The Initial Sketch Ground Floor (2018)

Over the next years, we would occasionally think a bit about it, but it wasn’t until Covid hit, and Jay lost his job, that we decided to really go all-in about learning how to construct ecologically, and started an online course about it called Solution Era. (That really threw us for a loop: Jay got fully into high performance and energy efficiency, while I was still very into natural materials, which can be two very conflicting perspectives).

We tried to take what we were learning and apply it to the interior layout of the house. We consulted with friends who are architects, learned about public and private spaces, loud and quiet spaces, and eventually we put all the rooms we wanted on post it notes, with different color codes for those things, to try different configurations.

You should do this too, if you’re involved in designing your home! You want to make sure people won’t be traipsing through your private space to get to a more public one: a common one for example is having a bathroom attached to a bedroom, so people have to go through your bedroom to use that bathroom (At some point, every available bathroom in a house will probably be used by guests!) You also want to consider the sunlight: are you a morning person who wants an east-facing window in your bedroom?

For a while, we were working on a version of the house where we only have one floor, where there was a bedroom on the ground floor, then a version where we had a second floor, but no basement. We must have made at least a dozen different sketches with possibilities, and in the end, we settled on something we were quite proud of (and got an architect to finalize):

The Final Plans Ground Floor (2022)

And when we looked back at that original, first sketch of the ground floor, it was almost identical. Just goes to show… well, fill in whatever parable you want.

I think the main take away for me is that, even if the answer is right in front of you, you still have to go on the journey to find that answer. Test your hypothesis!

But maybe we could have just trusted our gut instincts, haha. Sometimes you have an intuitive understanding of something, with good reasons, but you just can’t immediately articulate those reasons.

-Pip

1. We saved ~$9000.00 by avoiding an expensive electrical service upgrade.

2. A talented young electrician gained experience with a technology he can now offer other clients in a situation similar to ours.

It was a win-win.

Let me back up.

To determine how much electricity a home needs, an electrician runs a “load calculation”. The result dictates the size of the electrical service required from the grid to the house, and is expressed in terms of number of “amps” (or amperage, A). For an average-sized single family residence built today, a 200 A service is usually sufficient, even for a fully electrified home. Some fully electrified homes can get by on a 100 A service with careful planning, especially in milder climates1.

We had upgraded the electrical service from 60 A (very old) to 200 A one year before we decided to change our plan from building a new house in the meadow to updating the House that Moses Chaplin built.

While the 200 A upgrade was done before we had planned to extensively renovate and fully electrify this house, I assumed it was going to be adequately sized for the new vision of the house. This was based on prior experience with another fully electrified home, and some cursory reading. I didn’t give it another thought as we embarked on the renovation work.

You can see where this is going….

We were well into the project when a new electrical firm (Richard Electric) joined the effort, with Colby as the head electrician. As part of his diligence, Colby ran a standard load calculation, per the code and based on the existing and planned electrical systems. The calculations were clear– we were looking at an upgrade to 400A.

We weren’t excited about that news, because a service upgrade is:

1. Expensive. A 400A service installation was expected to be about $12,000.

2. Almost certainly unnecessary, code nothwithstanding. We had fully electrified another home prior to this project, and had installed an energy monitoring system (Emporia Vue) that allowed us to see both total power consumption and use by each individual circuit. That house has a 200 A service, and it has never drawn more than 85 A.

3. A small-scale example of an important contributor to rising electricity costs for all of us:

   1. A bigger electrical service often means the power company will install a larger transformer on the pole outside the house.

   2. The power company must ensure sufficient power generation capacity to meet the higher loads implied by a bigger service, even if the house never actually demands that much power. Our house is less than a rounding error for grid scale capacity calculations, of course. But multiply that “capacity oversizing” by thousands of homes in a grid area, and the utilities could end up adding extra power generation and transmission capacity to the grid for demand that may never materialize.

   3. The costs for (a) and (b) are most often shared by all rate payers. Grid upgrades of all kinds have been, and will be, costing rate payers plenty across the country. Rising electricity costs are a complex, multifactorial issue (increasing frequency and magnitude of repairs to the grid from storm damage, demand growth–driven largely by data centers, hostility towards bringing on new renewable energy generation by the current federal administration, incentive structures that encourage utility companies to install equipment with guarantee of a healthy profit, etc.). Finding a way to avoid an upgrade, especially with an approach that could be used by the many homes that will be fully electrifying as we transition from fossil fuels, seemed like a good idea.

So, what to do?

Before we talk about the solution we landed on, a little background on load calculations is required.

Standard load calculations are designed to ensure there is adequate electricity supply to the home even if nearly all of the electricity demanding devices and systems are on at once.

Imagine…it is a beautiful, moonlit winter evening in Vermont. Two EVs are charging in the garage (lovely to have our friends visiting for a snowshoeing/skiiing weekend). The heat pump is cranking away (clear skies, -14 ℉ without the wind). Two tired snowshoers are each taking showers, while the dishwasher is running and wet snow pants are in the dryer. Meanwhile, I am reheating leftover pizza in the microwave while baking chocolate chip cookies in the wall oven and boiling pasta on the induction stove (a carb loaded feast for the winter sports enthusiasts). Lights are on in every room.

This is a very unlikely scenario, of course. I would never microwave leftover pizza–soggy and leathery crust, yuck!

Having almost all the circuits in the house on at exactly the same time is also a fairly remote possibility. But with a standard electrical panel, there is no way to guarantee that the “all on” situation won’t occur. And because the “all on” scenario can happen, the assumption is that it will happen at some point. The code-specified load calculations ensure the electrical service is sized to meet this “all on” demand. The ultimate intent of the code is to prevent circuit overloads, equipment failure, and house fires, so this conservative approach is a good thing.

Enter the “smart” electrical panel

There is now a more flexible way to manage loads: a “smart” electrical panel.

One feature of a smart electrical panel is that it monitors how much power is being drawn by the home at a whole-home and circuit level. That allows a smart panel to detect when whole-home electrical demand gets close to the safe service limit, and dynamically manage the circuit loads in response. A smart panel can temporarily turn off one or more circuits (this is often referred to as “load shedding”) to prevent demand exceeding the safe limit. And when the demand from other circuits has reduced to the point that the systems that had been turned off can be accommodated, the smart panel turns them back on. This all happens in the background without the homeowner needing to do a thing, and almost always without the homeowner even noticing that this has occurred.

For example, in our above scenario, imagine the house with a 200A service. When the oven is turned on to bake the chocolate chip cookies while all the other systems are running (car chargers, dryer, hot water heater, etc.), the smart panel detects that adding the oven load on top of the other concurrent loads would exceed the safe limit. It responds by temporarily turning off the EV chargers2, which makes enough room for the oven to run and keep total demand under the safe limit for a 200 A service. And when the cookies are done and/or the clothes are dry and there is enough capacity freed up, the car chargers are turned back on automatically.

With a smart panel, we could have our smaller 200A service and our (chocolate chip) cookies too!

Importantly, code makes allowances for load shedding devices like the smart panel I just described, which effectively enable the electrician to ignore the circuits controlled by the smart panel when calculating load (since they can be dropped to zero as needed).

Moving forward

Colby and I had a discussion. While he hadn’t done a smart panel installation before, he was game to learn and explore! So I got to work to explore options.

Smart panels are now available from a number of different manufacturers. This 2026 review does a nice job laying out features that might help choose one over another for a given situation, though I am not sure it makes sense to “rank” them. Smart panels can have additional benefits beyond avoiding system “upsizing” in retrofits and new construction, including: (1) helping to maximize backup battery life during a power outage by dynamically managing which circuits are on and off throughout the outage, (2) reducing homeowner cost and grid-associated CO2 emissions by providing the option to time the use of certain “time insensitive” circuits (e.g.—car chargers, hot water tanks, some HVAC systems, etc.) so they run when electricity is least expensive (i.e.—off-peak hours) and/or when the power grid is supplied mainly by less polluting energy sources, (3) providing real time monitoring of power use and enabling remote circuit level control by the homeowner.

After some due diligence, we chose the Lumin Smart panel to meet our goals. Lumin’s technical sales lead, Phil Roth, was remarkably helpful in this process. He answered my many questions about how the system worked and how it could meet our objectives. Phil even came to commission the system, and was a great partner to Colby throughout.

Colby took it upon himself to write up his experience with the Lumin system, which is in full at the end of this post. He offers insights that are especially useful to both the technically-minded homeowner and fellow electricians who may be interested in this technology. If you are a homeowner who is less technically inclined but intrigued by the benefits that a smart panel can bring, you may want to share Colby’s post with your electrician. And of course, if you live in the Upper Valley and have interest in a smart panel, consider giving Richard Electric a call!

So…does it work?

I admit to looking at the Lumin app almost daily to collect information on the power consumption of my various systems. It was especially helpful as I was trying to understand the power use and efficiency of our air-to-water heat pump system (more on HVAC in another post). The data are clear and reliable–overall monthly power usage numbers reported by Lumin match almost perfectly well with consumption reported on our monthly power bills.

As for how the Lumin panel managed load shedding…a little context.

We are just over 8 months into our Lumin smart panel experience, including the passage of a very cold and snowy winter, as I write this. Throughout this past fall and winter, the air-to-water heat pump kept us perfectly warm even when it got down to -15 ℉ without the wind chill (more on HVAC in a different post). Our car charger kept the EVs charged up. Chocolate chip cookies were made in the wall oven. Many meals were made on the induction stove, and plenty of food (NEVER pizza) was reheated in the microwave. Friends and family came to snowshoe and ski, and they showered, and dried clothes. We hosted a 20 person youth group retreat, a 10 person climate retreat, and a 22-person Thanksgiving weekend extravaganza.

And how many times did the Lumin panel have to shed a load to stay under the 160 A “safe limit” for our 200A service during all that use?

Zero.

We never even got close.

A deeper dive

Smart panels can be a good choice for some homes in both retrofits and new construction. And they are just one small part of a much larger trend to make our homes and the power grid “smarter” overall, which present very real opportunities for increased cost savings and better reliability for all. While this is well beyond the scope of this post, if you are interested in learning more about opportunities for grid-scale improvements, a recent episode of David Roberts’ Volts podcast provides a good starting point. Volts is full of many inspiring examples of what solutions are already here, and what is coming, to help accelerate and simplify the ongoing clean energy transition.

Colby’s Review of the Lumin Smart Panel install experience, in his own words:

Overall thoughts

• Sleek, practical design, and easy to install

• Very user-friendly, for both professionals and homeowners

• Great surface mount installations

• Potentially difficult recessed installations

• Using a wire way or a junction box is a great way to cut down on excessive wiring in panels

• The installation guide is comprehensive and easy to follow

• Well-structured and intuitive online training course

• App is well organized, easy to navigate, and honestly pretty cool

• All Lumin employees (most interactions with Phil) have been incredibly responsive, informative, and helpful. Obvious passion for and (well-deserved) pride in their work. It’s been a pleasure working with everyone I’ve come into contact with.

Experience

I’m not gonna lie, this install was very intimidating before the work started. I pretty quickly had those anxieties invalidated, though, as my entire experience with the people, products, and teaching tools of Lumin was exceptional. I’m delighted and incredibly grateful for this experience and the opportunity to work with such extraordinary professionals (and homeowners). If it weren’t for people like Brian and Sophie, I would not be allowed to do something amazing like this. From the beginning, it seemed like a lot of weight on one’s shoulder performing a load calculation, knowing that in both the standard and non-standard method that we were looking at a 400 amp service, and then having Phil run the same calculation through his home brew spreadsheet, saying that we can definitely get this service under wraps…and I was awestruck. I’ve only had the opportunity to be involved in fewer than a dozen installs of services larger than 200 amp, and not one of them has been a cake walk, so to have someone confidently say that we would not have to go through another back-breaking install of a 400 amp service, I was beyond relieved. From the moment that I opened the box, I was impressed by the quality and overall organization of the panel. The mounting bracket and premade whip were amazingly easy to install. I do think that having an alternate location to make the points of connection is very beneficial to not overfilling the panel, and also allows for easy wire tracing if any issues arise. The overall installation was very smooth, but I do think that depends on how clean a panel you’re working with and how easy it is to access the pre-existing wiring and modify it. I will recommend that you make sure you check the length of all wires on the premade whip, especially that of the CT wiring that will have to reach the top of the panel to get the proper readings that the Lumin needs to accurately manage the loads. Out of the whole process, besides the physical installation, the longest part of the whole install was setting the device up on WIFI and setting up the app. Partly this was due to the installer’s error, not knowing that the Lumin needed a direct connection to the internet and could not be set up on a wireless access point. After this was resolved, the rest of the installation went smoothly. The overall experience was a tremendous eye-opener into the world of load management and the opportunities that may now arise to use this device to suppress the need for a 400-amp service when most homes on an average day never use more than 35 amps resting. While traditional load calculations are essential for protecting services from overload, the expanding field of load management offers significant opportunities for improvement. By utilizing load shedding to preserve existing services, we can avoid the substantial costs associated with service upgrades. I believe this approach is a clear benefit for both contractors and homeowners.

Recommended Parts for Installation

• One box of large blue Ideal wire nuts

• One box of (single size) red Ideal wire nuts

• One, 2-pole 20-amp breaker sized to fit the panel (i.e. Siemens, Eaton, Cutler-Hammer, GE, Murrey, etc.)

