Much of our design and construction planning focuses on reducing the energy our projects consume, not only to the benefit of those enjoying the home, but to the larger community and the planet. One of the best ways to influence this: special consideration, planning, and detailing of wall and roof systems (aka: the project’s envelope). I chatted with Ty Allen AIA, our design-build manager, who took us a bit deeper our current innovations and processes with our home enclosures:

Megan: Thanks for walking through this, Ty. I’m curious, what do you think are the key things to consider when you are designing the building envelope for a high-performance home?

Ty: Air leakage is one of the biggest areas of energy and efficiency loss. Think of it this way; you can have as much insulation you want, but if you leave the front door open, it doesn’t matter. Add up all of the thousands of potential points of air leakage, and it can quickly turn into a big energy and efficiency loss.

Generally, when we think about envelope design, one of the most fundamental things we want to do is define the pressure boundary. In other words, the line throughout the building in the wall-makeup where you’re creating airtightness. If there’s a break in the pressure boundary, say cold air leaking through the floor system into the living room, performance is lost.

Where’s the beetle these days? As with most things these traditional tools have a lifespan… Needing to replace a beetle that had met its end, Mike W and Alexander crafted a new one from a reclaimed timber scrap in our McMinnville, OR shop.

Freshly minted, this beetle looked very innocent on the bench. Mike showed it’s ferocity (and his!), displaying it with a more seasoned beetle:

These two will be headed to the next raising where the newcomer is sure to lose some of that bright patina of the freshly exposed wood as it ‘matures’. Thanks to Mike for the creativity and the photos!

Curious about where else the beetles have been? Check the rest of our blog.

In August of 2008, my wife Maxine, our son Jake, Dexter the dog and Annie the cat arrived in our new home of Portland, Oregon with a plan to open a west coast New Energy Works Timberframers.  In retrospect, the idea that we could just pick up everything, move to a city across this big country, find schooling, the grocery store, a place to start a new timber frame shop, customers, design and build our new home, and still be a solid co-worker and leader to our headquarters back in the beautiful Finger Lakes of NY seems a bit outrageous. It was. In the Fall of 2008 the economy was in the biggest downward spiral we’ve seen in our lives, so what at first seemed hard quickly became a challenge of far more epic proportions.

I was blogging pretty regularly during that time, largely as we built The Vermont Street Project, our modest if well-crafted home in southwest Portland that would eventually find its way onto the cover of three magazines, and be named Fine Homebuilding Magazine’s first ever Home of the Year.