Kings County, NS
Woodville, NS
Keywords: Passive, South facing, super-insulated, double drywall layers, triple glazing doors & windows
Passive solar residence, vegetable gardens + rural homestead, Woodworking shop/studio. Single car garage. Cold room for food storage., All functions in one building rectangle, facing due south.
I burn less than a cord of maple/yr, about $200 for heating. I use very little electric backup with the 3kW inline duct heater., Total electrical usage is 4850 kWh/an, This includes running a full 220V woodworking shop where all of the interior woodwork and cabinetry including 22 interior solid poplar doors were fashioned.
5A on side of North Mtn. Pie shaped lot, two springs, pond, forest
107' X 33' + carport overall, Steel roof ala VicWest, 2 legal bedrooms with two private rooms, one for each partner. A/V room which doubles as an LR. Limited open concept., No active systems installed but rough-ins are present., A Jotul
Local plumbing and electrical contractors + the rough-in crew of 3 local tradesmen. There are no active features in this building, although those are roughed in with 4" underpad conduit., Home Hardware, Berwick, Berwick Bldg Supplies [now bought out], Frasers Building Centre, VicWest steel roof., Cape Cod larch vertical wood siding, Bedford, NS, Fibertech Windows Ontario. Fibreglass frames, hard E argon filled windows and doors.
Small-time local contractors
My time over a 33 year period as a professional woodworker/cabinetmaker, was put to the task of installing all the exterior vertical siding, making and installing all the 3 sunburst gable enhancements, as well as all of the interior woodwork, which is local poplar, at least 80% which came from the trees felled by the owner on this 5A., All of this is documented on my blog., The 8/4 poplar lumber used for the 22 interior doors was further dried to the industry standard of 6.5% EMC in the mechanical room inside; a sort of kiln., The good local folks who operate kilns, do not dry wood sufficiently low enough in EMC., The house was a 9-year project, begun in 2009, finally completed in the summer of 2017., The house at the time of design was a culmination of all that I had learned in green technology, with a focus on manual passive systems, double wall technology and cellulose blown insulation., All building is a compromise. I'm well aware that the greenest building is one already built. There are no definitive answers. Some efficiency is lost through a willingness to create a design which is beneficial for human growth and the sacred reverence I hold for the natural world., The $530K I have pencilled in for the house cost is the total cash outlay for the bare land, all excavating, including driveway construction [800'] well, septic, all contractor fees and contracts, rough-in crew wages, house and all rough materials including a further $15k for the woodworking machinery, from which all of the interior and some exterior woodwork has been fabricated. This sum in no way considers the 9 years of my personal labour, conservatively estimated @ 2000hours/yr., All of this step by step process, including the author's other building history, can be sourced through the archives at my blog address:, http://johnotvos.wordpress.com
Only in a group setting with one viewing, at least for now.
Larger diameter attic piping for HRV, i.e., from the existing 5" to 7"., Longer warrantee for window seal leakage. After 7 years of habitation, I've lost 15 of the 22 south facing glazing units to broken seals., ***Greater focus on overheating in late August and Sept with the increase in our abrupt climate emergency crisis. The sun develops a lower elevation and begins to entrain further into the living space, therby heating up the thermal mass of the dual layer gypsum walls holding the heat overnight and not allowing more nighttime cooling.,