It’s a bittersweet time for the owners of the 100K House project homes. Both homes are being put back on the market for the first time since they were built as both families move on to the next phase in their journey through life.

My wife, Courtney, and I are expecting our second child (Mr. Ryker J. Ludeman) in the month of May and desire a division of space in our next house to minimize night time crying battles as much as possible.  Our neighbors in the 120K are moving into a rental as they contemplate a move to the West Coast as they are both finishing up their Masters Degrees in Sustainability. While we’d both love to own these homes forever, we just can’t make it work at this time in our lives.

Yes, many of you commented that a larger family could not work in the 100K. You are right to a degree. We could make it work for a year or so, but there’s something about not being able to close a door to our bedroom for a bit of privacy as the boys get older that just doesn’t sit quite right with us. This house was never intended for a family of four. It has been perfect for us to date and hopefully it will be perfect for the next owner. We think it will.

The 100K will be listed next week most likely for $299K. The 120K is already listed for $319K. The 120K is the one with the orange door on the corner if you are driving by. It has more windows, is 2′ wider than the 100K, has an awesomely wide floating staircase, has a ridiculously huge backyard (by Philly standards) and a fully custom kitchen by Pappajohn Woodworking. This is why it is listed for slightly more than ours on the inside with the green door.

While you’ve come to know these homes well here, some new folks may not know everything about them. They aren’t the largest homes in Philly, but we think they may be the most heavily decorated homes in the city in some key categories. Some of their accolades are listed below:

1. LEED Platinum Certified by the USGBC
2. Energy Star Certified and 50% more efficient than a new code home (utilities bills less than $100 per month on average)
3. LEED for Homes Project of the Year in 2010 awarded by the USGBC (this is a bid deal they tell us)
4. AIA Philadelphia Award Winner (ISA tells us this is a big deal)
5. AIA Pennsylvania Award Winner (ISA tells us this is a bigger deal)
6. National AIA Housing Award
7. Multiple magazine features including Metropolis Mag, Dwell Mag, GRID and GOOD Mag
8. Newsprint mentions including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Business Journal and many more
9. Numerous articles and posts on the top green building blogs and architecture sites around the world

Here are some of the better pics and videos on the project to complete this post. While we are both sad to leave the project, we are also excited to see who the new owners will be and how they will live in the homes.

100K House Postgreen Homes Flickr Set

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Inspired by Design: New Gen, Next Gen by Babelgum

We just settled on the Two Point Five Beta yesterday marking the completion of Postgreen’s eighth house. We don’t have final photography or LEED results yet, so this is just a quick celebratory post with a more comprehensive one to follow.

This house is the first to feature our new 1two5 Cabinets in the kitchen. The Sepviva Line, designed with matte laminates, aluminum edge banding and clean, simple lines was created for this house in Matte White and Terril. It features the Frigidaire slide in hybrid induction range and the Whirlpool/Bosch combo of fridge and dishwasher. The dishwasher blends in with a custom door panel. The final piece is a 2cm Ceaserstone countertop. We snapped some quick scouting pictures of this kitchen the other day with young Teague in the role of professional model. We felt his former work as an unhappy hipster qualified him for the work. Here’s a sample. More will follow when we take the actual professional shots.

In addition to the 1two5 kitchen the Two Point Five is home to another first. It is the first time we have beat the Passive House air sealing requirement of .6 ACH (Air Changes per Hour) at 50 Pa. Our final blower door came in at .54 ACH as you might have guessed from the cryptic title of this post. We will have more discussion of that in the coming week including how we got there and how it effects our final HERS rating.

Well, it’s a somewhat brief and unsatisfying post, but I promise more very soon. For now, feel free to put any appropriate unhappy hipster captions for the above picture in the comments. Check out the real site for inspiration.

We have been playing around with some new ways to post video to our MLS listings and thought you might like to see where it led. As most of you know, we are on the verge of building four homes in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia under the moniker Avant Garage. These homes, which will feature our coolest interiors to date, are currently available for customization and purchase. Run through the customization tool and tell us what you think. We have made a lot of changes and could use some opinions other than our own.

The video we made, using a service called Animoto is almost like a glorified slide show, but boy is it glorified. I like the initial results, and I think it is a tool we will keep working with in the future. It’s easy to use and there is more flexibility than I originally thought. Feel free to go full screen with it. The high res version looks pretty good.

Don’t worry, this style of video won’t replace our more ridiculous on camera antics, but we think it might play a role in sharing aspects of our projects. I still intend to do a lot of work on the overall format and hopefully will have an update to show you soon, but for now tell us what you think in the comments.

The whole post and all the related information is up on the Postgreen Homes blog, but I thought the video also deserved a showing here. Take a look as we jack my poor self up 35 feet in a tiny bucket to get shots of the view from the future roof deck and green roof of the Avant Garage project. You will also note that, as in most of our videos, I make a bit of a fool of myself. My parents are so proud.

Hope you all enjoyed the view and the picture of me in my helmet. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

As most of you know by now, we have moved our project specific coverage over to the Postgreen Homes Blog, but since change is a difficult thing, I will occasionally post some small updates with similar info here. Hopefully, everyone will soon subscribe to the PGH Blog for this kind of news, but until then I’ll continue to lightly burden those of you already reading both. Sorry, but it seems necessary.

We have been working hard at finalizing our Avant Garage plans over the past few weeks, and soon we will have some updated facade images and roof deck options. We are also trying to finalize our plans for the garage space and should have more details soon. Today, we posted a couple of new interior renderings including this one:

We are very happy with the quality of the renderings and think that they give a great sense of the space we are planning to create. ISA has done a fantastic job tackling the interesting challenges we have posed for them with this project. I particularly like the stair between the kitchen and living area. It’s mix of functional stairs, storage and seating is an excellent approach to the open two-level plan.

