Blake the Builder

Several weeks before we moved into our new house, a video crew from Serious Materials, the company who made our windows, visited to interview Blake. They wanted to make a video for their website about our project, which uses their products. They have finally posted their interview with Blake the Builder on their blog:
http://blog.seriousmaterials.com/?p=1216

Last week, a representative from Energy Star visited to do a quality assurance blower door test -- and also to check out our project, because he was interested in seeing it. We didn't get to witness our previous blower door test, so it was interesting watching it happen. He was impressed and said that he thought our house was very well-constructed and would perform very well energy-wise. It was nice to hear more external validation of our builders' good work!

 We've been staying comfortable in our house this summer, only turning on the A/C when we have a lot of visitors over, like we did for our housewarming party recently. At night we open several windows to let in the cool night air, and we turn off the Energy Recovery Ventilator so that it is not retaining our warm air as it ventilates, instead letting more of the cool outside air come in. Then in the morning, we close the windows back up, shut the blinds and curtains, and the house stays a nice temperature during the heat of the day. It's been working out well, and we're saving a lot of energy by not constantly running our A/C.