• Either one 6in×6in×24in or one 6in×6in×48in wireway

• Two, 6in×6in square end caps for wireway

• One terminal ground bar kit 21 space

• One, 2/0 main lug for proper grounding

• Two, fully dressed 2½in×4in rigid conduit nipples with both locknuts and bushings

• The Wire Marker Booklet by Ideal

• Approximately 6 lag bolts for mounting wireway

Breakdown of cost

Labor rate

• $98/hr for a fully licensed electrician

• Additional $48/hr with an apprentice

Total hrs broken down

8.5 hours total

• 2 hrs were at the higher rate for the mounting of the Lumin panel and the mounting of the wireway to the panel location. One person could have done this, but it did help to have a hand in making sure all things were plumb.

• 4 hrs for the physical install at the base rate, mapping out the wiring, and making the proper splices and connections to the existing circuits that will be controlled.

• 2.5 hours of setting up the unit to the Wi-Fi and configuring the app with the proper loads, ensuring everything was in proper functioning order.

Total labor cost: $969.00

Total material cost: $435.10

• This is based on the recommended materials list above, which includes all items used in this installation and a material markup.

Total cost- $1,404.10

• This does not include the price of the physical Lumin device.

The dream began as a desire to build my house with my own hands. I don’t quite remember how old I was, I think maybe in my teens, and I was starting to get better at building things, and I just had this sense that to feel truly connected to the place I live, I would have to build it myself.

And then I met an apprentice timber frame carpenter, and that dream seemed to finally be tenable. And like most processes that take something in our brains and turn it into reality, the reality was far from what I originally dreamed.

In my mind, building my house would be 100% traditional artisanship, with thick, rough hewn timbers, stone or adobe walls, ideally even a thatched roof. It would be the most real house that ever was, made of authentic materials, 100% by hand. I would spend countless hours of heavy labor if need be, and it would be glorious.

Now, I’m not saying that it couldn’t have been glorious–I think it would have been extremely satisfying for me to build a house this way, and I hope to someday build some kind of structure like this, so I can know that satisfaction. But the reality is that it just isn’t possible for my house if I want to 1) construct it legally, and 2) respect my other values of making an ecological home (which can mean different things to different people).

There are many ways to be ecological. Solution Era has a nice breakdown of what they see as the Five Movements in Ecological Building (only available in French), which emphasize different ideals: Simple Homes (like tiny houses), Carbon Neutral/Reduced Carbon Footprint Homes (in both its construction and consumption), Self-Sufficient Homes (aka autonomous and resilient), High Performance Homes (aka Energy Efficient Homes), and finally Natural Material Homes (aka using human-safe, renewable materials).

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My husband and I argue all the time because I want Natural Materials, and he wants High Performance, which are very hard to reconcile (I’ll dive into this more in future posts). And none of these highlight something important to both of us, which is Longevity: it’s more sustainable to have a house that will last, so it doesn’t have to be rebuilt and/or have the materials disposed of. Most people building a house probably hope to either eventually sell it or leave it to their children, because a house is supposed to last longer than our personal use of it.

This was another reality check: An ecological home isn’t just something that’s made for you and your satisfaction, it has to be something that other people will want to use. The reality is that in North America, the likelihood of our children taking this house from us is very slim1. More likely, it will be sold to someone we never meet, even if we do live in it for the rest of our lives. Which means, it has to be convenient for someone else, and honestly, even for me and my husband.

It needs to have modern creature comforts, like a stable temperature, good air circulation, and at least semi-modern aesthetics and tastes. So the building envelope has to be really solid and well–performing, the interior room layout should make sense for our use and potential other uses as well. We don’t want to spend all this time and energy making it look wonderful, only for a corner of the basement to collapse because the footing wasn’t made properly, or for a leak in the roof to destroy the inside of one of the walls. This means we have to use updated methods of construction, rather than only more traditional ones.

My ideals as a young adult were to have this intimate connection with the things I own, but as I grow older–and hopefully wiser–I’m realizing that there’s far more to consider when creating something that will (hopefully) outlive yourself. The dream is to build something that is perfect for you and your needs, but the reality is that a home doesn’t only serve you: it serves the community and future generations.

What are the things you think a good home should have? Things that will outlast you and contribute to the happiness of future generations?

- Pip

Garrett and I had met about a month prior. I was looking for a carpenter to focus on the interior work, and I was in a bind. We had lined up the flooring job with David and Charlie of Genuine Wood Floors, but as described in another post, the subfloor in the original house needed to be leveled out before they would do the flooring installation. When Garrett and I were having this conversation, David and Charlie were due in 5 weeks to start installing the floors in the original house.

“If we level the subfloor in the original house as you’ve asked, that will impact how the baseboard trim runs across the floor, the height of doors and their ability to swing, and how the door frames land at the bottom. You see, they are currently tied into a floor that is decidedly not level, so when you level the floor…it will really accentuate the irregularities. And it will create a lot of work to make the existing finish line up with the new floor. As for the walls and windows…there is no way to tie the existing window casings back into the new windows without it looking at least somewhat forced together. It will definitely take a lot of extra labor. And where do we stop chasing these lines that are not square, level or plumb relative to the floor? What is your fixed point? We always need to work from a fixed point.”

He wasn’t saying “No”. But he was leading us there.

As with the flooring conversation with David and Charlie, Garrett was saying that taking one step back to create a solid template for finish work was going to allow us to ultimately move faster, and create a high quality finished product.

He was also saying I should probably call Genuine Wood Floors and tell them we needed to reschedule the install so we could get the work back into a sequence that made sense: subfloor, then framing walls and ceiling, then sheetrock (and ideally some painting), and THEN floors.

Garrett is a clear thinker. He asks probing questions that help us more clearly articulate our end goal. He sees three steps ahead. And both he and his frequent collaborator, Gary, came highly recommended by folks in town that we trust. With mutual agreement that this could work out, he and Gary were on the job.

In case it wasn’t clear from Garrett’s line of questioning, the first order of business–very much not the original plan of “light touch in the original house”-- was gutting much of the interior of the original house.

The decision to gut the interior of the original downstairs, and reconfigure the upstairs, was not made idly. We had come to love both the history of the house and certain finishing details that recalled that history. What made the choice easier was that Garrett cared about these things as well. And it was clear that he considers the choice of whether to demo, and how much, on a case by case basis based on goals and the situation at hand.

So, as we mapped out the plan forward, we all agreed to bring back traditional elements in many places. In some cases, we would reuse/repurpose materials. In fact, we ended up saving a barn full of material (window sashes, doors, old framing material, etc.)! In other cases, we would seek to recreate elements we liked so much. You will see examples of both in future posts.

But, for now, a story about demo, and bringing things back to allow for quality finish work:

Garrett going after the ceiling in the living room. It had a layer of plaster and lathe, and then strapping, and then a layer of sheetrock over that. And a lot of mouse….leavings. Like 240 years worth. We were happy to be rid of those! And, if you are thinking this is an opportunity for ceiling height gain…you’re right!

Gary and Garrett team up to take out the old chimney. It was no longer functional, as the chimney had been taken down below the roof line already so we could put A Hat on the House. And we didn’t want to keep the fireplace (also known as ”a huge hole in the house that leaks heat like crazy”) in this high performance home anyway. It took some discussion, but losing the chimney all the way to the basement meant (1) more room in the front hall, and (2) a bonus upstairs closet!

The subfloor leveling begins. In the area that will be the expanded dining room, tapered cut 2X material (“sleepers”) were glued and screwed perpendicular to the less than level original subfloor, creating a plane that is level.

And on the now-level sleepers, new subflooring material is laid down.

Then framing for new walls. To the right, the new half bath framing takes shape (the give away is the toilet placed in to help get the sizing JUST right).

The north side of the den (shown here) was the high point of the first floor–so Garrett and Gary took out the original subflooring to lower the plane, then added back the height they wanted with sleepers on the joists. While they were at it, they added some more joists for good measure.

We discovered some things during demo that revealed some interesting history of the house.

One of the pieces of subfloor had a name written on it–”R. Forbush”. I have written extensively about Rufus Forbush (the 1812 war veteran, who inherited the house from his father, Rufus, who bought the house from Moses Chaplin, who built the original house ). We don’t know which Rufus this was, but my money is on the son, as he did quite a bit of remodeling in the 1830s.

We were surprised to discover that every post from the original timber frame had an added extension at its lower end (as in the corner post above, denoted by the red arrow). We had seen one or two of these earlier on and assumed it had been a repair. The fact that all of the posts had this same “scarf joint” extension suggested that, instead of repair, they had raised the height of the whole first floor by about 14 inches! Two other bits of evidence bear this out: (1) Gary found a reused piece of wood in one of the walls that had tenons on both ends that is exactly the height of what a stud would have been before they raised the height of the first floor, and (2) the studs currently in between the major posts in the exterior walls were all newer looking and a different wood than either the original timber frame or the shorter stud we found. So….that’s wild! I would love to know how they pulled this off.

We also found lots of evidence of re-use of materials, including two of my favorites–stair treads flipped up and over to be reused as risers, and floorboards used as sheathing repair. Would (wood?) that all resources were treated as so precious today!

Garrett and Gary also reframed the stairs to the second floor of the original house, taking advantage of some of the space created by demolition to create stairs that are less steep and have a consistent run.

Upstairs had its own transformation. I will discuss more of that in a post about finish work, but in the context of using demo to create space….

This was the attic space above the north bedroom before any work began on the house.

And this was the bedroom below. Cozy. Low ceilings. Modest amount of light. The old bathroom was on the other side of the wall to the right.

This is the new north bedroom, mid-framing. The attic space from the above picture is now part of the framed room. The mark down the middle of the floor shows where the wall that separated the bedroom and bathroom was before this renovation (a new bathroom was added in at the top of the stairs–details in a separate post). Garrett and Gary built a chase underneath the windows to hide a duct (the bright silver of the duct insulation can be seen in the chase). That duct is the make-up air vent for the kitchen hood. When the kitchen vent hood is turned on, a baffle at the exterior penetration of that duct opens up, allowing air to passively enter to balance the air being expelled by the kitchen hood. That is necessary in a well air-sealed home to prevent negative pressure or backdraft.

With the north wall sheetrocked, the duct is hidden, and a deep window seat begins to take shape.

Same room as above, with the window seat finished, and paint on the walls and ceiling. Not visible (by design) is LED strip lighting installed into a routed out channel in the collar ties that run across the room. This provides dimmable uplighting. The cutouts to left and right of the windows are for bookshelves, which is part of the finish work.

The south bedroom (pictured above) got a similar treatment to the north, with a vaulted ceiling and uplighting. Note the rafter of the original framing with “D. Millard” painted on it (and “1991” on the face). More history on the significance of that name, and the “Copeland 1929” and “M. Forbush” that also adorn the rafters in that room, can be found here and here.

With the basic layout complete, framing sheetrocked (and in many cases painted), the finish work–e.g. trim around the windows and baseboards, and some built-in elements— could begin.

I will cover the interior finish work in another blog–but just one vignette to tie the bow on this one:

While we were excited about gaining an upstairs closet and preventing heat loss by eliminating the chimney, we weren’t interested in losing the aesthetic of the fireplace in the living room (the mantle above was our placeholder).

The very talented mason Greg, from JT Dow Services –who has done extensive work throughout the project on a retaining wall, patio, the wood stove chimney exterior, etc.--recreated a fireplace firebox, hearth and lintel to bring back the aesthetic of the fireplace that was removed. Shout out to Jason for finding reclaimed bricks from a warehouse demo to give the feel of an older fireplace.

We’re really pleased with the look of the “new” fireplace! The only concern is that someone will try and use it!

Garrett would want any reader to know that the mantle is not complete in the photo above. He will rework the feet on the mantle so they sit flush the newly leveled floor. But this picture makes his original point. With the floor leveled, the mantle leg is now too short on the right when it sits on the floor to the left. Making that adjustment for one finish element isn’t such a big deal.

But if that had to be done with all the baseboard, all the doorways, all the doors….

No.

Just no.

Little Morsel. In the post A Modern Day Alchemist, I featured the craftsmanship of Jay Dumont. When I created the Green Dream Stories site, in collaboration with Jay’s spouse Pip, we intended it to become a space for others to share their path to creating their unique “Green Dream”. Well, I’m delighted to share that Jay and Pip will now be sharing their own Green Dream story on this site! It promises to be a thoughtful tale of what two talented two creatives have been doing to build their own efficient and beautiful home in Moe’s River, Quebec. If you’ve read the post about Jay’s work at our place, you already know it will be a demonstration of skill and thoughtful design! You can find their site here—expect new content soon!

For current subscribers to the Reading, Vermont Green Dream, you are subscribed to Jay and Pip’s story by default. You will have the option to continue to follow along or not as you wish going forward by choosing the appropriate selection in your preferences section. Having seen a little of what Jay and Pip are doing, I suspect you will want to join me in staying connected to their story! :)

Bonjour/Hi! We’re Pip and Jay, the dynamic duo building our home (mostly) ourselves in Moe’s River, just outside of Sherbrooke Quebec. We hope this blog will help inspire you or someone you know to build more sustainably, even if you’re a Millennial on a budget, and haven’t built a house before.

The main topics we’ll keep coming back to are:

Traditional Building with Natural Materials vs. High Performance Building

Beauty on a Budget (where to Save and where to Splurge)

DIY vs. Subcontracting (when to hire a professional)

First up, we want to dive into the beginning, of designing our Green Dream Home, and the search for land.

We’re excited to share our process and our progress!

Thank you so much for reading,

Pip & Jay

It was an interesting opening to a discussion about potentially hiring him and his partner Charlie.

