Off the charts

Our heat pump was installed yesterday.  Like most air-source heat pumps, there are two segments.  The outside part:

And the inside part (top right):

As you can see, both units are quite small.  It does not take much equipment to heat and cool a house that is this efficient.  Rather than have the inside part in a crawl space or mechanical room pumping air into leaky ductwork, our unit draws air directly into the unit and spits it right back out.  No ducts, no leaks.

Here are a couple more shots of the exterior unit:

Now check out the efficiency ratings:

That's right, our heat pump is literally off the charts in terms of efficiency.  They need to make some longer bars on that sticker.

Finally, our light fixtures are starting to go up.  Below are the sconces in the living room.  They belong to the same collection as the pendants and chandelier.

Things are getting colorful

The painters have been extremely busy this week. They are almost done painting the outside of the house, and they added all our inside room colors. If you have been in our current home, you know that we like bold wall colors, and this is definitely true in the new house as well.

Before I get to the photos, I wanted to share a short marketing-oriented article about our house from GreenFiber, the makers of our blow-in insulation. It's more about their product, but it's still kind of neat to read their view of our project: http://www.greenfiber.com/newscontent.aspx?id=61

On to the colors. Outside, the painters are almost finished. They added our brown accent color to the gable ends of the house, and this color is repeated on our garage doors and the front door:

Inside the great room, we went with a green that is very similar to the green in our current living room. This same green is repeated in one of the smaller upstairs bedrooms. All our inside paint is low-VOC. We used Rodda's Horizon line.

Here you can also see our finished stair railings:

The office is medium blue, and this same color is also used in the master bathroom and one of the smaller upstairs bedrooms:

The third inside color we chose was yellow, for the mud room and the laundry room:

Finally, we have a lighter blue in the master bedroom and in two of the bathrooms:

If you looked closely at those photos of the kitchen and laundry room, you may have noticed that our Formica counter tops have arrived! In the kitchen, we chose a dark gray with lighter gray flecks:

The laundry room has an off-white counter with a subtle pattern:

And both upstairs bathrooms have white counters with gray flecks:

One last thing: What's that happening up on the roof? It's the beginnings of our awesome solar water heater:

There are many other great changes in store for this week: linoleum flooring in the bathrooms, mud room and laundry room; carpeting upstairs; and the arrival of our stainless steel appliances in the kitchen.

Congratulations, Bilyeu Homes!

We are very excited to announce that our home was named new Green Building of the Year last night at the Mid-Willamette Valley Green Awards, sponsored by Friends of Straub Environmental Learning Center. The accolades completely belong to our wonderful builders, Blake and Larry Bilyeu, who have a strong history of green building in Salem and have made our home as amazing as it is. We feel honored to have them build our house.

There was an article on the awards in today's Statesman Journal.

And here's the award:

So now for an update on what's been happening at that award-winning home. The painters have been hard at work, both outside, where they added some more blue paint:

And inside, where they primed all the walls as well as the entertainment unit and the shelves under the stairs:

And if you haven't already noticed, the floors have been oiled and waxed. In other words, they now are the color they're meant to be, and they are awesome! The wood grain is really beautiful:

That's gonna stain

Painters have been busy staining and clear coating cabinets and trim.  I'm not precisely sure what stage these pictures reflect, but they certainly show the dramatic difference.

 

Passive House at the Olympics

I just found out this cool fact today: Austria built a Passive House at Whistler for the Olympics! It's the first registered Passive House in Canada. What a cool way to bring attention to this concept.

Here's a video about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgDRKSQp2RI

The painters stained our cabinets this week, and they look great! Stuart will probably be posting pictures sometime this weekend.

1-year Blogiversary

It's hard to believe, but we started this blog one year ago today.  In our first day of blog posts, we shared our preliminary floor plans -- there have been significant changes since then.  At that time we could barely imagine what the house might look like, and now we're practically ready to move in.  It's been fun seeing the project develop.

Enough nostalgia -- here are a few photos of what's been happening this week.

The painters are prepping the areas to be stained and clear-coated.

All of the doors and drawers get removed and set aside.

Blake made some gooseneck light arms from regular 1/2-inch pipe!  Well done, sir!  They really look awesome, and they're going to be perfect above our garage doors.

The lights will be primed and painted the color of our roof/windows/rafter tails.

Little updates make a big difference

Having cabinets strewn about the great room is one thing, but having them hung in place is something else entirely.

Gary Burton, our cabinet maker, has been busy installing, leveling, trimming, and tweaking the cabinets all over the house.  The entertainment center is now in place against the wall.

 

Abby approves.

The kitchen island is now mostly in place.  We have a small island in our current house, and the long dimension from the old island is the same as the short dimension of the new island.  In other words, this new island is big.

We had some extra room in the island to add bookshelves.  You can also see the corner of the bar seating, which should seat three.

Upstairs the laundry room cabinets are in place.

We have built in pedestals for the washer and dryer, including a big drawer under each.

And there is plenty of storage above and below the counter at the other end.

Tom Ricks, our carpenter, has also been busy.  Door trim is up all over the house.  The stairs and bookshelf in the great room are fleshed out.

The closet under the stairs has a few details now.

And my favorite part of the house, the cell phone alcove in the downstairs hallway, was given a miniature version of the window trim.

Article about our house

The Earth Advantage Institute published an article about our house in their February email newsletter. The newsletter goes to about 12,000 people, who are mostly builders and industry professionals. As I have said in a past post, Earth Advantage is a green building program, and we hope to earn their green certification on our house.

We feel very honored that they wanted to feature our project. I hope that many people will read the article and become interested in Passive Houses!

Here's the article: http://www.earthadvantage.org/news-detail.php?id=90