The Evolving Exterior: Part Deux

A few months ago we wrote this post highlighting the development of the exterior of the first Passive House in Texas.  Here are a few more developments that have recently been completed!  The first photo shows the house in it’s original state before the remodel began…it’s hard to believe how much it has changed!

Built in 1955, this house was ready for some changes!

For a long time the house looked like this: grey cement board covered the exterior.

Base of porch built--preparing the exterior for stucco

Roof of porch built and house covered in white stucco

the front porch; a little more finished

Building a Passive House: The View From Within!

As the building of the first Passive House in Texas continues, the inside of the house is slowly starting to take form.  The house is actually a remodel, and we have faced several design limitations based on elements of the house as we bought it.

A view of the original kitchen.

The main challenge was that the house had asbestos in the exterior siding of one part of the house.  While we originally wanted to demo the entire house and start from scratch, we realized that the asbestos abatement process would be costly and tedious.  For this reason, we decided to leave the original walls up that have the asbestos siding, and simply contain them within the new walls.  This is one of the safest ways to deal with asbestos.

One room in the house: cheap vinal flooring, aging fixtures, paint peeling off the walls, and an overall aged and moldy feel

The house was built in 1955 as a 3 bedroom house with a carport.  In the 70′s, the owner knocked out a side wall of the house and merged it with the carport to create 2 new rooms, which we found out served as a beauty parlor in the neighborhood for many years.  By the time we got the house, it was in pretty bad shape.  For the purpose of our remodel, we would need to rip out every interior wall of the house, bump out the back of the house and replace several exterior walls, build a new roof, and replace half of the foundation.

The back of the house before the bump out.

The entire roof is off, the old framing about to come down!

All the interior walls ripped out, new floors being built, the old roof off and a new one in process!

The back of the house bumped out

Another view of the house, gradually getting framed out!

First Blower Door Test

So I managed to get suuuuper lucky for my first blower door test.  And not because I got a great score.  Right now I’m still at about 1.2ACH 50, or about 900% better than Austin requires for air tightness, but still not good enough by Passive House standards.  What was lucky was that my blower door test was done by Greg from Attic Care, and he lent me his equipment for the weekend so i can spend as much time as I want improving my score.

First of all, I had never even met Greg before today.  Second of all, the blower door, and his thermal imaging gun are worth more than my truck.  Greg was so impressed with the Passive House concept that he is excited to see it work.  Even though my house is already “the tightest he’s ever seen” I’ve still got work to do.  I loaded up on tape, spray foam, and caulk, and I’m ready for tomorrow.  But for anyone in the Austin area needing attic insulation, an energy audit, or blower door tests, I would highly recommend Attic care.

An example of a blower door test

Passive House: The Evolving Exterior

Equitable Green Group is building the first Passive House in Texas! You can read more about this here.   Here are some photos of the front of the house as it progresses:

The "before" picture

The roof is off!

Building the roof back up...

It turns out the front of the house had to go too!

The roof is up, the front of the house is back on; now we are getting somewhere!

The siding is up...windows will be cut out soon.

Windows installed!