The topic at hand was flooring for the original house.

When we moved in, the original floors (pine) were painted in most rooms, with vinyl flooring in the kitchen. The painted floors were in fairly decent shape, save for the gouges and overall wear from 240+ years of service. Under the vinyl flooring, the origins floor was also there, but it was pretty trashed by the process of hacking down the floor to deal with a hump, adding leveling concrete, and installing a plywood subfloor.

And throughout the original house there were “peaks and valleys” in the floor that came from centuries of settling, racking, and some rot.

Let’s just say, a marble placed on the floor at just about any spot would immediately start to roll, and not in a straight line for very long.

The plan had been to lay the new flooring right over the old wooden floors in the original house. I figured with a little bit of carpentry, we could smooth out the toughest spots, and the new floor could cover up the “wrinkles” that come with age.

One flooring professional I consulted with agreed it could be done, though I found him light on specifics.

David and Charlie, from Genuine Wood Floors, balked at that idea.

Their practical objection was that the “moving target” of a floor plane was going to be really hard to deal with just “a little bit of carpentry”. And not getting it right meant that the new flooring would inevitably pop nails, gap, and otherwise look terrible eventually. As Charlie put it, “We could make it look nice for a while…long enough to run away…and then you would be miserable as the floor started to adjust to the poor subfloor below. That is not how we work.”

Their objection as craftsmen was for another reason. Those old floors, which we saw as gouged, marred, uneven…they saw as beautiful. Or they saw that they had the opportunity to be beautiful. It is impossible to describe just how excited they were by the 240 year old pine flooring. They said the color of the wood would be rich. The grain patterns would be tight like we hardly see these days (as these were old growth trees). It would have character from the old nail holes, insect trails, and other charming imperfections. “And,” they said, “think of the sustainability benefits of using wood already in your house to make your floors!”

David and Charlie were talking aesthetic, performance, resource use and embodied carbon benefits. They knew their audience!

The clincher was when they took up an old floor board, flipped it over, sanded it, and put a little oil on it to mimic how they would recommend we finish these floors. The rough looking floor was transformed!

David then hit the old wood sample and a new white pine flooring sample with a hammer, using the same swing/force. Ever the scientist, I appreciated the controlled experiment. Lo and behold, the old flooring was much less prone to denting. A little research indicates that the more dense grain structure, crystallization of resins over time, and high heartwood content of old pine conveys this differential hardness.

We were sold.

So, the old floor was carefully taken up, and David and Charlie trailered it back to NH where they had the operation to safely plane down and square up the old wood flooring and get it ready for install. When the time was right, they did so. There was enough high quality recovered wood for the front hallway, expanded dining room, and new half bath in the original house. In the living room and den of the original house, David and Charlie installed new white pine boards. And in the new addition, they installed new white oak flooring1 (which had always been the agreed upon plan, with no pushback :) ).

We were beyond delighted by the results.

We are fortunate to have had great partners on this project from day one. People who are talented, care about quality, and are willing to share their experience and insights–including being willing and able to redirect a plan if they believe it will better serve the goals of a project. David and Charlie were just such partners, and we hope and expect that the craftsmanship of their work will last many generations. We’re delighted to have them as a part of the ongoing story of this home.

Finally, you may be wondering about how the subfloors of the original house were made ready for David and Charlie to come do their work.

That is Part 2. A story that starts with….“I understand why you would want to do that, but…..”

Little morsel: One goal of this build—this Green Dream—is to create a place in which we can create community, encourage connection to the living world, and be a place of respite and recharge. One way we try and live into this goal is to host Active Hope Climate Retreats. These 2 day retreats are designed to allow people who are experiencing anxiety about the climate crisis to self-author ways to get involved in creating the world they wish to see, tapping into their natural talents and activities that bring them joy. People deep in climate work also can use this as an opportunity for reframing and reenergizing. The format draws heavily from the wonderful work of Joanna Macy (and her book, Active Hope, co-authored with Chris Johnstone), and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson—and the natural landscapes around us here in VT. We hosted our third such retreat recently. This was the first in which we had a heating system, floors, multiple functioning bathrooms, and enough sleeping area in the house to accommodate all eight participants! Tents were an important part of the housing plan during earlier retreats–and while still a great choice in certain seasons, are now optional! You can read the reactions of one recent retreat participant here. We always come away energized and excited after having one of these retreats, and we look forward to more in 2026 and beyond!

The breezeway, added in the 1830s to the House that Moses Chaplin Built, gave rise to a pile of timbers after its gentle deconstruction.

The timbers sat stacked in the yard for two years, awaiting their new fate. 

Ed suggested the timbers be a feature in the reimagined breezeway, now to be an open kitchen and living room space. They could be a prominent feature of this “great room”. The details–the many design possibilities, stacked up against the offsetting realities of available material–could wait until installation time. And for the right person to do the work.

As it happens, the right person was a family member. Our nephew Jay is an outstanding carpenter, with a love of, and talent for, timber framing. We were elated when he agreed to take on this project!

It was a joy to watch Jay practice his craft, and to see the efforts of the supporting cast that made this all come to fruition. The basic steps, as seen through my lens as a highly interested, and very novice observer: 

1. Design. The timber frame structure (trusses, beams and posts) was intended to “read” as structural, even though it would be applied to the surface of the standing structure as a decorative element. Room scale, timber availability, and Jay’s creativity and stylistic preference, led to a king post truss design1. The trusses were relatively evenly spaced in the room, and positioned to look like they were tied into beams that ran the length of the room and sat atop posts that span from the floor to the beams. The truss spacing, and the beam positioning to die into (and seemingly pass through) the end walls, both suggest there is one more truss hidden in each of the end walls (but now you know the truth). 

2. Prep the space.  The Snowdog team used Jay’s design to prepare for the trusses: Framing a flat ceiling and soffits on the end walls that complete the illusion and provide a convenient place to hide wires and ductwork; adding “blocking” to provide anchor points for the fastening of the timbers to the structure; installing a finished ceiling of nickel gap boards, against which the timbers can be set flush. The work to prep was happening simultaneously with the first steps of timber framing…it was a race to be ready in time!

3. Prep the wood. Jay sorted the timbers in short order, marking select pieces for future processing. Jay and Nell (who worked alongside Jay throughout the entire truss project) then pressure washed all the beams. Shout out to my neighbor Bill for the pressure washer loan!

   I was surprised to learn that the gray patina I had long admired in those beams was, for the most part, just accumulated dirt and mouse “leavings”. Turns out, sunlight is what most often creates the grey patina on wood. Most of these timbers would have been felled and used green, with little chance for sun exposure before they were tucked in the home. So, while a few clearly saw the light of day for a while and remained gray after washing, most were just filthy. They took on a nice tan hue when washed, and smelled a lot better too!

4. Cut the wood. Cleaned timbers were cut to rough lengths, and then Jay ripped the biggest ones down the middle lengthwise. They were halved so the cut side could lie flat on the surface to which they would be attached, helping create the illusion that they are full thickness and extend through the plane of the wall or ceiling. After ripping these beams, Jay scalloped out a little of the middle of each cut side with some deft chain saw work so that the edges were the highest point and would be sure to make contact before any other part of the beam. Clever fellow!

Rip it, scallop it, and move on! Time lapse of Jay in action.

5. Lay out, cut, and assemble trusses. The truss layout process involved first resting each framing element to be joined in successive, perfectly level layers, and then using a plumb bob and chalk line to mark precise angles for cutting, which helped ensure the pieces fit together tightly (oversimplification warning!). Once marked, out came the hammers, chisels and drills. Wood chips were flying, but it was the quiet focus of a true craftsperson took over in these critical moments!  After a period of exacting measurements and precision cutting…..the first truss was assembled as a test fit on the floor. 

Jay and Nell get after those truss pieces! Time lapse above.

6. Put up the trusses!  After the trusses were test fit, it was time for the raising! With some heave-ho from all of us, and the physics of a lift, the first truss went up to its spot, and was tight set in place.  When Jay was happy with the fit, long screws were used to fasten through the large timbers, through the ceiling, and into the blocking the team had set for just that purpose. This was repeated for the other trusses.

It takes a village to get the trusses in place!

7. Beams and posts! The setting of the beams that span under the trusses, and the posts that run from the beams to the floor, was less complicated. Jay made a “Jupiter” join (below) to attach sections of beam to create a piece to run the length of the great room, one for each side of the room, after which posts were cut and set to be tight between the subfloor and the beam.  

Screws served as the attachments here as well. All went well until the very last screw of the very last section. Jay was giving it just one more twist when suddenly the lights flickered and went out in the great room. The screw had gone a little askew and straight through the wire that fed the ceiling lights. It was almost a relief that the invariable “thing that goes wrong” for the truss project was so easily remedied (by a good electrician), and didn’t involve very heavy trusses at height, or big saw blades hitting embedded nails, or other, more onerous possibilities.

8. Celebrate! Once the work was done, we had our first of what I hope will be many dinners in the great room with friends and family. 

Throughout the dinner, I couldn’t help but stare upwards. I still can’t, almost each time I walk in the room. 

I wonder at the journey of these timbers.

From trees that started growing in the 17th and 18th centuries, into the hands of craftspeople hundreds of years ago. To a tour of duty as the internal skeleton of the breezeway from the 19th to 21st century.

Then, a brief respite in our yard.  Or was it a rest at all, out in the snowy cold, and driving rain, and blazing sun, with mice nesting in this or that mortise? But then, a shower to clean off the grime from almost two hundred years of holding up the breezeway.

Finally, into the hands of the alchemist and his team, who transform these pieces of timber into a new shape. A new purpose. 

No longer to bear the weight of “structure”. 

But rather to watch over and delight those who gather, who dine, who live, who love, who pass on and make way for new ones who will do the same, in their own way. 

The alchemist made gold, indeed. 

Jay once told me that his reason for choosing the king post truss would be obvious when we were able to see them up with the lights on. 

His reason? 

The beautiful shadows they cast. 

We most certainly agree.

———————————————————————————————————————————— 

A little morsel. We were honored to have been chosen to be part of the 2024 Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) Protour series. In August, we hosted about 50 folks– tradespeople, engineers, architects, sustainable energy aficionados, etc., who came to learn about the approaches we have taken, and lessons learned to date, as we work towards our Net Zero Energy Retrofit and Expansion of a 1782 Vermont Farmhouse. It was inspirational to be in community with others who seek to enable a healthy and sustainable built environment, and we were delighted to have an opportunity to learn from their excellent questions and ideas. 

And, finally…I just went to the most recent NESEA Protour featuring the amazing work of New Frameworks in Burlington. New Frameworks is manufacturing low embodied carbon straw bale panels, and using them to build, amongst other things, Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) that are going straight after the affordable housing crisis in VT. The ADU we visited was BEAUTIFUL, outside and in!  Can you believe that has straw bales in the walls?

Decisions to be made. Materials to purchase. Issues to resolve. Process checklists. To do lists. Items for team discussion.  

Action oriented, forward-looking lists. All helpful to manage the project, which is now moving at lightning speed on many fronts.  

The pace also means it is easy to let the progress go unnoticed. 

Or, for some blog posts to go unwritten.

So one more list, reflecting on some of the key happenings since midwinter, now that we’re solidly in midsummer. 

• Drying everything out after the addition went up. The addition went up when there was a lot of snow coming down. So, the first order of business was drying out the inside.  Three industrial sized dehumidifiers and three industrial electric heaters/fans with hoses extending like elephant trunks around the inside, plus a month of time, and we were good to go! First electric bill we paid in a long time (our solar array production usually more than covers for electric use of the current house, though we should get much closer to actual usage when the house is fully operational). 

• Tying together the original house and addition at roof. The addition and original house lined up perfectly on the first level, a testament to Bensonwood’s precision. At the upper level, the roof line of the addition was carried over to meet the roofline of the original house.

The wall to Skye’s left is the addition that Bensonwood constructed. In front of him is the new roof on the original house, and over his head is the newly framed roof, with the sun shining on the water resistant barrier above. After some more roof decking and insulation, the connection of the House that Moses Chaplain Built to the new addition was complete. 

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• Stopped leaks in the addition roof, and finished primary air sealing of the addition. After Bensonwood finished erecting the addition, some areas of the roof deck were not water tight (as a winter rainstorm made abundantly clear). Further, some places where the house panels came together were not airtight. The Snowdog team used lots of Zip tape (to better seal ridge, valleys, and various points on the roof deck) to get the roof dried in until we could get the final roof on. Bensonwood and Snowdog collaborated to identify and seal the air leaks. 

The black lines on the roof is the tape used to seal all the likely leak areas (between roof panels, on nail lines, in the valleys, spots where the deck may have been slightly damaged–doesn’t take much to let water get by). We’ve been dry ever since. 

After covering up the window and door openings, the blower door depressurizes the house, causing outside air to come in through any leaks in the building envelope.

In most cases, you can just feel the cold (at the time of year) air coming in when the blower is running. Above, Tommy from Bensonwood found one. 

And the thermal imaging camera will spot the rest (above, Michael and Tommy are using the camera to find another leak).  Tape, caulk, backer rod, and a judicious use of spray foam took care of all the air leaks. We will use another blower door test after we have addressed any penetrations for wires and vents to get a quantitative number and ensure we meet our airtightness goal.  

