I don’t attribute this shift in plant lifespan to my gardening skills whatsoever, it’s all house. Plants love this house, which is awesome/imperative, because we always envisioned it bursting with greenery. There is so much natural light, both direct and indirect, that no matter where we put our plants, they seem to be happy.

On one of our many tours, we had a horticulturist walk through. She didn’t care much for the house, but did for the plants. Every word she spoke was a commentary on how poor our plant positioning was with regards to sunlight, this one shouldn’t be here, that one shouldn’t be there, etc. I want to say I took her constructive plant criticism into account and did something about it, but I didn’t. And yet they are still thriving :)

Case in point  
Almost one year ago, I bought a fiddle-leaf fig. A beautiful, but notoriously difficult plant to care for. I bought a ‘bush’ plant, but what I wanted was a ‘tree’. Taking a chance, I separated the bush, which had three stalks, into three separate pots. (Actually my wonderful sister Lindsay helped me with this arduous task). And they’ve each grown over 2’ since, in different locations and orientations throughout the house. They’ve continually produced new leaves throughout the winter, even though they’re supposedly in their dormancy period.  

Another case in point
From the outset of the design, we liked the idea of having a green wall within our courtyard/void. It made sense that this green wall would live on our stair screenwall (the wall that supports our stairs and is made from industrial steel floor grating). But I’m not a fan of most indoor green walls I see. They require a lot of maintenance and can create a lot of mess. No thanks. For a long time, I wondered what to do. I scoured the internet and plant shops looking for appropriate wall containers, but didn’t see any I liked, at the right price. Then one day, on a routine Ikea run, the lightbulb went off in the kitchen markethall. Hanging utensil holders. At $3.99 a pop, I bought a few to test out at home. They easily hooked onto our screen wall, and had a metal grate in the bottom that left some breathing room for roots. It was a winning solution. We now have a multitude of plants and pots scattered across our screen wall. Some cheekily poking through the other side. And we’re only getting started. Best part: I’m only watering once a week. And I can easily water them from the stair side, with no need to get up on stools. 

I am enjoying learning to care for these plants, in the lowest maintenance way possible, even if the house is doing most of the work. The indoor plants make it come alive, and help it to feel more vibrant, especially on days we’re cooped up inside over winter ice storms and such. They also make our Passive House fresh air, even fresher. *Knock wood*, but there were no sickies in our house this winter save for a few short-lived runny noses. 

• Ottawa is getting hit by a hard spring ice storm, the worst we’ve ever had (this time of year). We’re in the middle of a multi-day onslaught of ice, snow, rain, a mix of everything, and fierce wind. It’s nutso. Trees are coming down, giant ice pellets are sliding off buildings and trees and onto sidewalks. People are afraid to go outside, and the city has ground to a halt. I am able to take great comfort in our house during times like these. It’s quiet. It’s warm. It’s a peaceful refuge in contrast to the great shitty outdoors. And if the power goes down, we'd be a-ok for the first week without heat. Thank you house.

Looking forward to spring, however, and getting to play outside.

—

Outside the house

Inside the house

In spirit of our Canadian thanksgiving, I wanted to follow up my previous post with some house love.

It is an eye-opening reminder of how good we’ve got it when I think back to some of our previous living environs. Over the past 10 years together, we’ve lived in 7 different homes (not including the 18 months we spent globetrotting), including some with electric baseboard heaters, and some with the highest-efficiency gas furnaces; some with AC, and some without;  some with mold in the walls, and some with bugs in the walls. In Ottawa, there’s no doubt that winter puts the performance of a house to the test. The air is dry, and it’s cold...freezing cold. We’ve employed all sorts of active strategies to thwart winter discomfort. To name a few:

• Hot water bottles and flannel sheets in bed
• Blankets, sweaters and slippers
• Humidifiers to keep us breathing easy
• Weather stripping and window plastic to improve the r-value of our windows (looking outside be-damned!)
• Programmable thermostats to help manage time-of-use consumption costs

I still recall a time when Mark and I were living in an old Victorian home, which was renovated in the 80s, with electric baseboard heating (when electricity was cheap in Ontario). We were still recent’ish graduates, living paycheque to paycheque, with student loans up to our necks. We were terrified at the site of our hydro bill. We were looking at ~$700/month to heat our 2 bedroom apartment in the heart of winter. Of course we didn’t realize what we in for prior to signing the lease... The house was always cold — we stockpiled slippers and sweaters for all who came to visit. We purchased a cord of firewood for our fireplace to help counter our electricity demands. On the coldest nights, we moved our mattress out in front of the fire to sleep and keep warm. It was fun, and romantic, but a lot of work and a major pain in the ass. In hindsight, the fire was probably making our heating costs go up vs. down, knowing what we know now about building performance. We tapped out after one winter.

What was it like then living in our passive house, one winter and one summer in? Mark has a couple more technical posts on the heating patterns observed in our home, I’m just speaking anecdotally, from what my experience living in the house was. The best compliment I could give it is: I didn’t notice. The house didn’t affront me, the way the previous ones did. I wasn’t bothered by cold bedsheets, bathtubs or drafts coming through the walls and windows. I could sit in our book-nook and read to the kids an inch away from a large window. My daughters eczema improved, there were no nosebleeds, and less colds and runny noses – an attest to the air quality, I'm sure. When it came to the thermostat: we set it and forget it. The performance of the house faded to the background.

