District to allow those that have grown up here to stay here once they move out of the family house. I am also aware that the planning staff are soon to be proposing alteration of the neighbourhood zoning bylaw to allow lane-way carriage houses (which would further support a 'second' accommodation on the property).  The mistake I made was asking in the first place.  You see, there have been other owners in my neighbourhood that have lived in a trailer during their build.  The difference is that they did not ask and no one complained, so the District was not forced into action.  Because I did ask, in the end, it came down to one person with the authority to say no.  If I had more time and did not have the second obstacle, I would have pushed for a text amendment to the zoning bylaw.

My second obstacle was my wife.  She categorically refused to live in a holiday trailer even though it could be argued the accommodations would have been nicer than where we live now. She was making arrangements to stay with family.  My hope was that once the trailer was in place and she saw that it would not be that bad, she would soften and move back 'home'. But I fear, this was just a pipe dream on my part and was never going to happen despite how nice I could make the living conditions.

So with a source of accommodation dried up and with a build looming, I needed to find a place for us to live, and fast.  This is slightly complicated by the fact that my oldest cat is a resident of the neighbourhood FIRST! and our pet second.  You see, he has grown up in the neighbourhood and used to live about 300ft NW from where I live.  He is also an outside cat and just graces us with his presence at his direction. The requirement was to find an affordable place within his current 'stomping grounds' or fear an abandonment if we went someplace new (he did after-all abandon his first owners).  I also wanted to be close so I could go 'home' at lunch and keep tabs on the job site.  Fortunately, after I received the final correspondence from the District on Thursday, I went on line that night and checked the local Craigslist ads and lo and behold, the basement suite across the street was available as of Sept 1 (I had not even realized that the previous renter had left a month ago).  Today, the neighbour and I shook on a deal that would see us move in March 1 2014 and move out September 1 2015.  The two bedroom will set us back over $25K for the 19 months including a signing bonus so that he will hold it from now till we need it next March.

This will be a big hit to the budget (represents 8%) and I will need to cut costs or expend our budget accordingly,  but in the end will make my wife much happier and you know what they say.

Happy Wife - Happy Life!