• Insulated addition floor system, and laid down subfloor for radiant flooring

The floor system in the addition utilizes a “slabless slab on grade” approach. The picture above shows the skeleton of that system going in last fall. A double layer of strong vapor barrier material runs on top of and then down the concrete foundation wall, across a sand layer at grade, and then back up the other side, creating a robust vapor (and radon) barrier. Joists hang from the plate that sits on top of the concrete foundation walls–Nell is hanging one in the above photo. After the building was up and weathered in/dried out, the next steps could start.

Dylan, Nell and Skye hard at work getting ready for insulating the floor system in the great room.  The holes in the joists will allow conditioned air to flow freely just under the subfloor when connected to the HVAC system, which we have engineered into the design in case any drying is ever needed.

The floor system below the ventilated space was dense packed with cellulose, as Skye is doing here. This system eliminates the concrete slab (and its high embodied carbon), and takes advantage of the carbon sequestering and insulating properties of cellulose (“slab” below floors is insulated to about R-50). Finally, the subfloor (the sea green material Skye is standing on) was installed over the insulated floor system. This product is Warmboard-S, a thick plywood subfloor with channels to run tubing for radiant heating, and a thin layer of aluminum on top to allow for good heat distribution across the whole panel. 

• Framed interior walls on top of subfloor. This gave us a real sense of the layout and scale. It also meant the electricians and plumbers could do their rough-in work to get us ready for sheetrock. 

• Woodstove installed

The Hearthstone Lincoln stove, shown in the corner above, is one of the smallest/lowest output EPA rated stoves on the market, which was necessary because the great room needs very little heat due to the air tightness and high insulation values. While it will mostly be an art piece, the stove will also serve as backup heat in the instance of a long power outage. Not visible in this photo, a duct runs from the bottom of the stove combustion chamber to an outside wall, providing external combustion air avoiding backdraft when lit. This is important in a well airsealed home. 

• Remaining windows (not already installed by Bensonwood) and doors installed

Mike Bays and his team at Graemar Carpenters made some beautiful insulated and tight wood doors for three of our main entrances. 

The former three season breezeway, now the great room that will house our kitchen and living room, features the most glazing and really creates a sense of being outside all the time.  The thermal performance of the triple paned windows (~R-7.6) help mitigate some of the heat loss impacts of all that glazing. Scott Baum of Sublime Windows has been a great partner in getting us products that fit the project goals.

This pic, of the south facing side of the great room, highlights another window design element. Taken at roughly noon around the summer solstice, this illustrates how the large eave overhang minimizes direct sunlight (and heat gain) in summer.  In winter, the sun will be lower, allowing the sun to come in, and help passively heat the room. 

• Rough electrical and rough plumbing nearly completed in addition (sheetrockers scheduled!)

• Bathroom tiling complete for two bathrooms 

Our interior designer (and daughter, Abby) sourced these tiles from an Etsy site, and created this design for the shower. As an independent artist herself (biased, perhaps, but I love her work), Abby was eager to support an artist making such creative tiles using impressions of actual plants. 

• Updated vapor barrier, completed airsealing sill, and built an insulated floor in the basement. 

The complete vapor barrier, now taped to the sill around the top of the foundation, has really finished the process of drying the basement that was covered in a prior post. 

The floor has Rockwool Comfortboard insulation (~R-12) on top of the vapor barrier, below two layers of subfloor. This is where much of the HVAC equipment will be set. With the dehumidifier and heat pump hot water heater down here now, this room is very cool and dry in summer. I will admit to eating lunch down there a few times on the hottest days of the heatwave this summer.

• Strapped ceilings for drywall and trusses

Madeline (left) and Jack are setting the strapping in the great room to make room for wires, and provide nailing for V-groove that will cover the vaulted ceiling. The blocking between the strapping near Jack is for the eventual attachment of trusses that our nephew Jay, a professional carpenter and timber framer extraordinaire will create using the hand hewn beams that were originally part of the framing of this space. We shope Jay and his spouse Pip will be posting their own Green Dream Story soon…they are building a very efficient home in Quebec!  

• Built the porch on the original house.

  We have a photo of the house with a porch at one time–probably early 20th Century, but evidence of it was long gone when we took over as stewards. Well, a porch is back on again–and I love it!  

The porch is a great place for blogging!

• Got a wood fired hot tub

The Alumitub is awesome. Heated with a wood fire, water from the pond, summer nights listening to the frogs and watching the stars….and the only electricity needed is for the pump to get water into the hot tub, which we plug into the solar panel (so filling only happens during the day!)

• Copelands visited.

Amongst the many unforeseen benefits of ensuring that the House that Moses Chaplin Built endures has been the opportunity to connect with the living history of the place. In a previous post, I discussed the kindness of Ginny and Sally in sharing their story as the family who were stewards of this place just before us–for about 80 years. Well, we were so delighted to have been more recently visited by members of the family (the Copelands, who I mentioned briefly in a prior post) that had lived in the house before Ginny and Sally’s family.  I hope to have more to write about this in the future with their cooperation, but I am so happy to have been connected with sisters Fern and Julie and their cousin Bill of the Copeland family. Teaser: Julie (left) and Fern are standing in front of the spot where their mother was married in this house. I think of it regularly as I pass through the room these days, and it makes me smile. 

• T shirts made, and said “see you later” to Skye

The aforementioned daughter Abby designed/sketched these t-shirts to share with the team. While they are to commemorate the project as a whole, we accelerated their creation so we could share with Skye, who was heading off on a new adventure to Idaho. 

The t-shirt comes in two flavors, and Snowdog wears them well! From left, Dylan, Jack, Skye, some blogger dude, Michael, Madeline, Nell.

These two are lifelong friends, and business partners on their outdoor gear company, Alpine Gremlins. Entrepreneurs for sure–love it!

• Hosted Yestermorrow Net Zero Building Design (NZBD) class

Hands down, the most instrumental experience that shaped this project, was being a student in the Yestermorrow Building Science and Net Zero Building Design Certification Program. I have posted extensively about this program and its impact before.  So…it was very full circle–and such an honor and delight for Michael (one of my instructors from the class, and now GC on this project) and me to host the spring semester 2024 students at the site! They were motivating and inspirational to us, and we were psyched to have them come visit! Special thanks to Stephen Stuart, lead instructor for the course, for helping make this happen!

Finally, three little morsels–a list in of itself!

1. We are so delighted to have been selected to be a stop on the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association Pro Tour this summer. On August 9th, 2024 we will be hosting folks to come see a work in progress, and learn more about our Net Zero Energy Retrofit and Expansion of a 1782 Farmhouse in Vermont. If you have interest in seeing the project live, getting into some of the details you care about, and meeting some of the folks involved, we’d love to see you!  You can register here. 

2. I write this in the shadow of the passing of the remnants of tropical Storm Beryl, which–exactly one year after the devastating floods that happened throughout Vermont in 2023, has brought more flooding and ruin to so many not far from here. Feeling deeply for those affected in Barre and other parts of Vermont. And recommitted to the urgency of action in developing more climate resiliency, effecting a faster transition to clean energy, and doing it in a way that brings the benefits to all people, especially those with the least resources to do it on their own.

3. This month, the final work will be completed to get a town-owned solar array up and running in my town of Reading! The array is located behind the firehouse and designed to make as much power annually as the current electricity consumption of the town buildings. Made possible by new rebate incentives for municipalities and nonprofits as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and just as importantly…by the support of residents in town who voted to make this purchase. It will bring renewable energy and significant energy cost savings to the town over its lifetime, and I think it looks great next to the community garden. 

The time from when Bensonwood made the first cut on a piece of framing to the day they drove off our property, leaving us with a fully framed, insulated, and weather protected building shell for the addition. 

Eighteen calendar days. 

The time from when Bensonwood and their partners from JEDCO and Hutch Crane started lifting panels to set in place, to the day they finished. Eighteen days included the MLK holiday, and at least three decent snowfalls. Temperatures varied from single digits to the mid-40s.  And we received a couple of inches of rain. Yes, rain. In winter. In Vermont. Definitely NOT balmy building. 

One and one-half days. 

The time it took the team to stand up the first floor walls. 

It felt as fast as it sounds. The pictures and video tell the story best, so I’ll let them speak.

In a separate post, I discussed precision building in a controlled environment. The video below shows how that pays off–what a tight fit! Tommy, Kevin and Hunter do the work, while the rest of us “supervise” (as if they needed that!). Jason Dow of JT Dow Services, our neighbor and partner for all things site prep and masonry (and haying, and sugaring, and….) even got in on the “supervising”. I like to think we were an invaluable party of the assembly team….

The beams look even bigger up close. Bensonwood was (and is) known for its timber framing, and it was nice to have some of that worked into this project, as it harkens back to framing for the original building. Of course, Moses used whole tree trunks for his beams, and the new beams are Glulam, a terrific modern product.

After the shell was up, the team spent time installing all the fasteners to connect the panels to each other,  to the foundation, and to the existing house. They also filled all gaps, and taped every seam to complete the airsealing process.

And then, after doing site cleanup, they were gone, leaving behind a house that we hope and expect will stand for centuries. It was breathtaking to see the pace with which this part of the project progressed. And it closed a really important chapter.

We’ve much admiration for the Bensonwood/JEDCO site installation crew: Tommy (crew chief), Jeremy, Noah, Patrick, Kevin, Hunter, and Jay. They worked hard and skillfully from early ‘til late, were cool-headed when thousands of pounds of house were moving about overhead, dealt with a lot of weather issues, and are genuinely good folks to be around. And Jim, our Bensonwood project manager, kept us well-informed all the way along in the lead up to and follow up from the site install. We look forward to seeing them all again when we celebrate project completion!

It quite literally took “a village” to get the site installation of the addition completed. Beyond the Bensonwood crew, we’re thankful for the support of neighbors, especially Bill and Dylan, who helped keep the site free of snow and ice at critical times. And more kudos to Dylan (again) for doing “as needed” road prep so the truckers had safe conditions to deliver the house panels on our steep (and variably icy/snowy/muddy) dirt road. Glenn and the rest of the Town of Reading road crew were also very helpful, as usual. It’s been a tough year for road maintenance, between floods and atypical wintertime “mini mud seasons”, and they’ve managed to keep things navigable for all.

Next up: Knitting together the air/thermal/water control layers between the addition and renovated original house, drying out the assembly after all that rain/snow, and installing the electric, plumbing, and HVAC systems. And once we get the windows and doors installed in the addition, we will quantify exactly how airtight the new addition turned out to be. 

But that’s another story.

A little morsel:

In preparing for the installation of HVAC equipment in the basement of the existing house, we took one more step towards getting the house free of fossil fuels: oil tank removal! We are still using a propane furnace for heating, so not quite there yet, but it was a figuratively significant moment.

“Ready to go”....watch, that is.

On the shortest day of the year, the Snowdog team and collaborators took a field trip to observe our partners, Bensonwood, work their magic inside their 110,000 sf fabrication facility in Keene, NH. As described more fully in a separate post, we had partnered with Bensonwood to build the addition to the original house that Moses Chaplin built. Bensonwood’s offsite panelized construction process offered the opportunity to quickly and efficiently create a high performance building shell that matched our intended design. 

When we arrived at the Bensonwood facility, it was 20 degrees outside, with snow on the ground, and rain and snow forecasted for the coming weeks. 

But inside, it was balmy.

A great day for building, and a great day for a tour.

Welcome to “wall and roof panel” and “window install” day!

First stop was the material staging area, which is large enough to store all the materials for our project, and MUCH more. Being able to store materials inside, so they don’t get wet, swell, warp, etc., really helps with Bensonwood’s precision building process. When you are counting on lining up fully insulated (multi-thousand pound) panels out at the installation site to create an integral wall and roof assembly–in all kinds of weather conditions–it sure helps to have materials that have been built exactly as the plans specify!

Next stop, the Hundegger Speed Cut SC-3: where “virtual fabrication” drops the “virtual”  

At the outset of our collaboration, Bensonwood coordinated closely with our architect Ed to translate his concept into their system (special shout out here to Aaron and Florian at Bensonwood for their work here). After finalizing the design, the project moved into a “virtual fabrication” process, during which Bensonwood created an exceptionally detailed digital 3-D model of every aspect of the build. Precise dimensions for every piece of lumber. Every angle of every cut. Every nail and screw and hanger. Every penetration for plumbing vents, exterior outlets, ventilation.  Every…everything.

Having spent a lot of time with Dylan and Michael cutting rafter tails for the new roof over the existing house last year, I had some sense of just how exacting a process that can be at the job site. Suffice it to say, the SC-3 is WAY faster. If you want to get an idea of one in action, check out this video! It is amazing. 

At this cutting station, engineered I-joists were fed (automatically loaded via a roller feed) into one end of the SC-3, which did all the manipulation and cutting, and sent a finished rafter out the other end. By the way, I understand the SC-3 can also drill, route, mill…a real “Edward Scissorhands” of the carpentry world! All framing elements for Bensonwood wall, floor and roof panels are cut by this machine.

And now…the Weinmann Multifunction Bridge! 

After framing elements are cut, they are brought to their respective production lines (wall, roof, floor) for framing. When we were onsite, the wall team had just finished the initial framing of a wall section, and it was moving down the line to the….Weinmann Multifunction Bridge (WMB).

Interior sheathing was set on top of the framing, and then the WMB went about its business. With the 3-D model data driving its action, the WMB nails the sheathing at specified intervals, cuts out rough openings, trims edges–all while vacuuming up its mess. It is a sight to behold. It was hard to get a great shot, but the audio alone in the video below illustrates how fast this machine is at nailing off an entire wall section. Try doing that manually on a job site in perfect conditions, let alone when it might be snowing, sleeting, or raining!