Also of note: our behaviour didn’t have to change, other than to open the curtains during the day; thus enabling us to simply live, and be, in the house. We took long showers and baths, frequently ran the washer and dryer, kept our espresso machine turned on, as well as the computer + backup drives, and kept our thermostat at an even 22°C throughout winter – we like being warm :) Our annual consumption (energy required to heat and power our house) was 47.5 GJ. This is less than half the energy of a typical new house in Ontario (107 GJ), without even trying. (That’s a new house, if we looked at average energy consumptions, the number would be much higher).

We feel as though our lives have been dramatically upgraded. We are living a more luxurious lifestyle in our new home, using a fraction of the energy to do so. People shouldn't have to give up or sacrifice in order to live in a passive house. At least that’s not the philosophy we’ve ascribed to. In order for it to become more mainstream, that’s hopefully how more people will come to see it too. The success of the Tesla isn’t because it’s the eco-friendly option (although those government incentives don’t hurt…). It’s because it performs waaaaaaay better than other cars, even other performance cars. It’s also beautifully designed, which is of equal importance IMHO. As I’m sure I’ve written before, if something performs well, but doesn’t look good or feel good, you won’t love it. And if you don’t love it, you won’t keep it or take care of it.

All this to say: I love my house. One year in, and all the aspects of the house that make it passive house, are actually what makes it 100% livable.

I’ll be sharing more 🏠❤️ and lessons learned.

It’s been almost a year since I’ve written. And just over a year since we’ve moved into our new home. Quite the hiatus from someone who promised ‘many posts to come...’. After the big milestone of moving in, I needed to catch my breath and simplify, part of which meant time off from writing, and time off from the house.

This might sound crazy, because from the outside: we did it! We accomplished what we set out to do and we have a beautiful house, that’s built so well it would standup against the apocalypse, and is performing to Passive House standards. But it was a lot to take on, more than we could appreciate at the time, or if we did, we just didn’t have the time to process any of it. So when we were actually settled in, and things started to slow down, instead of feeling relaxed and grateful, I had itchy feet and was looking for the next thing to tackle. Which was difficult for Mark, especially, who wanted to feel relaxed and grateful, and fully deserved to.

I knew that the big rocks were in place, and the rest would settle. It was a struggle for me to settle into this knowledge, however. I just wanted to move in and be done with it already! We had walls and running water, but there was still landscaping to be done, railings needed to be designed and installed, doors to go up, paint to get applied, basement finished, garage built: the list goes on and on. Not to mention artwork, furniture, and the other nice-to-haves in a house. I did not relish the idea of putting our dingy old second-hand furniture and ikea as-is finds in our new, designery modern house. For all our efforts, we’ve been living in a mostly finished house, even after one year of living in it.

This past year, I’ve needed time to connect with the house, in real life, and come to terms with the anticipation and expectations I had placed on it, versus the reality of a house being just a house.

What were some of the expectations I had placed on our home? At the outset, it was going to:

• Be one of the ‘greenest’ (low energy) homes in Canada.

• Disrupt the building industry and get built entirely unconventionally.

• Reflect our shared design sensibilities and the embody quality to the touch and space.

• Have integrity. And modest restraint.

• It would jump start Mark’s architecture firm. Because who doesn’t dream about being their own client?

• Make us excited about living in Ottawa, somewhere, frankly, we never saw ourselves settling.

• Act as an ode to my father. He passed away shortly before we got married and started our family. Our house, in spirit, would be a monument to him — something that would make him proud. For it was he who introduced Mark to building science, which unbeknownst to him at the time, set him on a course to find his passion — houses like ours.

• Cost less than a traditional custom build. I wanted to prove to the internet that regular folks could do what we were doing. With a little gumption and a lot of will, that you could do it too!

Our expectations read more like aspirational goals. It’s in our nature (Mark and I) to aim high. Something’s not worth doing, unless it’s done right...and then some. I’m glad we had such high expectations for our house. In differing ways, and to varying degrees, we feel we actually achieved all of them.

I’m not sure what value you, as a reader, may have garnered from this post. It’s mostly just been therapeutic for me to write. It’s recognition for me that we took on a lot, and managed to survive, family intact, with a truly incredible house. I’m able to appreciate it more now, one year in.

Key takeaways

• Don’t say to yourself ‘when ___________, then things will be fine’. Because they won’t be. Find a way to make the ‘now’ enjoyable. It will make enjoying the ‘then’ much easier. Accept and enjoy the ongoing process of building.

• Let go of perfect. Houses are never square. The entire finishing process of a house is an act of deceit—masking the scars and imperfections that lie beneath. No one else will notice the details that keep you up at night. (And if they do, they’re not worth inviting back!)

• Don’t expect to get everything 100% on your first try. Even though we knew this, in theory, reality was that we also saw this house as our one-shot—our big opportunity to get everything right. We wanted to go all in, with little compromise.

• Reframe failures into learnings (duh - right?). Consider a next time. And if there is no next time, simply what did you learn? For example, we learned that building a 2’ thick wall is much more difficult to make square, because you need to square it in 3D vs. 2D. Good to know.

• Rome wasn't built in a day. Your house will not be finished when you move in. It probably never will be. Thinking that if you build or buy a house brand new means you have less maintenance and TODOs is foolhardy. If you own a home, there will always be jobs to be done.

• Let a house be a house. Building is an all-consuming process. It’s great to shoot for the moon, but at the end of the day: remember that your house is not your life! Don’t put pressure on it to be anything more than that.

There will definitely be a 'next time' for us. 

We celebrated a very peaceful and quiet candle-lit Earth Hour last night. We used our Sense Energy Monitor to watch consumption drop as we went around and turned off lights and appliances. We went so far as to turn off the fridge and the ERV (normally we would never turn these off, but we wanted to see how much energy they were actually using). We got as low as 83W of baseline load, which we attribute to the small plug loads made up of things like the modem and router, alarm clock, tv and receiver (plugged in but off). Our normal baseline is about 200-250W, which includes the ERV running 24/7.

