HOUSE of the MONTH

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2005

This image is a photograph of how the exterior wall retrofit was literally hung on the side of the house. The materials used in this retrofit were a 2 x 6 bottom plate of all weather wood, lag-screwed into the old 2 x 4 wall floor plate laterally. A top plate was attached to the underside of the soffit at the top of the wall. Then wall framing studs of simple 1 x 4 rough cut local spruce timber from the Interior of Alaska were used for the entire wall retrofit. Each frame of the windows was framed with "five quarter" framing material to make it fit well with the exterior retrofit. The window framing was all painted white and then all the walls were filled with 5 inches of dense pack cellulose.

This is a picture of the front of the house with partial completion of the siding showing the Tyvek exposed all the way to the soffit. The areas of the wall below the windows have already been filled with cellulose and now the top of the wall remains to be filled, after the completion of the siding all the way up to the soffit. Using this particular technique allows you to fill the wall cavity with very dense pack cellulose without making a mess. The Tyvek very nicely confines the material in the wall without losing a lot by leakage and also provides an excellent weather barrier material on the exterior for water infiltration protection (a rain shield in effect) and it also is a wind barrier.

This shows the completed wall in the front of the house being painted with the masking over the windows.

This is a picture of the super window featured in the Fall 2005 ABSN newsletter. This was a fiberglass frame, high tech. window, the most expensive and highest quality I could find for the retrofit. It is in place in the next picture just having been set in the window frame with the vapor barrier surrounding it. Note the reflectivity of the window indicating its low emissivity and high reflectivity. This window cost about $61 a square foot and was the highest quality window I could find from a heat loss perspective.

A nice autumn/September picture of the house completed with the beautiful pastel yellow finish, which contrasts wonderfully with the former grey/blue battleship color that the house was. This retrofit cost on the order of $35,000. We are already noticing many affects from the retrofit including much higher humidity levels indoors, less air leakage, and much less operation of the oil furnace.