After adding framing for a service chase1 , the wall panel is flipped over (yep, via machine) so the “outside” of the wall, with empty stud cavities, is facing up and ready to go to the…

Isocell insulating machine! 

The Isocell machine then fills each of the exterior stud cavities with the amount of cellulose necessary to achieve a dense pack (3.5-4 pounds per cubic foot), after which they are sent to a second WMB to add the exterior sheathing (in our case, this was Steico Wood fibre board insulation. The wood fibre insulation provides additional R-value, slows heat transfer through the studs, and leaves the assembly “vapor open” to the outside (meaning it can dry should any water make its way into the assembly). 

I’ve left out some of the attentive detail the team does along the way to the above, most notably taping seams to ensure airtightness. But it was clear from what we saw, and their posted procedures, that the Bensonwood crew is careful and checks each step. 

Roof panel production is a similar process as walls. The pics below show some roof insulation in process that illustrate the Isocell function.

Final stop…window installation!

The other workstream we got to see was installation of windows into fully built wall sections. For the walls of our house, after insulation, they are wrapped in a weather resistant barrier membrane (blue SIGA-Majvest), and strapping is attached to allow fastening of clapboards after the building is assembled on site. When the clapboards are attached, the strapping over the sheathing creates a space between the exterior siding and the house when the that is known as a “rain screen”—if (when) any water gets past the clapboards, the gap allows bulk water to run down and out, and any wet materials to dry via the vented space. Rain screens significantly extend the longevity of the sheathing, siding, paint, and the house itself.

After all that is done, windows (and often doors, but not in our case) are installed into the rough openings. 

Window installation is often a problem spot in high performance homes, as details and materials are essential. Being able to install in a controlled environment, with good materials and expert installers, is a great boon. The largest windows and doors will be installed on site, and we will be paying close attention to detail to get those as nicely installed as Bensonwood was able to do here.

We were grateful to the Bensonwood team for hosting us that day (we also got to tour their Walpole, NH woodworking shop). We left impressed by the precision, efficiency, and care with which the Bensonwood team worked, and by the speed at which things can move using their approach to building high performance structures. 

The finished panels in the parking lot made it clear that the construction was coming together…and fast! Just how fast is the topic of another post.

A little morsel: 

During our visit to the woodworking shop, I spotted this little beauty of a machine! Folks who know my story will know why I enjoyed seeing the TS 750 so much. And not because it is a tilting spindle shaper…as cool as that sounds. 

I’ve written elsewhere about the concept of putting a jacket and hat on the original house that Moses Chaplin built. In brief, it involves building a straight level and plumb frame around the decidedly NOT straight, level and plumb original house. Then, the new exterior frame is covered with plywood sheathing, resulting in empty cavities between the old (now interior) sheathing and the new exterior sheathing. These cavities are then insulated—a newly insulated roof is the “hat”, and the insulated walls are the “jacket”.

The work thus far was exacting, including many custom measurements and cuts, dealing with the southward lean, sill rot, and the rest. And at the final step of sheathing the new frame, the Snowdog team was especially attentive to air sealing to ensure a continuous, intact air barrier (air infiltration is a major cause of discomfort, heat loss, moisture issues, and the like). It is important to get air sealing right–so much so, books have been written on the subject, including “A house needs to breathe…or does it?”

The effort yielded a new frame and “skin” on the outside, and empty cavities in between the new and old walls and roof. 

The final step to put on the hat and jacket was to stuff the cavities with insulation! 

Our insulation material of choice is cellulose. Why? 

Amongst other reasons, cellulose:

1. Traps carbon pollution. Plants use atmospheric carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) to make sugars via photosynthesis.  One of those sugars, glucose, is strung together end to end by plants into long chains to yield cellulose1.  Cellulose is used to make paper and related products (e.g.-cardboard). Recycled paper and cardboard, when chopped up into small bits and put in the right places in a building, is a great insulation. 

   To recap…atmospheric carbon dioxide is pulled out of the air by plants, and ultimately makes it into the walls and roof of the house as cellulose insulation.  So, for as long as the house stands (centuries, we hope) that carbon remains locked in the house, and can’t be a greenhouse gas. 

   Many other types of insulation in common use today can not claim this carbon trapping property, though there are a few–and some exciting newer ones gaining traction. Like straw bales. And wood fiber insulation (our partner Bensonwood will be using this wood fiber insulation for the new part of the house, in addition to dense packed cellulose)2.

2. Manages moisture. Cellulose reversibly adsorbs water vapor under humid conditions, and releases water vapor when humidity decreases. Managing water vapor in a home to prevent inappropriate condensation and subsequent mold growth and rot –especially in “tight” homes that are well airsealed and insulated–is a major issue. Cellulose helps do so by serving as a “vapor buffer” within wall and roof assemblies.

3. Does not contain toxic volatile chemicals that off-gas for days, weeks, or longer. Spray foam…not so much. There is a reason spray foam installers ask homeowners to remove themselves and their pets for 24 hours after spray foam installation. he green building community has PLENTY of reasons to want to avoid foam in most all applications. You could start with this relatively recent article from VT Digger if you want to know more. 

4. Helps block fire spread. This is counterintuitive (paper burns after all!), but the borate added to cellulose insulation acts as a fire retardant, in addition to inhibiting mold growth and repelling rodents and insects. Check out this dramatic demo to see just how well cellulose insulation resists ignition and dramatically slows heat transfer.

5. Attenuates sound. I love my neighbors. I’ve come to recognize the sound of each of their cars, and notice the rhythm of their daily routines when they drive by the house. We don’t get much in the way of traffic, at least outside of leaf peeping season, so one tends to notice. But the morning after we insulated the wall facing the road, all was quiet. No 6 AM truck heading off for a busy work day. No 8:45 AM run to town. No post office van speeding by late in the afternoon. I first thought I had just been distracted, but then realized just how much quieter the house was. Guess I will have to set my alarm for 6 AM from now on!

6. Comparatively inexpensive.  Self explanatory. 

Yay cellulose3!

The process

To get the cellulose where it needs to be, cellulose bales go into a machine with two big augurs that break up the bales into a “fluff” which is then blown through long hoses into the wall and roof cavities. For loose fill/semi-dense applications (like the roof), this can go very quickly. Indeed, with Skye and Dylan up on the roof with the hoses, Nell and I were filling the hoppers on the two machines at a quick pace!  When dense packing (to create a self supporting vertical stack of cellulose, like in walls, so that it doesn’t settle over time) smaller hoses are used at the business end, and the mix is adjusted to provide more air/less material. The process slow downs a lot at the machine end when dense packing. This leaves time for the people filling the hoppers to do things like write blog posts. 

The jacket

The jacket (wall insulation) is at least 12 inches of cellulose.  “At least” because the southward lean of the original house around which we built a straight level and plumb structure means that the top of the north gable end and the bottom of the south gable end are significantly further than 12 inches from the new outside wall. Plus, Ed added 14 inches minimum on the north gable end (versus 12 to the south) for architectural reasons. This all means that the insulation jacket ranges in thickness from 12 inches at a minimum (south wall, bottom) to as much 25 inches (north end, top) on the gable ends. The eave ends (east and west) are considerably less variable, and accommodate pretty close to 12 inches of insulation everywhere. For those who like to talk about insulation in R-values (a measure of resistance to heat transfer), the eave end walls are roughly R-44 throughout, whereas the gable end walls range from at least R-44 to as much as R-91. Wall insulation target levels by Vermont code is R-20. 

The hat

Given the propensity of heat to rise, the hat (roof insulation) warrants a greater thickness than the walls. In our case, insulation depth is about 20 inches at the eaves and 30 inches at the peak. This variation is because we chose to build a steeper roof over the top of the original roof, so the distance between the original roof and the new roof deck grows from eave to ridge. The corresponding R-value is about R-62 at the eaves and R-93 at the ridge. Sloped roof insulation target levels by Vermont code is R-49. 

The sudden weight gain

As of this writing (about two days from completion of insulation), the original house had received 7,125 pounds of cellulose insulation in the roof, and 2,600 pounds in the two completed walls (west and south). When I first reflected on the roof number, it occurred to me that we’d just added a weight equivalent to two RAV4s (the car I drive). Two of my cars plopped (okay, melted down and evenly distributed) onto a 240+ year old timber frame. 

The structural engineer, who knows much more than me about such matters, was perfectly happy with this plan, as were Ed and Michael. And I trust them! Of course I do.

But just to take the edge off, I did a little internet sleuthing. 

Turns out, 7,125 pounds is roughly the equivalent of about 12 inches of damp snow on this roof.   That was quite reassuring, as we’ve seen twice as much on this roof on any given winter, and I am sure the Chaplins, Forbushes, Eastmans and Copelands, George and Mary and their descendants saw plenty more in their time! 

But you know what was even better than that feeling of relief?

The feeling inside the house.

Before we insulated, there were nights when our bedroom—which is now the living room since we’re renovating the upstairs–would get into the low-40s at night. Not quite in equilibrium with the outside, but close. Of course, the room really only had three walls (the fourth being two sheets of plastic), and we didn’t have heat directly in that room since we removed the fireplace chimney. Let’s just say it was brisk, and getting out from under the covers required a deep breath before jumping up to greet the day!

We still have a partial, uninsulated wall in the bedroom/living room as of this writing. However, with two of the three exterior walls insulated, and the roof fully insulated (except for the dormers), interior comfort is transformed. 

Where previously outside temperatures in the low 20s would drive the bedroom down to the low 40s, it is now easily holding 60 degrees when the thermostat (located in the dining room, on the other side of the house, and closest to the heat source) is set to 57. And the upstairs bathroom, in which I sometimes wondered whether I would find a frozen toilet bowl to greet me after a cold night, has matched the thermostat setting quite nicely. And that is without a direct heat source upstairs. 

I even caught myself walking around in a t-shirt on a recent 13 degree morning, and passive solar heat gains from the south and west windows in the living room/bedroom mean that we can get into the mid-60s with that same 57 degree thermostat setting.

I’m sure my southern relatives will be shivering just thinking about these temperatures…but we find it extremely cozy already. 

All this relative warmth in a house without a structurally complete exterior wall on one side, insulation in the dormers, or higher performing windows and door. So, we’ve plenty of fossil fuel free thermal comfort and efficiency upside to come!  

A few other morsels

1. We’ve completed framing the floor system for the addition, and have “put that to bed” until Bensonwood will arrive to assemble the addition on top of that floor system–very soon!

2. The Bensonwood team has begun assembling the elements of the addition as of this writing. We are looking forward to our visit to Bensonwood to see our walls and roof panels being built!

3. What distracted me from finishing the blog today.

It wasn’t the conference. I’d attended the annual NESEA conference for a few years, and the agenda was once again dynamic, educational, and inspirational. It had a great lineup of topics on sustainable building, building science, embodied carbon, renewable energy deployment, workforce development and diversity, and so much more.  

The issue was I had missed lunch, and I was hungry.  

When I’m hungry, small concerns can occupy a disproportionate amount of headspace.  The feeling is a bit like how I imagine “hangry” to be (my family says I am prone to this, but they’re wrong). The feeling I’m describing is better termed “hanxious”. At that moment, the “hanxiety” I was feeling was about our project timeline. 

It was clear by this point that the Snowdog team–mighty to be sure, and also pretty small–had taken on a big challenge with our project.

In reality, it is two projects: (1) an energy retrofit of an 18th Century home, and (2) a single story two-bedroom house with attached garage and loft to be added on to the aforementioned 18th Century home.  Project 1 consumed nearly all of our time and effort to that point: working to repair rot, prep the foundation of the existing house for the planned “fatting out” of the walls and roof, tilting in a gable end, constructing a straight, level and plumb exoskeleton over the original house, and so much more. 

My “hanxious” mind was saying “At the rate we are moving we won’t be done until 2030! We haven’t even started to nail a single piece of wood in place for the addition! The foundation for the addition, poured almost six months ago, looks the same as it did on day 1….and it is laughing at me!”  

To compound the issue, we were at the front end of the relatively short Vermont building season, and efforts to find subcontractors to do the framing for the addition were not proving fruitful. That was a fact, not low blood sugar-induced exaggeration.

There was only one thing to do.  I went to find a snack in the exhibitor hall.

After scoring a cookie (oatmeal raisin, if memory serves), and cup of tea, I was rushing off to the next talk when a presentation in the exhibitor hall caught my eye. 

The presenters were showing photos of high performance windows (much like the Sublime windows I had seen at, and then purchased after, a prior NESEA conference), being installed into a fully insulated wall assembly. What surprised me was the window installation was happening in a climate-controlled warehouse. 

I stopped and listened to them describe their process for offsite construction. I had heard of “prefab” before, but this sounded different than some of the associations I had with that term. The presenters were using phrases like “achieving passive house standards of airtightness and insulation”, “aiming for low embodied carbon”, “minimizing waste, and supporting sustainable forestry practices ”, “fully enabling net zero, electrified homes, even in northern climes”. 

My key takeaway was that they could do much of the construction of a home–a net-zero ready home, for owners that cared about embodied carbon, waste reduction and safe building materials–at a very high level of precision and quality, in the controlled environment of their indoor facility. The house is constructed as a series of large panels of wall, roof and floor assemblies. The panels are then brought to the site, connected to each other and the prepared foundation in just the right order, and voilà: a fully weathered in, well airsealed, well insulated house, ready for the final exterior cladding and interior mechanical and finish work! 