For those of you who have been following us for a while, you may remember this post from last winter in our old rental house. I was noticing in that post that our rental unit (an older semi-detached house in central Ottawa) was losing 1 to 2 degrees Celsius in 8 minutes, causing our furnace to short cycle like crazy (it was about -8C outside at the time). 

This morning I looked at our temperature chart from last night. It took our Passive House 3.5 hours to drop from 22C to 21C. The temp outside during that same period dropped from -6.5C to -8C. Our heater didn't come on at all during this time!

What's really cool about this is it demonstrates how protected our house is from power outages or a broken furnace. The old house would have dropped from 21C to -8C in under four hours . Our Passive House would take 101.5 hours for the same drop (4.25 days)—but this wouldn't even be possible because the sun would come out and heat us back up during the daylight hours (we've even noticed moderate heat gains from solar energy on overcast days).

What do you think? It's pretty comforting to know our pipes won't ever freeze while we are away, and that even if he power fails in the winter we would be able to stay in our home for a long time.

We've had our new Sense Energy Monitor installed for nearly a month now, so I thought I'd share some first impressions.   

First, a bit about the monitor we chose. Sense is a new product that has only been on the market for a few months, and isn't currently available in Canada (we ordered ours to Ogdensburg and drove down to pick it up). The purpose of the product is to monitor and track our electricity usage — and since our home is all-electric, it in fact tracks our total energy usage. The monitor installs with two clamps on the electrical mains leading in to the panel. While the install was quick and straightforward, I had the assistance of my electrician since the mains are always live (and if you're thinking of getting one, I'd recommend you do the same!).  This type of electricity meter installed on the mains is fairly common, but what Sense claims to be able to do is to recognize different signatures and break out the electricity usage for each individual appliance in the house. 

After install, the monitor takes several weeks or months before it learns everything in the house (for more information on how and why check out their website), but it will give you immediate feedback on total consumption. After nearly a month, it has learned our espresso machine, oven, and fridge and freezer lights. Even though this doesn't seem like much, it's been very interesting to look at the energy usage chart and figure out usage trends by deduction!

I'm hopeful the Sense Monitor will continue to add more devices soon, but in the meantime check out this chart showing from midnight to midnight last Friday. I've indicated some of the big spikes and what we figure they were. 

24 hours of monitoring from March 17th

Here is the chart of yesterday's temperatures. There are 2 indoor temperatures being monitored: the Book Nook is on the east side of the house outside of the master bedroom, and the Loft is on the top floor of the house. You can see that the temperature in the loft starts to rise noticeably as the sun gets around to the West, and starts to come in through the large lift-and-slide door in the loft.

And here is the electricity consumption (downloaded hourly from Hydro Ottawa's website). You can see the drop at 9am and the ride at about 9pm — this is the 4kW heater turning off then back on. It's interesting to notice how, even as the heater shuts off at 9am, the temperature in the house climbs steadily from 7am through to about 4pm! 

Our brief flirt with spring weather has ended (for now). This morning we woke up to -18 on the thermometer, and it's been below -14C all day (it's 2pm as I right this). 

Our "furnace" (the 4kW duct heater that heats our home) turned itself off at 9am, and has been off ever since. That's 5 hours at -14C or colder without any heat on! What's more, the temperature has been slowly climbing all day thanks to the sunny weather—it was 20C when the heater stopped, and its 22C now. 

I'll comment later to let you know what time tonight the heater comes back on. 

With spring on the horizon we are feeling a fresh bit of motivation to pick up the blog again and start sharing our experiences from the first winter in our new Passive House. Watch this space — I'll be posting some of our monitored data soon, as well as sharing some of our observations and experiences from day-to-day life in the house.

------------

I want to talk to you about building for the long term, through a personal project of mine — my home.

The home I designed, with some help from my husband (who happens to be both an architect and a building scientist). We not only designed it, but also managed construction, negotiated with the city, navigated our way through construction mortgages, maintained neighbourly relations, swung hammers and hung drywall, as well as lobbied with government organizations and documented the entire journey.

But since this is a UX talk, and I don’t have all week, I will stick mostly to talking about the design process.

With that...

For each of us [point to crowd], a lifetime of experience dictates what we think we need in a home. We started out by coming up with a functional plan – the things we thought we needed in our home. Our list looked like a fairly typical realtor spec sheet for a single family home (three bedrooms, two and a half baths). Throughout the design process, we’d challenge our assumptions, but they helped lay the groundwork.

When you decide to rent, or to buy a house, you probably have a vision on how to make it your own. What colours you’ll paint the walls. The artwork you’ll hang on them. Or even what walls you may want to take down one day. You’re likely already building, or decorating, within a box.

But what if you had no box? Where do you begin? How do you define your box?

We started by defining our parti, which is architectural lingo, for a concept. It became quite introspective. Who am I? Who are we? This was actually dead easy for my husband and I to agree on. In a previous life, we had spent the better part of two years as wandering vagabonds, traveling the world together slowly, overland, with no destination in mind (and no airplanes). We were onboard with the idea that the journey is part-in-parcel with discovery. We wanted to imbue the house with that same ‘wandering spirit’.

Great, our visions aligned for the parti. But how do you capture ‘wandering’ in a fixed, static, object. The two are seemingly at odds.

