Tony finished the installation of the folding accordian door yesterday, so all of the windows are now in. No more rain in the house.
It's starting to look like the model Tracey created in Chief Architect!
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It's starting to look like the model Tracey created in Chief Architect!
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In "Passive Solar Design - Part II" (way back in August of 2013) I reviewed a few different windows with different Solar Heat Gain Coefficients (SHGC). As you may recall, the SHGC is a measure of how much of the Sun's heat is captured by the glazing. A higher number means more heat captured and a lower number means more heat rejected. Unfortunately, Andersen Windows did not offer their Passive Sun high SHGC glass in the 100 Series. Based on our cost and payback analysis, we decided to use the Andersen 100 Series windows anyway since they are constructed with a maintenance-free composite material and very cost effective. The main reason for the exclusion is that the IECC Building Codes do not permit high SHGC glass in our part of the country, which makes building a passive solar house more difficult. Recently, however, Energy Star Version 3 has provided an exclusion for passive solar designs. The exclusion is detailed in section 13.e. This is very important news for anyone building a passive solar design.
 Andersen customer service is great, but because the Passive Sun high SHGC was a new product, it took many e-mails and phone calls before we were able to special order the 100 Series windows with the Passive Sun glass. They utilize Cardinal LoE-180 which is one the best glass units on the market today.
This is a huge breakthrough because we can now get a durable, low-cost window system with truely excellent high SHGC glazing. We were very fortunate to work with Mike Korney from ABC Suppply. They have offices and distribution centers around the country so we were able to work with Mike face-to-face here in Chicago and have the windows delivered to their distribtion center in Marietta, Ga. The windows have arrived and the large fixed units have an SHGC of .54 (which is awesome). As a side note, the Builing Codes are several years behind the new ENERGY STAR standard. We met with our county Building Commissioner to get a waiver based on the new standard. A lot of dead branches and debris have collected on the site. Although we want to preserve the natual setting, it had become unsightly and it poses a fire hazard. 
Since it costs roughly $400 per load to bring mulch in, we decided to have Garcia's come back, clean-up the debris and chip whatever he could. We know this doesn't yield a high quality mulch, but we thought it's more responsible to use it here on the site rather than throwing the debris in a landfill. They moved the machine around the property and sprayed the mulch out as best they could, which will make spreading the mulch much easier. 
We decided to use fiberglass shower units to help keep costs under control and reduce long-term maintenance. I'm using a Maax Stamina shower unit in bathroom-3. This is a 5' wide unit with integral seats and an integral top so there are no seams that will ever leak or collect grunge or mildew. We got a great price online through Quality Bath and they delivered right on time. The main drawback on these large seamless units is that they weigh a ton. OK, I'm exagerating... this one weighed in at about 300 lbs. It was too heavy for us to move it into the house when it was delivered so it had to sit out front for three days. Fortunately, showers are made to get wet so a little fog and rain didn't bother it.
Just because a product is prefab, it doesn't have to be boring. The Maax is is very curvaceous and is a perfect complement to our modern-industrial design style.  Several months ago, we re-designed the front porch so it would feel a bit more like a bridge floating over the slope. Here's a pic showing the concept.  It's almost done now and we're exited to see it shaping up the way we imagined it.  
The saga with the damaged well-head has a happy ending. The good folks at ABC Supply have come through and they are paying for the repairs to the well. High-Five to ABC!!
Mark Miller was at the site yesterday to wrap up the rough-in on the plumbing. He installed the the valves for the showers and the Viega Manablock manifold for the PEX supply lines. A very neat, professional installation!  The well guys came out yesterday to repair the damaged well head. They had to dig down a ways to cut the casing off below the break and attach a new section. They gave us a fake rock to put over it, which is pretty funny. I think I'll have the excavator put a real boulder between the well and the driveway when he comes up to finish the grading.
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