My blood sugar was rising, thanks to the cookie.  And my enthusiasm for what the offsite construction approach could mean for our project was rising as well.

There were many questions to be answered, and diligence to be done. But…what if we could partner with this group? That would mean Snowdog could focus the building season largely on getting the original house all weathered in and insulated, while the other team implemented Ed’s architectural vision for the addition. And then, at the right time (i.e.--hopefully any time before there was three feet of snow on the ground!), the building envelope for the addition could be finished on site, bringing together the newly retrofitted original house and the new addition. That would be awesome! It could address so many of my concerns, some of which, I will admit, had been there for a while…even when I wasn’t “hanxious”. 

So, I grabbed a business card, and later that day gave Ed and Michael a call to start the process of exploration. The initial list of questions:

1. Would they be able to work with Ed’s drawings, or do they require you to use a design they have created?

2. While the addition is essentially a stand-alone house abutting the original house, it needs to be perfectly tied into the original house and have the same architectural aesthetic. Floor levels, window heights, roof lines, trim details, etc. all need to line up perfectly so the resulting house is one home. Would they be willing, and could they, achieve that level of precision?

3. We’d already poured a 6-inch foundation wall, which is thinner than typical, and we didn’t have a concrete slab under any of the living areas in the addition. These were done to minimize concrete use, a major contributor to the embodied carbon of a new build (covered here). Would they be willing to adapt to thinner foundation walls and our unconventional floor system? 

4. Could they achieve our targeted level of performance, while doing all of the above?

5. Would they truly support our goals of minimizing embodied carbon? 

6. Did we feel aligned on values?

7. Would they fit the budget?

The short version: the answers to these questions were “yes”.

And since midsummer, we have been thoroughly delighted to be teamed up with the folks at the company in question: Bensonwood. I will have more to share about Bensonwood, their capabilities and process, and our experience, in other posts.   

But for now, let me say that every time I look out at the foundation, instead of feeling anxiety, I feel great. Because I know that the Bensonwood team is hard at work translating Ed’s original design for the addition into a fully enabled offsite construction plan.

In less than two months from the date of this post, the Bensonwood installation crew is scheduled to arrive on site to do the finish assembly for the addition. Construction inside their facility begins in a few weeks.  They expect that within two weeks of their arrival, we will all step back and admire a fully weathered in building envelope for the unified house.

Sometimes, the search for a cookie can lead to surprising outcomes!

A few other morsels

1. The exoskeleton has now been covered in sheathing and a new roof system, and is nearly ready for insulation and window/door installation!

2. We’ve begun inside work on the existing house on rainy days (unlike Bensonwood, we can’t do work on the building exterior when it pours, which has happened a lot the last few months—sometimes disastrously so). The inside work involves moving the upstairs bathroom and renovating the bedrooms. In a prior post, I mentioned that the rafters of the existing house above one bedroom had the names of two prior owners painted on them, alongside the years they replaced the roof–”Copeland, 1929” and “Millard, 1991”.  We were delighted to discover another piece of “roof structure graffiti” during demolition, this one on a rafter tie in that same room. We plan to vault the ceilings in this bedroom to expose the original rafters and ties, leaving some house history on display.  

3. The beauty of this setting never ceases to inspire. The other day, the sun and rain–and physics–conspired to create a full spectrum rainbow over the house site at the end of a full work day. It restored me, physically and mentally. 

The basic elements of that timber frame are as follows: Large 8 inch by 10 inch (roughly) hand hewed beams (horizontal pieces) are set in a rectangle on top of the stacked fieldstone foundation. Posts (the vertical pieces) of just about the same dimension project up from the corners of that rectangle and some key spots on the sides of that rectangle, to meet a second rectangle of beams that form the top of the wall system. There is bracing, a diagonal piece of wood running from post to beam, at each top corner where a post and beam meet. Rafters that form the roof frame are set into the big beams. There are other beams spanning the middle of the building–and that makes up the “big bones” of the house, after which the “smaller bones” (floor and ceiling joists, wall studs, and the like) are added to round it out.

And voila, a house skeleton! 

When we first moved into the house, the original framing was mostly hidden from view, tucked away neatly inside plastered walls, cased inside painted boards, and under floors/ceilings.  But, like so many things on this journey, a clearer picture emerged with time…and careful deconstruction. And the more we reveal of the original handiwork of Moses and Aaron–the more we peel back the coverings to get to the original timber frame–the more we love it. 

We love it for its look–a warm grey/brown patina on wood from trees that started growing well over 300 years ago. 

We love it for the feel as we run our hands along the contours of a hand hewn beam, the skill and effort evident in each little rise, fall and catch along the length. 

Stare at one of those beams long enough, and the brain starts to add in other sensory experiences, imagined or otherwise. 

Sounds from 240 years ago. The rich tones emanating from a huge log as the tool used to make the beam, most likely an adze, strikes over and over again. Banter between friends as they chisel away to make the mortice and tenon joints. Grunts and curses as Moses and Aaron hoist the beams into position. 

Sounds and smells from today.  It is easy to tell when someone is having a go at one of the old timbers of the original house, whether to repair a rotten section or thread a wire or piping. The sound is the first clue--the song of the saw as it labors to cut through wood with such a tight grain is a tune as distinct from the usual “modern conventional lumber” song as heavy metal is from light jazz. The smell follows up the sound. A lovely, sweet smell of heated old timber wood, impossible to describe without sounding like a pretentious wine connoisseur. 

If you’ve been keeping track of the senses up to now…then, no, I haven’t tasted it. Carpenter ants clearly have, in some places where the wood got wet and stayed so for extended periods. Seems they, and the fungi that do their part to break down trees, found it delicious. We’ve since cleaned all that out decay, the repairs are mostly done (I’ve said that before!), and we’re looking ahead.

Given our enthusiasm for the old timber frame, it should be no surprise that we plan to leave some of it exposed when the renovations are done. We also plan to reintroduce some exposed timber elements from the original deconstruction of the 1830s addition when we add back the addition of the 2020s. More on that in other posts (pun intended). 

Even as we’ve been working out where and how to expose some of the frame of the original building, we have been building another frame that is exterior to the sheathing of the original house—an exoskeleton!  In contrast to the original framing, we plan to bury this new skeleton completely.  

There were two primary reasons to add exterior framing:

1.     The original framing, while strong and beautiful, was quite askew. The frame racks to the south anywhere from 6 to 11.5 inches (which led to a fun exercise to pull in a gable end wall, as I described in Part 1 of this series). As we’ve worked our way around the house, we’ve also come to appreciate that it also sinks at least 4 inches from the northwest to the southwest corner, and rises again from the southwest corner to the southeast corner. It is, as the Snowdog team likes to say, “cattywumpus”.  Attaching a straight, level and plumb exterior of the new addition to a house that is…well…cattywumpus, would be both very challenging and leave the resulting integrated structure looking more than a little strange.

2.     We wanted the room to add significant amounts of insulation. The walls were pretty much empty when we started, and the roof had very little insulation as well. Yes, it was as drafty, cold and expensive to heat as you are imagining it might be. And while we could have chosen to fatten the walls and roof to the inside to add room for lots of insulation, that (1) wouldn’t correct all the wonkiness just described, (2) would shrink the living space of the house, which we didn’t want to do, and (3) would be very disruptive to daily living as we did construction. 

The approach to create the new framing around the outside of the house was described previously.  In brief, it involved using I-Joists (aka, TJIs) as the main framing element to frame new walls and a roof, the rafters for which hang from a newly installed ridge beam above the old roof. 

Easy enough to say. But the work was painstaking.

This was mainly because we needed to create a straight, level and plumb frame around the aforementioned cattywumpus frame. No shade on Moses here.  Two and a half centuries will do that to any frame. My roughly half century old personal frame engenders comments about not being exactly what it once was every now and again as well (though I’ve yet to be called “cattywumpus”). 

After many custom measurements, non-traditional angle cuts, lots of shimming, and many other adaptive techniques to bridge between old and new, the Snowdog team has gotten to the end of the majority of the rough framing phase for the existing house. This an exciting milestone! 

The completion of this phase leaves us poised to begin the sheathing work, after which we can frame and add in the windows/doors, and then insulate. And in so doing, we will have the hat and jacket on the existing house for winter. And we will have buried the new exoskeleton, making it a proper skeleton once more!

For those following closely, you may be wondering:

1. What is the plan to build the addition that will go on to the back of the existing house, the foundation for which was poured a fairly long time ago?

2. Considering the time it has taken to get from the start to this milestone, especially as there doesn’t seem to be any progress on the addition, won’t it be another few years (or decades?) to complete this project?

Well, we have a plan, and a collaborator I’ve yet to introduce, that will go a long way towards addressing both of those questions.

I look forward to sharing that soon.  

Then the rains came. And came. The rivers swelled, then overflowed. Sometimes, they failed to follow the turns they do in gentler times, and roared straight through homes.  Bridges and roads washed out. Power and internet lines came down. The Reading Historical Society captured some photos to show what things were like here in Reading. In towns nearby, hillsides gave way and washed into town centers, while still other downtowns filled with feet of water, even as there was worry that upriver dams might overflow and unleash an even more destructive torrent of water. All of that devastation from a storm that didn’t even get a name. 

For some, the loss was nearly complete. 

For others, like us, the effects on property were relatively minor, even as we felt for those who lost so much in our community and beyond. 

Nature seemed capricious that day.  And immensely powerful. But we knew that.

Two weeks out, some other things are just as obvious: 

1. The community of Reading is full of caring and hard working people who come together in a time of adversity. Folks with excavators moving debris and repairing roads–assisting our ever diligent highway crew, the work of our fire department and other responders, volunteers helping muck out basements or sort through flooded personal effects, community dinners, medicines and food delivered to those who needed it, fundraisers organized by local businesses and community service organizations, and so much more. From what I can tell, acts like these are occurring all across the affected areas of the state. They reaffirm the best of what community, and humanity, is all about. 

2. “100 year” storms aren’t 100 year storms anymore.  Irene, the last storm of similar magnitude in this area, was just over a decade ago.  As I’ve written a bit about previously, we must prepare — as individuals, as a community, and as a society—for the reality of more frequent, severe storms. This will need to include mitigation efforts to minimize the worst effects of intense rainfall, ever more effective crisis response when disaster does strike, and ongoing support systems for those most deeply affected. 

3. Support will be needed for some time to come. The road back is going to be long. The area has continued to get bouts of heavy rainfall since, causing additional damage, and weighing on the psyche. And, as is so often the case, those with the fewest resources will have the toughest time of it. I hope that you will keep in mind those who have been so affected by these recent floods.

   If you’d like to learn more about what some Vermont organizations are doing to support those affected, both in the crisis response and rebuilding phases, as well as to plan for longer term resilience, there is some good information at the Vermont Community Foundation site. The Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont also has information about their work supporting farmers who play such a vital role in the local food systems in Vermont, and who have suffered significant crop loss as a consequence of the rainfall. These links include information on how to make a donation to support various flood relief efforts, should you be so moved to do so. 

Thank you as always for reading, and I look forward to sharing that construction update with you soon. Stay safe, and be well!

It was nestled amongst other items that were likely cleared out of the house to prepare it for showing.  As Cornell grads ourselves, it caught the attention of my wife and I when we first looked at the property with our realtor, Mary.  We didn’t know who the person was that was named on the diploma, granted on “...the 13th Day of June, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twelve”. But we enjoyed the suggestion of an overlap in space, if not time, with someone connected to the house. And then we moved on with the rest of the tour.

Amongst the many delights of stepping into the ownership lineage of a house that is well into its third century is the (re)discovery of some of the stories of the lives of those who came before. 

We’ve enjoyed learning something about the periods when Moses and Aaron built the original house in 1782 and the Chaplin family time, through the Forbush family (1806-1865), the Eastman family (1866-1920), and a few “brief” ownership stints from 1920-1939, with the Copeland family having owned it longest in that period(1922-1936).  My attempt to capture some sense of those stories, and references to the historical records I drew upon, can be found here. 

The timeline begs the question: what of the period between 1939 until we purchased the property in 2020? 

That story starts with the person named on that Cornell diploma, and equally important, with the woman he fell in love with and married. 

Before I get into that, a bit of context. And gratitude. 

Ginny and Sally

It isn’t always true, but in this case it very much is: one of the other joys of stepping into the ownership lineage of a house that is well into its third century is the opportunity to meet the people who have been stewards of the property prior to your tenure. 

The sisters from whom we bought the house, Ginny and Sally, have been gracious and kind from the first time we met while transitioning the property. Their willingness to answer questions, share stories and information, and provide words of encouragement, has been a gift. I strongly believed that any telling of the story of their family’s time on the property would be a collaboration, and mostly in their own words.  True to form, when I approached them on this idea, they agreed.  

The stories they shared, drawn from both conversations and written answers to questions they provided, are below. I’m very grateful for their willingness to share. 

Mary and George

The name on the 1912 Cornell diploma is George Taber Ashton. The woman George married, Mary, is the family connection between Ginny and Sally and the property in Reading. 

Mary was Ginny and Sally’s great-great-aunt. She was born in Bavaria in the late 1800s, and met George in Buffalo, NY–where she was a piano teacher and concert pianist, and he a successful insurance salesman.  They apparently shared many interests in music, theater, literature and European travel.  It was Mary’s Bavarian history that brought them to Reading, as the look of the area reminded her of where she had grown up. 