Along our travels, we made notes on spaces, lighting, moods, and objects that we were drawn to. We loved the courtyard architecture of southern Spain and Morocco. The way the hallways and staircases wrapped around the pen courtyard, which became the heart of the house. We loved Moroccan lanterns and Moorish patterns. The connection to the outdoors and rooftop gardens. The sense of discovery and chaos wandering through a souq followed by the sense of safety and calm as you passed through the threshold, leaving the outside world behind.

But we don’t live in Morocco. We live in Ottawa.

We channeled this inspiration into something that fits our climate, our lives, our land, our modern aesthetic, and our budget. A design concept started to emerge, with what we named ‘the void’—our monument to wandering. The void became our interior courtyard and grounded the home, while the surrounding living and circulation spaces lifted it upwards, providing unique views and discoveries along the way.

Concept was crucial at the outset for grounding future decision making. It is THE THING that ensures the final product is cohesive. It’s not that you need to be able to guess the concept if you were to walk into my home, but you should just see that it works. The concept results in a cohesive and subliminal continuity that can be felt even before it’s understood.

Now let’s bring this back to ‘building for the long term’.

If you love something, like a favourite pair of jeans, you’ll hang on to them longer. What makes you love those jeans? The style. The fit. Probably. But if the quality doesn’t hold up, no matter how good they look, you’re just not going to keep them.

What you want is a pair of jeans that you love AND that are well built. They will last longer because of their quality, but they will also last longer because you take care of them. The front ass-thetic end and the back end need to hold up.

Having a deep understanding of the back end – how our house would perform and get built, was integral and complimentary to our design process. Again, we live in Ottawa. It’s an extreme environment. Energy prices are skyrocketing. And we are killing our planet. Building for the long term also means building sustainably and reducing our energy dependencies, so there’s some planet left for our kids and our kids’ kids. This is very important to us. Which is why we decided to build to the Passive House standard.

What does that mean? It’s quite simple really, which is why I’m so on board with it. It involves making your house super insulated and airtight. So that the heat you generate, stays inside the house. Then you add to this a super high efficiency ventilation system that provides fresh air but still retains the heat in the house. Essentially, that’s it - that’s Passive House!

My husband uses a really good winter coat analogy when describing Passive House principles. Think about winter here in Ottawa. Now think about wearing a spring coat outside, during winter. In order to stay warm in your K-way, you’ll have to work really hard and run your little heart out. Now think about wearing a Canada Goose parka instead. It makes more sense, doesn’t it? The K-way spring coat is a house built to code. Our house is the Canada Goose parka.

Our walls are rated at a nominal R-96. The newest building code is only R-24. They are 2’ thick. We will heat our home through solar gain and by simply living in it: showering, cooking, and being human. Because the heat will stay in the house. Any makeup heat will be produced by a heater with the equivalent output of a toaster oven.

One of the other ‘measures’ for Passive House is comfort. Have you ever thought about what makes a space feel comfortable? Well the Germans have. They actually have calculations for this.

One of the things they’ve taken into account are thermal gradients. There shouldn’t be any. Meaning the surface temperatures of everything in our house should be even. We will be able to sit an inch away from a window, naked, on a -30• day and say ‘f you’ to winter.

Another comfort measure is the velocity of air movement. You shouldn’t be able to detect it. No drafts.

As added bonuses to building this way, the air quality and sound quality are super quality. Because our house is so air-tight, the air we intentionally circulate passes through three controlled filtres, ensuring my family is breathing clean air at all times. No more air leaking in through rotting wood, allergens, dust or whatever else might be stuffed inside wall cavities. And because our walls are so thick and insulated, even in downtown Ottawa, next to busy roads, our house is as quiet as a mouse. When we close our windows, it feels like we’ve left the city behind.

Passive House. Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? It just makes so much sense to us. Understanding that this was the best possible way to build was key at the outset of our design and enabled us not to see it as an obstacle, but as an opportunity.

Passive House became our framework to design within. The architecture needed to operate within this framework, not against it, yet not afraid to push against the ‘rules’ of the standard.

When design concept and engineering came against each other, these were the opportunities for greatest creativity. For example, instead of thinking of our 2’ thick walls as lost square footage, we started thinking about window seats, and counter tops and ways to use them to our advantage. Some of our most creative details are the result of our 2’ thick walls.

The success of the house, and what makes it built for the long term, is this harmonious marriage.

The build has paralleled my start of my journey with Shopify. We broke ground on the house about a year ago, and have been living in the house for a few weeks now. Somehow we survived. And are beginning to feel the benefits of our hard work. There are still many things that need doing. We have no doors. We need landscaping. Lots to unpack. We have yet to hang things on walls and take the magazine photos. None of that really seems to matter at the moment though.

The real payoff is seeing our kids in the space. The house is like one giant, indoor jungle gym for them. The instant we moved in, they were at home. Moving through the spaces, up and down the stairs with ease, filling it with their creativity and energy. For them, to be able to grow up in a house like this, is where we’ll really see the benefits in building for the long-term.

On September 2nd, exactly one year after the city granted us our building permit, they granted us occupancy. It was a roller coaster leading up to it, which has left us completely shattered, yet elated to finally be living in our home. Two and a half years after the land purchase, our long journey is winding down. Sure there are still outstanding tasks, like trim and doors, but I’m feeling very little motivation to take action on them just yet. I think we need some room to breathe and reflect on the fact that we’re in, and that we actually did it. Was there every any doubt? (Yes...lots of it...).

This post won’t have too many pics because of how crazy the week was. And how cluttered the house is with moving boxes and Ikea Pax boxes hijacking the spaces. We’ll do a proper photoshoot once we’re fully moved in and set up. For now, if you’re curious, come to the open house this weekend. We’re busy assembling these Pax closets to shove the aforementioned moving boxes inside of, to give the illusion of settled. Even with the outstanding finishes, the house shines through. Details for the event can be found here: http://greenenergydoorsopen.ca/events/wander-house-passivhaus-tour/

So what happened in the final week? It’s still a bit of a blur, but I’ll attempt to recount.

