Painting Has Started and First Blower-Door Test

February 2009: Painting has finally started. The painter first painted this small section of the garage to show us the colors so we could decide if we still wanted those colors. And we loved them! The shake shingles in the gables are being painted Cedar and the vertical lower siding is Mountain Pine with the trim in Mystic White, all from Olympic.

On Tuesday, Claude St. Hillaire, the LEED inspector from Home Energy Group performed a preliminary Blower-Door Test to check the air-tightness of our house. Another one will be performed after the sheet rock is finished. Here is the report from our builder: "All,

Home Energy Group did the blower door test on Tuesday afternoon. As a builder, it was quite an informative exercise. This should be done on every house.

The basic SIPS performed quite well. The panel to panel, the wall panel to wall, and the wall panel to roof panel connections were all fairly tight. There were a few areas that had some leakage, but all can be repaired. The majority of the spots that had some leakage were the areas where the SIP panels that formed the walls of dormers rested on the roof framing, where beams were cut into the SIP panels, and the door that was cut into the attic space above the garage. The testing agent was very thorough and as he went around he marked the few spots that needed to be filled/foamed. We'll get these areas repaired prior to hanging sheetrock. All-in-all, it is a tight house and will be very energy efficient.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks."

Richard J. Rogers P.E. ROGERS CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING 2324 Devine Street Columbia, SC 29205 If you haven't noticed, I finally figured out how to put web links into the blog, so have fun clicking!