After purchasing the property in 1939, it became their seasonal residence from May to October. George and Mary never had children of their own, though they were very close with Mary’s grand-niece, Dorothy (Ginny and Sally’s mother), who would often spend time with them in Vermont. Mary passed away in the early 1950s, and Dorothy, her husband Norman, and their daughters Ginny and Sally, spent time with ”Uncle George” every August, and during Memorial Days and Columbus Days to open and close the house. 

George ultimately passed the house on to Dorothy, and Dorothy to her daughters.  “Our mother was really like a daughter to Uncle George, and he was very much a part of our lives and like a grandfather to us.  He always sent us wonderful books and stuffed animals for our birthdays, and spent most Christmas times with us. He accompanied our family on road trips to Florida every year in a caravan.”

I first heard about George’s personality from a neighbor who stopped by one day while I was doing a bit of gardening and said “I can still see George driving around these roads, always so dapper, with his fine suits, thin mustache—always quick to smile and wave. Great guy. Great neighbor!” 

I asked Ginny and Sally for a bit more color on Uncle George, which confirmed and expanded our neighbor's recollection: “Although very successful, Uncle George was humble and never one to brag. He reminded us of an English gentleman with three piece suits and pocket watch...always meticulous. He did his calisthenics every day without exception, and was very precise and disciplined. He was also quiet, gentle, with a playful sense of humor, and a loving heart for children. Uncle George had a deal with us that we would get ten dollars if we could touch a chipmunk. There were many around the property at the time. Sadly we never succeeded.”  

They went on to share that George was an avid reader, with an excellent memory, who was able to recite long poems, much to their amazement.

“He had the pond put in as fire protection, and we swam in it almost every day. He would swim around the pond with his legs somehow sticking up in the air. And he liked to give a ride on his palm to some rather large frogs. He had always been athletic and learned to play tennis in his 60s from Norman and Dorothy, who were Buffalo city tennis champions. George was slender, very fit and energetic, and a serious competitor. He did like to do repairs around the house, and built the bulkhead on the side of the house. He was a true Renaissance man.”

George was also apparently an avid gardener. Ginny and Sally told me that he “tended his gardens with loving care.” He had a garden full of “Golden Glow, tiger lilies, phlox, iris, delphinium, peonies, mint, monkshood” and much more. We have been seeing lovely primroses pop up in the old garden this spring. Evidence of George’s spade?). The house was even a stop on the Reading house and garden tours in the late-’60’s/early 70’s. 

A true Renaissance man indeed! I’m sorry I never had the chance to meet him.

Dorothy, Norman and summers in Reading with the family

Of course, it wasn’t just the Cornell diploma we noticed when we first viewed the property. The beauty of the land that drew Mary’s eye was evident to us as well. As did the 1911 Steinway piano in the living room, which we now know was Mary’s, since relocated from the barn. 

There were also many lovely paintings of the house and surrounding areas, which we came to learn were Dorothy’s. She was clearly an accomplished painter. And having seen some of the photographs taken by Dorothy’s granddaughter Mary, it would seem the artistic talent is inherited (see below)!   

The piano and some of the paintings remain with the house, for which we are grateful, and will always be a nice remembrance of the original artist.

I wondered what summers in Vermont were like for Ginny and Sally while they were growing up, and it all sounded rather idyllic:  “Coming to the “House in the Hills” (which is what Uncle George called it) was a sanctuary for our family and friends.  A typical summer day would involve perhaps hiking on the land, playing croquet on the sloping back yard, reading, doing art projects (like painting al fresco in the fields or painting stones), doing grave rubbings, scenic rides on the back roads, swimming in the pond, playing tennis at the Woodstock Country Club or at the private clay court of our family friend. There used to be a small creek in the woods where we used to look for tadpoles and salamanders. Typically we went out to “luncheon” at a variety of inns. Without television as an option, we learned to enjoy other forms of entertainment. We would read aloud as a family group (often Sherlock Holmes), play dominoes or hearts and then listen to classical music. We had many croquet and hearts tournaments, complete with paper crowns listing the winners. On nights with a full moon we would often listen to the Moonlight Sonata, which was magical.”

Summers with their growing families also created many wonderful memories for Ginny and Sally. “The children enjoyed doing similar recreational activities as we had loved: hiking, games, swimming in the pond (now with a dock and little sand beach,) as well as the addition of a fire pit next to the pond. After all the activity of the day, home cooked meals with fresh local vegetables were shared together on the breezeway, complete with some of our mom’s favorite records playing in the background. Perhaps we would later get to see fireflies, always a treat.  Through the years, there were also many family friends’ visits, celebrations- birthdays, graduations etc., family reunions with everyone wearing matching printed t-shirts designed by the children, and 4th of Julys with the children marching around the back yard with sparklers as our mom played Sousa marches.” 

Taking our turn 

Ginny and Sally have been kind in sharing their enthusiasm for the work we have undertaken on the house/land, and offered some thoughts on what their mother might have said about this as well: “Our mother loved the serenity and beauty of the property and hoped that the land would remain intact in one piece. She would be so happy that the house is being enjoyed year round and being well cared for. She would also be glad that the new caretakers are people who are really interested in the history of the house, value the special beauty of the property, and enjoy the land so much. She would also be glad that you are trying to repurpose some of the materials in the original house (such as the wood from the breezeway) because you appreciate the historical aesthetic of the home.”

This house and land has had many families, chapters, and stories. The property has served many purposes, from before written history as native lands to the Western Abenaki, through a long stretch supporting a working farm life, to a summer retreat. The history is part of what makes this house and property special to us. 

The reminders surround us. George’s diploma now hangs in the den, alongside a picture of him as a boy (perhaps with his brother Herbert, another Cornell grad), and the photo of George and Mary, so obviously in love. On the other side of the room is the original survey, drawn up by Thomas Hammond, undoubtedly of the family for which the nearby hamlet of Hammondsville is named. The Forbush family handiwork is in the stairs and second story bedrooms, as well as all the wood from the addition they put on in the 1800s, which will find a new use in our planned addition. The Copeland name is painted on the rafter in the attic, acknowledging their roofing work from the 1920s. All this, set in the context of the original house, itself a testament to the work of Moses Chaplin and his friend Aaron Kimball.

And now, it is our turn. 

We will spend whatever time we are given making our own stories in this house. If we’re so fortunate, we’ll get to stay for a while.  

And then the story becomes one for others to create. 

Just as it should be. 

Michael said “Oh yes, I saved my Christmas tree!”

I’ve seen pine trees high up on steel buildings under construction before, but must admit I had not given these sightings much thought. I suppose my subconscious chalked it up to an abundant, and seemingly year round, sense of holiday spirit amongst the crew?

I took that exchange between Michael and Lee as an opportunity to learn a bit more about the “topping out” tradition.

Some further digging revealed that the practice of commemorating placement of the last/highest structural beam in the building – often with a fir tree placed on said beam—may have originated in Scandinavia. There are suggestions that the original tradition served dual purposes, practical and mystical.  

The practical: the time it took the pine tree to dry out and drop its needles would be a convenient signal for when the timber frame had dried sufficiently to enable the framing to be enclosed. 

The mystical: the tree served as an homage to the spirits that may have been displaced by the felling of the trees for the construction of said structure.

Regardless of the exact history and motivations, “topping out” is a good time to pause and have a bit of a celebration.

This article is a delightful accounting of this tradition, and the various forms it takes around the world.  I am particular to the “pannenbier” tradition of the Dutch, who fly a flag on the beam in question, and won’t take it down until the one paying the bills offers free beer to all the workers.

The path to the top

Putting a “hat” on the house that Moses built involves framing and insulating a new roof that will sit over the existing roof. The rafters framing the new roof will hang from a new ridge beam set over the existing roof peak. This beam will be the highest structural beam in the project (see where this is heading?).

Before the beam could be set, posts needed to be erected to support it. Which is exactly what was done, once the preparatory work of shoring up the foundation and tilting the gable end was completed. 

There is one post at the north gable end, one at the south gable end, and one in the middle. 

The middle post is not truly in the middle (closer to the north end). And it isn’t one post.

It is two shorter pieces. The upper part drops through the existing roof to the top of a (huge!) structural beam that spans the building and sits at the height of the first floor ceiling. This hand-hewed beam was no doubt set by Moses and Aaron when they first built the house in the early 1780s. The lower part of the middle post picks up at the bottom of that same (huge!) structural beam and carries the weight from the top post down to the basement. 

With the posts set, and after: (1) some pauses due to weather and the early onset of mud season, (2) a delay in getting a crane (one broke just before coming to our job, and a different operator had to be found), and (3) some work to do on the walls (more on that later), a weather and equipment window opened to set the beam. 

Once the crane arrived, the job was to get the roughly 42 foot long, 1500 pound ridge beam up two stories and dropped neatly into the brackets set at the top of the three posts on which we hope it will rest for a very, very long time. 

The process went smoothly, in large part due to the good planning, steady hand and cool head of Dylan. Michael helped out quite a bit, including helping to get things plumb and level at altitude. Spencer, the crane operator from Hutch Crane Service, did his job with great care as well.

I took pictures. 

With the beam secured in its forever home, the tree was dropped in place, and Modelos were handed out alongside compliments on a job well done. I hope the Dutch would be proud of our version of “pannenbier”. 

Growing in all directions

All the pictures of the house in this post reveal something else newly added to the original house: I-joists (aka, TJIs) vertically mounted on the exterior walls. In the same way that the expanded roof will be the “hat” for the existing house, the TJIs on the walls are a critical part of the framing for the “jacket”. After the wall TJIs are covered with sheathing, there will be a 12 inch space between the original sheathing and the outside of the added TJIs, into which cellulose insulation will be dense packed. That will complete the “jacket”.

But before sheathing and insulating the walls, we will frame the roof, and build the rough openings for the new windows that will eventually be set into the newly thickened walls.

And just to stretch the winter clothing metaphor to the limit, the existing house will also eventually get some “winter boots” (i.e.—an insulated and waterproofed basement).  

But that’s another story. 

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The southward lean of the house wasn’t always that way, I’d guess. Moses probably had it fairly plumb to start. 

The lean certainly wasn’t noticeable to us when we first viewed the house, or even as we started to settle in. But clues emerged:

The window shades upstairs on the north wall lean away from the wall an inch or two at the bottom when fully extended. 

When standing in the upstairs bedroom on the south, if you stand close to the window, you get a sense you are leaning over the side yard.

The first floor corner posts looked a little tilted, and uniformly to the south. 

But these were features that were easy to notice briefly, and then just as quickly forget about and get on with the day. 

Until we couldn’t.

In a prior post, I described the unexpectedly involved effort to get concrete piers tied into the original fieldstone on the gable ends (north and south) of the original structure. The piers are there to help support the weight of the new roof, which will be built over the existing roof. The space between the new roof decking and the prior roof decking will be insulated; this will be the new “hat” for the building.  

In order to support the new roof ridge beam, the posts on the gable ends (and one in the middle of the house) will run straight down from the new roof ridge beam to rest on the piers. 

The key word in the last sentence for our purposes is “straight”. 

Some readers may already see the problem. 

When Dylan and Skye dropped a plumb line (mimicking the location of the eventual post) straight down to the ground from the top of the current roof ridge on the south gable end, it landed about 6 inches off the pier. Decidedly not the plan. Topsoil makes a lousy support for a roof ridge beam. 

It also revealed that the house leans well over a foot from bottom to top, and our pier was too small to accommodate that drift. 

This issue was discovered on a Friday. We ended the work week with the two most immediately obvious options in mind, neither of which sounded great to anyone:

1. Try to tilt the whole house back northward, with various machines at our disposal. This was full of risk—plenty of opportunity for interior plaster damage, and perhaps more catastrophic effects. Tilting a 240 year old structure is asking for trouble. 

2. Pour a bigger pier. A decidedly less risky option, but would use more concrete (which we are trying to avoid), excavation, and time. 

Michael came back the following week with a much better idea. Coming up with creative solutions to challenges after a little time to ruminate is one of Michael’s superpowers. 

“Hey Ed and Brian, I was thinking…I know we don’t really want to try and til the whole house northward.  But what if we just tilt the second story gable end wall? That ought to pull the post back far enough to land on the pier, since most of the “lean” is in the second story. And since the house doesn’t currently have a ridge beam in the roof, that means we only have to push in the second story exterior wall and one set of rafters.”

Tilt the house? Nope. 

Tilt the wall? Yep. 

Wall tilt it was!

Dylan and Skye separated the two rafters on the south gable end from the roof decking so the rafters could move inward. And they cut out a continuous section of drywall from the ceiling and kneewall of the south bedroom near the gable end so that the exterior wall could move inward without resistance from the drywall.

With the prep work done, the actual tilting went very quickly. I was 45 minutes late to the show one morning, and by the time I got there, the deed was done. Some clever roping/winch work, and a few whacks, did the trick (see Dylan’s comments in the comments section for some great details, and a link to the video of the tilt in action)!

The post will now land perfectly onto the pier when it comes time to put the new hat on the house. 

But before the hat goes on, the new “jacket” needs to be framed. This involves fattening the walls to the exterior, and then insulating the space between the old and new sheathing. 

More on that in Part 2.

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Something old, something new:  I mentioned previously an old apple tree out behind the barn that gives us some lovely apples that are not quite exactly like anything else we’ve tasted. We wondered about its provenance, especially since there is record of Moses and his friend Aaron bringing apple trees from Cornish, NH in the late 1700s. 