Floors
The floors were oiled with a one-coat product called Rubio monocoat, in a clear finish. It went on well but meant no one could walk on the floors for 24 hours. So we didn’t! It really brings out the character and grain of our white ash. And matches our brown ash cabinets remarkably well. We were keeping our fingers crossed they would. 

Clean up
We hired a post-construction clean up crew to get rid of the construction dust and make our windows sparkly clean. Even though our house remains somewhat of a construction site. 

Ground source heat loop
We had it charged by a heating contractor from R&B Heating. Meaning he filled our loop with a glycol solution, the loop we lay prior to foundation. We’re still calibrating and trying to get our entire heating and cooling system sorted. Mark will elaborate on this for us eventually.

Occupancy
On Monday, an inspector came out and did a walk-through. He failed us on a few points, including temporary railings, hand rails, bathroom doors and exposed ICF foam. We spent the following few days addressing the deficiencies. Reinforcing our lower deck railings and blocking access to our rooftop. Extending handrails. Installing a temporary bathroom door. And installing drywall in our future basement suite.

On Thursday, a different inspector came for the revisit. The new inspector mostly looked at the list of outstanding items provided by the previous inspector. He was also going to conduct the plumbing final. This new inspector required our plumber, Nathan, to run a bowl test. According to Nathan, bowl tests are an Ottawa anomaly. The test required Nathan to start punching holes in our drywall. He couldn’t find what he was looking for and eventually had to climb up on our roof to conduct the test. The inspector didn’t stick around the 10 minutes it took Nathan to do this, so we had to get both of them back the following day, Friday.

Prior to the revisit-revisit by inspector number 2, there was a brief moment where Nathan was worried that someone punctured one of his pipes because they weren’t maintaining pressure. At this point, I tuned out because I didn’t want to know. I was busy directing the movers on where to put things, while dealing with pangs of fear that my family would be looking for a hotel room for the weekend. That’s right — we moved in on Friday morning, without our occupancy permit in hand. While I was moving, Mark and Nathan were hurriedly running around the house. I’m not really sure what happened in the end (Mark and Nathan figured out there was not enough water in one of the traps, and once corrected everything was good), but when the inspector returned that afternoon, and we finally got our permit. 

Move in
Suffice to say, we are moved in. And a million pounds lighter. The pain and torture of working back-to-back-to-back-to-back 16-hour days is slowly fading. (Yes, Mark and Graham worked these kinds of hours, staying until 3:30 am installing the final set of stairs.) Of me feeling like a house widow/single parent for the past two and a half years. The financial and emotional toll of building a house is incalculable, but so is the joy and sense of accomplishment that it brings us to finally be in it. As is the experience and growth Mark has gained as a professional. And most of all, the benefit to our children as they grow up in a healthy home, designed for them. You can’t put a price tag on that, and you might just say it was worth it. This house certainly was. 

It feels so good to be home. 

For once, I can say that I’m looking forward to winter. To see if this Passive House thing really works...

Our ceilings aren’t the only destination for wood in our house. Wood on the outside, wood on the inside. I’m starting to think of our house as the ‘wood box’: where a simple, honest shape meets a simple, honest material. Anyways, this week was focused on floors and stairs. Both receiving the full white ash treatment. 

Stairs
Our super-awesome-carpenter-guy Graham was tackling stairs. The stairs are three inch thick slabs of white ash (from the Wood Source). They have been designed to be supported by the stair metal brackets Mark had made and installed. The wood requires a small channel carved into its ends, so it can slide onto the bracket, sandwiching it, and hiding it so that the wood ‘floats’.

And this is where I segue over to Graham praise. He goes above and beyond. We are incredibly lucky to have him on our project. He possesses the same passion and care for quality and craftsmanship as does Mark. For instance, in order to carve our stair channels, he needed a better tool for the job, a Festool. He couldn’t find one in Ottawa, so he drove to Kingston to purchase it (hour and a half drive), drove back, and took a lesson on how to properly use it that same night. He was on site the next day figuring our how to precisely carve these channels at varying subtle angles, in order to get them just right. And he did. He also makes a great DJ. No Chez 106 on our site.

The only stair hiccup was a small mistake made by Mark with measurements. One floor riser was ⅜” taller than others, which apparently isn’t ‘to code’. I’d bet none would be the wiser if we kept the ⅜” difference, but to the uncompromising Mark Rosen, this surely wouldn’t do. So we had all the stairs planed down ¼” so that each step is now at 100% equal height. Unfortunately, we had to bring them back to the Wood Source to get them done. So all the work on the stairs won’t pay off until early next week and the temporary stairs had to get reinstalled. Wah-wah.

Floors
Drumroll…

No squeaks! Rejoice rejoice! 

A full glue down was the trick for our 5” white ash, site finished hardwood. We used two different polyurethane flooring glue because the local supplier, Dragona, didn’t have enough in stock to do all in one brand. We used both Maipei ultrabond eco 995, and Roberts 1540. We also stapled, but only when necessary to keep the boards toight. 

Mark, Graham and Sebastian have been working on the floors, burning the midnight oil. Working until midnight the last three nights in a row. We rented some machines to sand the floors down ourselves too. We were going to hire out the finishing job, but we’d have to wait until Wednesday to do so. And with our September 1st move-in coming up, we just couldn’t. 

Everyone unanimously vows, repeatedly, that this would be their first and last glue-down hardwood floor + finishing install. The glue was the worst. Thankfully, they are also in unison upon the fact that they look bloody fantastic. 

