Winter Building in New England (Part 2: Not Exactly Balmy Building)

Vol. 3, No. 5

Six calendar weeks.

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.

~15,000 pounds of house arriving at the site. It took 9 trucks of different sizes to get the house here.

First floor went up in just about a day!

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 loft apartment over the garage taking shape, with gable end and two dormers on.

Big beams CAN fly (with the aid of a crane)

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.

The roof dropping in from above!

It was great to have our buddy Julian come during the install! We put him to work (he loves to work—carpentry especially). Snow clearance was a big priority, because we were getting it just about every day of site work (when it wasn’t raining).

One last glimpse at the sky from our future bedroom at this angle–a roof panel was just about to drop in. The window at top left was the one Sophie was peeking through in the post about the Bensonwood production facility tour.

The original house (left), and most of the new addition (right), tethered by just the walls of the great room. That would change the next day. PC: Tommy Hotaling

Dropping the big ridge beam for the great room in place. This room, which will be the future kitchen and living room, bridges the original house and addition. Getting things to line up (floor, roof lines, wall connections) was no easy task, but with many careful measurements, checked and rechecked, and a little creative use of a sawzall, it got done and looked great!

With most of the roof on, the great room is looking more and more like a room! Note all the snow inside. We needed Julian to come back to visit! 🙂

The crane needed to head out on this day, so the crew worked right up ‘til sunset. This was the very last panel to drop in (a little one connecting great room to addition wing). It was darker than it looks–note the lights on in the house, and you may be able to pick the glare of the crane headlights on the house.

The sun came up the next day to reveal a fully assembled building shell, and the moon came by for another look that evening.

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.

PC: Dylan Hooper Goetinck

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.

Skye (Snowdog) and Travis (Legacy Plumbing and Heating) giving the oil tank the old heave ho.