I sent off leaves from this tree (which I named Foundation, given its proximity to an old foundation) to Cameron Peace, a professor at Washington State University who runs the Washington Tree Fruit Genotyping Laboratory.  Amongst other things, the genetic data his lab generates can help uncover the lineage of a tree.  Here is an excerpt from Cameron’s recent communication about the tree in question:

“Not matching identity to anything in our current dataset. So far, its parents have not been detected either (although there is still the chance it will have such a connection when a colleague gets back to me with results of comparisons with his dataset). Foundation appears to be at least two generational steps from everything else, and closest to Esopus Spitzenburg, other such children of Reinette Franche, and some other old American cultivars, placing it in an early stratum of American germplasm.

So, results are that you have something unique and old.”

Indeed we do. 

It was a lovely Christmas present.

I should admit that the material has a few drawbacks, notably: (1) the application method is very non-targeted, so it gets on every exposed exterior surface, and significant worksite cleanup is necessary after each application (2) the moisture content is EXTREMELY high, and (3) it loses its structural integrity as temperatures rise. 

That said, the snowfall is beautiful.  And very much welcomed in this season. 

Fortunately, significant snowfall held off long enough that the team building the foundation for the addition were able to finish all the work that needed to happen prior to framing, which will happen in the spring.   

Foundation work came in five major steps, not counting the initial excavation: (1) forming and pouring the footings, (2) forming and pouring the stem walls and piers on which the structural elements for the building will rest, (3) installing the foundation drainage system, (4) insulating in areas where the footings will be a bit shallow relative to frost line, and (5) installing below grade plumbing (waste pipes), and then backfilling the entire area. This was a coordinated effort between Lucas’s team on concrete work, Bill (with some assistance from Nate, Greg and Jason of JT Dow Services) on excavation, drainage and backfilling, plumbing work by Travis and Josh at Legacy Plumbing, and the Snowdog team for insulation and general support. 

There are a few noteworthy aspects of this portion of the build relating to both carbon pollution minimization during the build, and future resilience of the structure in a world warmer than it is today.  

A bit more on a changing world before discussing the foundation

The world is warming. The warming is driven by carbon pollution created by humans, mainly from the process of extracting and burning the remains of dead dinosaurs (and ancient plants, and other organic matter) to make energy.  

The (grossly oversimplified) essential work we have before us as a global community is to: (1) stop burning dinosaurs to power our lives, and transition exclusively to non-polluting forms of energy as soon as possible, and (2) get ready for a warmer world.  

It is encouraging that the scientific community appears to be coalescing around the notion that with the actions planned for and increasingly being taken globally, the absolute worst scenarios (4-5 degrees Celsius of warming, which would cause the level of change imagined in movies like Mad Max) are increasingly unlikely (phew!). That said, we’ve passed by 1 degree already, 1.5 degrees warming is pretty much guaranteed at this point (likely by 2030), and most scientists agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2022 report summarized here) that it will take a very concerted effort over the coming decade or so to limit warming to 2 degrees. 

So, while we must work as hard and fast as possible to get to net zero carbon pollution, we also need to plan for the world to be, so that we can adapt and be resilient in the face of it. 

There are now publicly available, science-based, predictive models for how the warming will uniquely affect average weather patterns for different regions of the world.  We have used two such sites, Probable Futures (very user friendly, fewer models) and Climate Wizard (less user friendly, more models), to get a better sense of what the trends might look like in this specific region of VT at different levels of warming. 

The key takeaways?

It will be wetter. The proportion of that precipitation that will fall as rain versus snow will increase. And the rain will come down in heavier downpours (warmer air holds more moisture). 

It will be hotter.  And we will have more humid days over 90 degrees. 

These are not a surprise. For those of us with enough years behind us, we can already see these trends here in New England, just as others around the world are seeing their own region-specific changes (less snow, more rains/flooding, less rain/more fires, etc.). 

But what does this mean for the foundation of one building in Reading, VT?

The house that Moses Chaplin built sits at the bottom of a big, forested hill.  As discussed previously, his site choice was likely deliberate, and the benefits of that choice has revealed itself over time. Another benefit to add to the list: the forest on that steep hillside buffers the flow of surface water coming off the hill during rain events quite nicely. 

That said, the more severe and frequent the deluges, the greater the need for systems to manage surface water. We know from Bill (our neighbor, excavator operator, and local historian, amongst other talents!) that during tropical storm Irene, the swale at the base of the hill did its job to divert much of the water off to the south around the house. The rush of water overwhelmed the culvert under the road, and ended up washing out the road at that point, but fortunately the water didn’t overtake the house. I can’t know what the basement might have looked like on August 28-29, 2011. But past experience, as well as future predictions, suggest that managing surface water for extreme rain events is a very good idea. Furthermore, the ground water on our site already gets fairly high during spring, as described in this post. 

So, with all this in mind, the architects at DiMella Shaffer and Wagner Hodgson, along with Bill and Jason, have planned a new swale and curtain drain system at the base of the hill east of the house to catch and divert water from the hill to go around (rather than through!) the new house footprint. In addition, footing drains run all along the foundation, and there are pipes that transect the area between the stem walls to allow water to pass through.

You may have noticed in the photos above that we backfilled between the foundation walls on the inside, as opposed to creating a basement. We left just enough space to accommodate an insulated flooring system that will hang from the stem walls. 

Why no basement? 

First, we don’t need any more basement space than what is under the original structure. We’ve plenty of storage and equipment space in the house as designed. 

Second, basements are a challenge to keep totally dry. But that can be solved. 

Third, as discussed in prior posts here and here, one of our major targets for reducing carbon pollution associated with material use is concrete. We used 6-inch stem walls (as opposed to the more typical 8 inches) for just that reason. In addition, no basement means no need for a concrete slab over the square footage of the living area of the addition.  We will be pouring a slab just for the garage in the spring.

For now, we have the foundation all in and tucked away for winter. The tops of the walls suggest the house that is to be, and is fun for the imagination.

But the building will wait until next season. 

Or, by this account, six Vermont seasons from now; “Actual Spring”. 

Meanwhile, we have now turned our attention fully to the original structure, and the goal of making that as snug as possible, as soon as possible. 

More on that in the next post. 

And the low point of the build, insofar as the mass of the house recently got as low as it is expected to be during this project. 

Which means we are moving into the “adding back” to the original ~30’X40’ house that Moses Chaplin built, including the second floor that the Forbush family added in the 1800s. It is an exciting inflection point!

The fall colors provide a spectacular backdrop to the work. The trees, seemingly ablaze in the fall sunlight, are striking enough that just about every day someone on the job site comments on them. 

The brilliant leaves, and temperatures regularly dipping into the 30s at night, also serve as a reminder that snow (and hard freezes) is not far off. These signposts of seasonal transition keep the primary goal for the fall building season–getting the existing structure “snugged up” for winter–in sharp focus. 

We’re currently a ways away from “snug”, with the building now essentially being a timber frame structure with plaster walls on the inside, with four inches of uninsulated space covered only by board sheathing on the outside. The dining room wall was a notable exception to the structural state I just summarized, as it recently passed through a phase with no wall whatsoever—the Snowdog team has since remedied the situation admirably—we now have a framed wall where that hole is below! 

There remains a roof (mostly–and that is coming off), electricity, and running water. And heat from the fireplace insert. Flannel, down comforters and hats work just fine for now. 

But with no alternative heating source, less insulation than we had last winter…and shortening days, the race is on! 

Getting the building “snugged” up for winter means the following:

1. Finish repair of all the spots with rotten wood–most notably, the sill beams and the aforementioned dining room wall. Most of this is now done. If you look carefully at the picture above, you can see that the dowel/wood hardener approach discussed here worked really well to repair many of the partially rotted sill beams.

   

2. “Fat out” the walls (outward), and roof (upward), and then insulate the newly created space. We are basically putting a jacket and hat on the house. At risk of torturing the metaphor, next year we will put on leggings/socks when we insulate the basement. 

3. Frame up the porch that is to be added to the front of the house, so that the roof on the house and porch can be tied together seamlessly.  

4. Replace the existing windows with triple glazed, air tight windows to be set into the fattened out walls.

5. Cover the walls and roof decking with a water resistant barrier, so that it can take the snow and rain until the exterior cladding is added next year. 

6. Work out a temporary heating system to get us through this winter (next year we will trade out any fossil fuel solutions for heat pumps and a wood stove backup)

Completing 1-6 will allow us to live in the house this winter. Plus, the work of Bill, Jason and their team on excavation/site prep, and Lucas and his team at Gendron Construction on getting the concrete1 foundation poured for the addition prior to winter, will leave us in a strong position to have a flying start in the spring.  

About “rock bottom”....

The plan to fatten and raise the pitch of the roof calls for a new ridge beam set up above the existing roof ridge, and supported by posts that run down to the ground; two of which will snug up against the existing house on the gable ends. In order to have them be stable, those posts need to rest on a concrete pier that extends below the frost line. Easy enough–excavate two fairly small (2’ X 3’) holes so that the pier can be formed up against the existing foundation and tied into it, and we’re all set! 

“All set”, except for the fact that the original foundation of this house is fieldstones stacked on top of each other with no mortar, which means three things relevant to pouring a pier that hugs the foundation (and is structurally connected to it somehow):

1. the stones are irregularly shaped, and many stick out away from the house, so you can’t dig a hole close to the house for the pier without removing many stones

2. most of those stones are too small to find a way to easily connect the new concrete pier to the stones, which quickly became moot when we saw that….

3. when you remove one rock, because there is no mortar, other rocks start tumbling out, resulting in a hole in the foundation that grows exponentially with each stone you remove.

That last point is an exaggeration–it wasn’t exponential. But I assure you that when you are standing in a 6 foot deep hole, with the foundation falling down around you, neither the mathematics of hole size expansion, nor the physics that says the building really won’t collapse as that amount of foundation is removed, is of any comfort! 

We got it done by digging down to the bottom of the foundation (and then some), removing the stone, and then the concrete team formed and poured a pier, as well as a new section of foundation wall, that provides nice landing spots for the posts that will support the roof. 

Now, we are truly ready to start adding back to the building—let construction begin! 

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Aside from planning, the actual upgrading of the house that Moses Chaplin (and his friend Aaron) built, with the high level goals as summarized in a prior post, will occur in four phases: (1) selective deconstruction, (2) repair, (3) construction, and (4) finish work. 

My friends from the drug development world may particularly appreciate the “phases” analogy; Phase 1 is preparatory/exploratory, Phase 2 lays the foundation for the “pivotal” work, and Phase 3 completion–the most expensive and time-intensive phase –is a major milestone. And much more remains to be done (Phase 4 work) at the end of Phase 3, if successful. 

But I am getting ahead of myself, because we are just nearing the end of Phase 1 in this project, which I am pleased to say has been a complete success to date!

The goals of “selective deconstruction”, and current status, are:

(1) remove the aluminum siding and clapboards from the entire structure so we could assess state of building and prepare for fattening the walls of original structure; done,

(2) remove completely the “L” extension that Rufus Forbush (the son) added onto the back of the original structure in the 1800s–as well as the frost walls that had been poured (in the 1970’s, we believe) to support that structure; done

(3) save as much material as possible from this deconstruction for future use in the renovated house (all that lovely post and beam wood and barn board sheathing, primarily, but also fixtures, doors, window sashes and the like); done, except for some parts of the original house

(4) remove asphalt shingles, chimney, windows, exterior doors from remaining (original) structure to enable installation of new triple-glazed windows, new exterior doors, standing seam metal roof– defer until repair is complete and time it so that existing building remains weathered in as long as possible.

(5) assess the status of the structure, identify areas for repair, before we turn to construction; ongoing…read on.

Okay, so what about that decay we found?

The rot in the beams came as no surprise, in hindsight. We’d had clues that conditions were right to cause rot when we first saw rotten sheathing and posts on the north side of the house when the clapboards came off.  That side of the house also had evidence of water infiltration from the roof and windows. 

To put it in perspective, the large 10X12 inch hand-hewed beams that sit atop the fieldstone foundation of the original house, have been in place for 240 years. Nearly two and a half centuries of rain, and snow melt, regularly soaking the lower beams at some spots (they are very close to grade in many areas). Also, being on the north side of the house, and shaded for many years by a large hemlock (now gone), is not conducive to drying. 

Under those conditions, even that marvelously dense old growth wood, that likely began its journey skyward in the late 16th Century, will eventually succumb.

To time.

To water.

To fungi, that digest and soften up the moist wood. 

And to the opportunistic insects, such as carpenter ants, that use that soft wood to make their nests. 

And succumb they did.

What was surprising was that it wasn’t worse! Even where we have seen rot, in almost all cases, well over half of the beam thickness was very much intact, making it possible to repair using a mixture of wood hardener and sawdust, which the Snowdog team has undertaken. 

There were a few places, however, where the beams are rotten right through and no longer tying the timber frame structure together. These are not to be ignored. The most noteworthy spot was that same pesky northeast corner, where the beams at the top and bottom of the first floor wall were rotten all the way through.

The rotten top and bottom beams at that corner had effects on the rest of the structure, including: (1) the main floor in the dining room sloped downward towards the rotten beam, as the floor joists that tied into that beam sagged along with the beam, (2) likely contributing to the leaning of the house towards the side away from where the beams were rotten through.

So, for important structural reasons, and to make the subsequent job of connecting the addition to the main house more straightforward, work is underway to repair and reconnect these beams–a key part of getting the structure ready for its next 240 years. When that work is done, it is on to construction (Phase 3)!  

The excitement is building!

….see what I did there?