Oiling the floors happens this week.

Appliances
With the exception of our laundry machines (because the wood floor has to come first), all our appliances have been installed! So what appliances did we choose for our Passive House build? I’ll write a separate post on this. For now, just know they are in. Mark was boiling water every 10 minutes, and timing it, on our new induction cooktop. He even took video to show me, on the first night in was installed, and now I’m posting it here for everyone to see. It's just about the least exciting 4 minutes of your life, but not for Mark. lol.

Temporary railings
We had to install some temporary railings to get occupancy. Must admit, we cried a little on the inside putting the hideous, weathered plywood up on our mostly finished house. But at least it’s safe and will get us to permit. It should only be a few weeks of us living with them in this state until the permanent railings are ordered and installed.

Yard cleanup
I wish I had thought of Kijiji earlier on in the build. I used it to get rid of all our extra building material. And it was so easy! People will take anything. Especially if you say it’s free. It would have saved us a whole dumpster of waste, at least. Lesson learned. Now that most of the extra building material is off the lawn, it’s starting to feel like a proper house (our landscaping is on hold, so it’s a massive weed garden, but it’s better than a building supply lot).

Plumbing
Toilets, faucets, showers, bathtubs, drains, heat exchanger connections, floor drains, condensation traps, backflow valves. We’re ready to pass our plumbing final inspection, which will take place on Monday. Our diswasher and espresso machine still need to be hooked up, but aren’t required for occupancy. I’d like to take a moment to admire Nathan’s skills. Our mechanical room is a work of art. Look at all the cool copper handiwork. It really adds to the engine room feeling of the house. Of all the beautiful spaces in our house, it might just be Mark’s fave :)

Occupancy
And finally, our occupancy. We called for the city to come on Tuesday. Usually they are required to come within 24 hours of a request. But for some reason, they were overbooked, and we couldn’t get anyone out this week. So someone should be coming on Monday. We were really hoping for someone to come on Friday, to give us an idea on what our weekend ‘occupancy to-do’ list would but unfortunately, no dice. 

Move
Meanwhile, while Mark’s working on site into the late hours, I’m at home packing boxes. I pulled the trigger and managed to find a moving company less than a week in advance of the move date. The thought of moving all the boxes and furniture ourselves, with all the work remaining at the house and all the work to date, was enough to shatter me into a million pieces. Phew! When my mom was visiting last week, she was with her Australian boyfriend, who trained with their military once-upon-a-time. He expressed concern that we were starting to show signs of severe exhaustion akin to his military training where they push you until you break, and then keep pushing. Maybe. But at least we have our new spa to unwind in at the end of the long day :)

The majority of our week was spent on the 7-step wood ceiling (see last weeks post). With our move-in date looming, and tasks remaining, I wanted to cut corners and time (patience is not one of my virtues). But thank goodness we didn’t (and thank Mark and Graham’s overruling expertise). It looks so damn good. It brings sense of nature and warmth to all the man-made, hard lines on the inside. It rewards you at the end of your winding staircase journey. And I get to wake up each morning looking at it. Much nicer than a boring ol’ white ceiling.

Track lighting has been installed where you see the larger black gaps. We’ll be hanging several pendants off the tracks over the void. Once we get the fixture order in.

Apart from the ceiling, I painted the girls rooms. They chose their colours, and I surprisingly love them! Purple and green. Our plumbing fixture install continued. And our tiling is 98% complete. The kids had their first bath in the house over the weekend. And we had our first dinner party with my mom. Take out pizza on the roof deck.

We did a major cleanup over the weekend in prep for the week ahead. Stairs and wood floors. Hoping third time’s a charm.

We are participating in this years Green Energy Doors Open, taking place over the weekend of September 10th and 11th. This is a great chance to get out and see some Passive House builds near Ottawa! Not just ours. There are 7 with their doors open. Including a multi-unit community housing project on the CCOC bike tour and the Chelsea Passive House that plotnonplot designed, both of which Mark acted as Passive House advisor. If you're interested in Passive House, and building science, it's a great opportunity to see the various approaches and talk to the people who built them. RMA Architects also has its office doors open, where you can see some cross-laminated timber (CLT) in use.

Our house will be open for touring Sat afternoon and all day Sunday. 

http://www.ottawagedo.org/

Here's the roundup from week 49.

Deck
The deck platform and stairs are finished, with the exception of the final stairs to ground level. We need our final grading to be completed first, which should bring our number of stairs down to 2 instead of 4. We also need some railings. These will most likely be temporary railings, to get us to occupancy.

Tile
Benjamin was at the house and finished laying the tile in our bathroom. It was a lot of tile, extending all the way to the ceiling (which will get the special wood-treatment soon). It’s quite dramatic.

Countertops
Our island counter was installed. And quickly covered as to not incur damage. We chose Caesarstone because it's zero-maintenance.

Electrical
We have lights! Now there’s no excuse for us not to work late. Most of our fixtures are in. Minus a few feature lights. Thank you Yves, and sorry for choosing pot lights that tore up your hands during the install :(

The best tip we received for lighting was to consider what you want to light. With stairs, for example, it's important that the stairs are lit, so you can see where to put your foot, and not the entire stair well. And with general room lighting, it's the walls that need defining, so direct your lights towards the walls and not the middle of the room.

Plumbing
We have a toilet in the house! This is majorly exciting for me. I don’t have to use the porta-pottie when I’m working on site anymore! And we can finally get that thing removed. The remaining fixtures will be installed this week.

Vanities
Mark assembled and mounted our bathroom vanities. We opted for Ikea vanities. We went through multiple explorations, trying to find an alternative, but just couldn’t stomach the associated costs. We almost pulled the trigger on a custom bent metal vanity that we designed, but in the end, it left us with too many unknowns (and no drawers). In our bathroom, we have an Ikea base that we’re pairing with a Caesarstone counter and Toto vessel sink. It will be partially custom, in this case. It will look great, but I really wish that Ikea made a 1 drawer depth vanity. I prefer the proportions, but am sure the extra drawer will be put to good use.

Ceiling
Mark and I had this crazy idea that our sloped ceiling would look fantastic if it were clad in wood. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I’m sure it will become a good idea again, after all is said-and-done. But now? It’s a lot of effort. 

The order of things is a follows:

Step 1: lay plywood
Step 2: level and strap ceiling
Step 3: paint everything black
Step 4: install lighting tracks
Step 5: oil and stain ash planks
Step 6: mount ash on strapping
Step 7: admire hardwork 

Graham and Sebastian helped to progress the ceiling over the weekend. Finishing off the strapping in our bedroom and bathroom. They moved on to the main space, over the void, and set up what they nicknamed ‘the death trap’ – a precarious platform to help them reach across the 2-story open space (aka. void) that exists in the middle of the house. It isn’t actually as precarious as the name makes it sound. The hope is that they finish the strapping tomorrow, leaving the death trap setup for Mark or I to paint everything black. Yay. 

It really will look fantastic…

Landscaping
We’re working on a landscape plan with Rebecca James, an architectural technologist with a horticulture degree. Landscape design doesn’t pay the bills, so she does it on the side of her regular 9-5. Because she loves it. My kind of girl. We’re happy with what’s she’s shown us so far. 100% we won’t have landscaping for occupancy, nor this year for that matter, but we want to set up the design now, so we know what we’re working towards in the future. I wish it could all happen RIGHT NOW!!!!

Project management
On the project management side of things, we’re hoping to finish electrical and plumbing this upcoming week so we can go for our next construction mortgage withdraw. In the meantime, we’re racking up lots of travel points on our credit cards. One of these days we’ll want to leave Ottawa and our new house, so those points will come in handy. One of these days...

Our heads are down and we're ticking tasks off our lists faster than new ones are getting added. It's looking promising *knock on wood* for us to make the occupancy call on Aug. 23rd. My mom is visiting from Vancouver this week and has taken our kids to a cottage. I got to spend the whole weekend working on site, And will have my evenings to contribute this upcoming week too. Miss the kids like crazy, but won’t have much time to do so. Lots of site tidy-up and painting on my plate. And getting ready to move. Hopefully for the last time.

But first, we had a rooftop picnic with the girls tonight (on our newly finished rooftop deck!). When we arrived back at our just-ok rental house a few blocks away, Josie started crying. She said “I no want this house”. Ha! I guess we’re all getting a wee bit anxious.

Stairs and screen wall

Our stairs are designed to float between the wall and a 2 storey metal screen wall. So before the stairs themselves can go in we had to install the screen wall and metal bridge. Mark tackled this over a couple of weekends with some great help — huge thanks to Rob Villeneuve, Steve Dufresne, Mike Davis, Graham Dorey, Nick, and Gary Sharp (again! Gary, we owe you so much for all your help on our home). The metal screens support the bridge and the stair treads, and the bridge and stair treads stabilize the screen. Mark installed temporary treads so that the stairs are usable until the finished treads can be installed.

Kitchen install

We have a kitchen! And it’s gorgeous. Ordered our kitchen from Astro and had Kosta do the install. He was a pro. Took him 3 days. We have a combo of a white, glossy laminate for the functional kitchen drawers and a brown ash, sandblasted finish, on the doors facing the living space. For more on our kitchen design and layout, read this post.

Our counters will be installed next week. We decided on Caesarstone, in a dark cement finish. The counter is from Solid Decorum. And we have some beautiful ash butcher block from the Wood Source for the sill-come-counter under the window.

Tiles

The majority of our floor tiles have been laid. With the remaining to be completed and grouted over the weekend. We have quite a bit of tile in our house. In our bottom floor entry, and our main floor living space, we went with a dark, larger-format tile, arranged in a staggered pattern Mark designed. We’re really happy with them. In our upstairs bathrooms, we opted for a 1” x 3” black tile on the floor, which conveniently hide our linear drain in the master bath. And a larger format white subway tile on the walls. We’ve got a lot of wall tile in our master bath because of our sloping ceilings. Really look forward to seeing it go up – next week.

We’ve also been very happy with our choice in tile contractors. Flowtopp. Highly, highly recommend them. Tiles was sourced from Ceragres. We used Gate on the main floors (in Licorice), Unit on the bathroom floors (black), and I forget for the bathroom walls…

By the way, we aren’t concerned in the slightest that we’ll have cold toes on ceramic tile. We won’t have any thermal bridging thanks to Passive House. We also have a lovely area rug we purchased on our Moroccan honeymoon (years ago now, wow) for the living room, to soften up all the hard surfaces.

Priming and painting

The house has been primed and painted. Quelle difference. It’s starting to feel like a finished house. We went with Benjamin Moore, Chantilly Lace, in a flat finish (aka. white). We understand that an eggshell finish cleans more easily, but wanted to make sure that when light washes against our walls, they’ll look smooth and dreamy. Flat does a better job at hiding blemishes. We enlisted the services of Michael Fenton, who helped us paint our last house as well. This man knows his paint.

ERV and heater install

Mark is nearly finished installing the Zehnder ERV and ground source heat exchanger. The units are hung in place and most of the ductwork is connected. Our 4kW Thermolec duct heater is also in place. This is the heater for the whole house! It’s small enough for our 3 year old daughter to hold on her lap while she eats ice cream. Nathan from Ackland Plumbing will be priming our ground loop and connecting it this coming week. 

Hot water tank install
Nathan from Ackland Plumbing also installed our Stiebel Eltron heat pump hot water tank. It’s an 80 gallon tank that uses an air source heat pump to heat the water (meaning super energy efficient). It looks cool too.

Siding
Our siding is finished and looks fantastic. Thanks to Graham Dorey. 

Roof deck

Our rooftop deck also looks amazing. Thanks to Graham Dorey. Who struggled with a strained knee, from a football accident and not the house, these past couple days. Going up and down a ridiculously high ladder with decking materials. 

We have yet to install a railing, which we’ll need for occupancy. The building inspector nay’ed our initial design, because it didn’t meet the building’s code definition of safe. He considered it climbable. He did say, however, that if we built a mock-up, he’d come look at it and assess the climbability in person. So that’s something we’ll be progressing next week. And/or we’ll look at redesigning it.

Front deck

Our front deck build is underway. Step one was to get some helical piles drilled into the ground to support the structure of the deck. Why helical piles? To minimize root damage to our big tree out front. A more typical deck pile requires digging of a hole much larger than the post itself. Whereas, a helical pile requires a hole only as large as the diameter of the pile itself, which you see in the picture is quite small.

Step two was to lay some landscape fabric and gravel for underneath the deck. Mark did all the gravel moving himself in the humid, sweltering heat that is Ottawa in July. Deck build is set to start this weekend and continue over the course of next week, with Graham on the job. 

That’s all folks. I’m sure I’ve missed things so I’ll be sure to write more frequently over the final weeks to come. If for some reason you don’t hear from me, it’s because we’re building a house, and are busy building it.

When Mark and I decided to move forward with the build of our home, we decided to take on the heavy task of acting as general contractors, together. We knew it would be a sacrifice, with extra hours into our evenings and weekends, but fingers-crossed, it would be a short-lived one. Since we had two toddlers already, we weren’t giving up any kind of social life to speak of. And we were both self-employed, with a good deal of control over our schedules (minus the toddlers factor). Shortly before breaking ground, however, an exciting full-time job opportunity came my way, as they do when you least suspect them, and I took it. Leaving Mark to handle the build almost entirely solo, with me acting as the annoying backseat driver, into our evenings and weekends. 

Full disclaimer: who am I kidding? I had/have no business acting as a GC anyhow, but I was ready and willing to learn. In any case, I resigned to understanding that I was contributing to the house in other ways. Making a steady paycheque and putting food on the table. Still, not quite what we planned for.

Mark has done exceptionally well, all things considered. There have been ups and downs in our learnings, from budgets extended to pigeons roosting. With the delays incurred due to the floors, and standing on site, seeing the state of things, I was starting to see our move-in date slip further and further away. I wasn’t about to let that happen. It’s crunch time. Our older daughter is going to school in September. Come hell or highwater, we need to be in the house in August. So we sat down together one night and project managed the shit out of our house.

If you remember from our previous project management post, our binder is in a state of disarray and our Gant charts have fallen behind (ie. pretty much non-existant). So for starters, we downloaded all the information that was in Mark’s head to a free tool/app called Trello. We’ve both had some experience with project management methods like Agile and GSD (get shit done, as my office calls it), so we borrowed some of these methods on our house. The list is a mile long, but we are getting through it, one task at a time. It will be done. Oh yes, it will. Every night we check in with eachother to see how we’re doing, what tasks need to be shifted or altered, and we’re getting shit done. We’re pulling together, in our race to the finish line.

I’m finally able to write about week 44. We had trouble with our hardwood floors. 

We bought white ash, 5” solid wood planks from the Wood Source. They were sitting in our house, acclimatizing for a couple weeks. The kitchen was all lined up for install the following week (week 45) and the floor was to be laid prior-to. Our lead carpenter, Graham, installed the floors with Mark’s help. They looked spectacular. But when walked on, they creaked. Not good. They were laid on top of waxed paper, and used staples every 12–16”. A bit more context on the situation: the subfloor is ¾” plywood glued and screwed on open web joists on 12” centres. The subfloor seemed good prior to installing the hardwood, with no squeaks or detectable movement, and moisture content within 5% of the hardwood. So what could the problem be?

That same day, they ripped them up, and re-installed. Second time around, they used waxed paper, 2” cleats every 4–6”, and glued the tongue and grooves together. Still, they creaked. At this stage, I was so ready to just screw the floors down to the subfloor and live with screws all over our new kitchen floor. But Mark, bless him, was not down with this. Again, they ripped up the floors. This time the glue destroyed the tongue and groove as they pulled it up, and this along with all the nails made the wood unsalvageable. Sniff.

We delayed the kitchen install while Graham and Mark consulted the Wood Source and multiple installers to try and troubleshoot the creaking. No one was able to provide any clear direction forward. With all the uncertainty, we decided to proceed with the kitchen install, which happened this past week (week 46), despite having no floors. 

We wanted the floors laid first, so the island could sit on top of them, at the right height. And because it makes for a much finickier install around the island. But it is what it is, we couldn’t delay our kitchen install any longer.

This was incredibly frustrating. It actually still is. We have some ideas on what to try next, but we’re not confident and therefore and continue to consult other installers and wood flooring companies. I want to be sure that when we install them for a third time, we won’t run into the same problem again. And if we do, we can confidently identify the culprit and get compensated for any loss. Fingers crossed. Any suggestions are welcomed.