Will we continue to revise these homes for the next few days as we prepare for construction. Of course, throughout that time we encourage comments on all the details we bring up. We love to hear feedback from all of our readers. If we didn’t, we would probably keep most of this to ourselves.

As always, the four homes in the Avant Garage project are available for customization and purchase. Come on over and check it out. Window shoppers are always welcome and we would love to hear your feedback.

As always, feel free to use the comments to let us know what you think, but we would like it even better if you went over to the PGH Blog and joined the conversation there.

The Avant Garage project is the new, oddly named Postgreen Homes project consisting of four homes in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. We are happy to announce that all four homes are now officially available to customize and buy.

Everyone at Postgreen is very excited about this project as it is introducing a new model in a new location. I am not going to spend a lot of time on the details here, but you can find out plenty more about the floor plans, facade design and more on the Postgreen Homes blog.

So, instead of rehashing information already available elsewhere, I’ll simply share this video press release on the project which will give you a chance to see a bit of the neighborhood and laugh at our persistent foolishness. It will also allow you to marvel at the quality of a video shot entirely on my iPhone.

We will have more information on this project as it develops over at the Postgreen Homes blog. So, stop on by or better yet, subscribe via rss or email.

As always, please confine your praise, mockery or combination of the two to the comments section below.

You know by now that we’re all about finding the best bang for our buck when it comes to energy efficient construction. That’s how this whole thing started. It’s been a while since we’ve posted on advancements in our building philosophy, so why not talk about our next super-insulated wall assembly that we think could just possibly be the most affordable wall assembly that achieves maximum R-value and minimum thermal bridging with the least impact on your budget.

This is a bold statement, so I expect some comments and rebuttals. Here is my rationale.

THE Wall Assembly

• Double stud wall, 2×4′s on 24″ centers.
• Dense-packed cellulose in the wall cavity.
• OSB exterior sheathing.
• R-10 continuous exterior insulation, taped at all seams.

Here’s why this wall assembly is chalk full of awesomeness:

• Double stud walls on 24″ centers is the easiest and cheapest built thick wall cavity. Both material costs and labor costs are extremely low compared to alternatives (TJI’s for instance).
• Cellulose is economical while also being the best green insulation product known to man (see future post on cellulose superiority). It’s cheap. It barely has a carbon footprint. It fills all voids. It retards air flow like a champ. It has high thermal mass compared to alternatives like foam and fiberglass. Did I mention it’s affordable? This is important.
• OSB is cheap and makes it easier to attach cladding and laterally brace your structure.
• Continuous exterior insulation is the icing on the cake. It’s not uber cheap or low in the carbon footprint category, but used sparingly, it can be quite effective. It eliminates any thermal bridging worries that might have you up at night. When taped, it also can virtually eliminate air penetration and double as a water resistive barrier allowing one product to serve three important roles.

The next Postgreen Home, the 2 point 5 beta, will incorporate a 9″ thick double stud wall filled with dense packed cellulose (R-30) and sheathed in OSB and capped off with 1.55″ (R-10) of exterior Poly-iso rigid insulation. This will result in a wall with an R value of 40 and absolutely no thermal bridging. This will be our best wall assembly to date and most likely the wall we will stick with going forward. [Please forgive discrepancies from this description and the image above]

Inferior Alternatives?

One of my hopes in posting this hypothesis is that one of you guys out there will prove us wrong and give us a better wall assembly that packs more bang for the buck. Here are some of the other options I will shoot down in advance:

1. Excessive exterior insulation – As we stated above, rigid insulation is not cheap and has a larger carbon footprint than many other insulations. Therefore it should be used as sparingly as possible. R-10 is the minimum amount needed in most US climates to mitigate dew point issues that could cause moisture in your walls. Lastly, going over 2″ in thickness in exterior insulation will drive up the cost of your fasteners and labor required to attach your exterior cladding to your framing underneath.
2. Spray foam – While spray foam could be argued to be one of the more effective insulation options out there, it’s by far the most expensive and one of the most damaging to the environment with it’s ozone killing component and high carbon footprint.
3. Any type of batt insulation – Seriously?
4. ICF’s - Expensive, built of harmful foam, hard to get a high r-value and filled with concrete.
5. Big ass SIPs – These have the same problems as excessive amounts of foam as that is what the core is comprised of. Also, have you ever tried to lift a 10″ – 12″ roof SIP into place as a wall? They’re really heavy and unwieldy, adding to your install costs.
6. Blown-in Fiberglass – Substituting fiberglass for cellulose would decrease your costs slightly while achieving the same R-value. The big downsides are that it has a much higher carbon footprint, virtually no thermal mass and does not resist airflow, crippling it’s advertised R-value in the face of any air movement through your walls.

Let the comments roll.

We don’t like to duplicate content between this site and the Postgreen Homes site, but I’m so excited about our newest project and the introduction of a new model that I had to at least make a brief announcement here. We are officially launching the Two Point Five model that we talked about a couple posts back and it’s debut will be in a single home project behind the 100k House. We have tentatively named that project the Two Point Five Beta. There are still some design items to flesh out, but the house is available for customization and purchase as of today.

This home is going to be very cool. Head on over and check out the post announcing it or better yet, just jump right in and customize the Two Point Five Beta.

This Saturday, as in tomorrow, is the Trenton Avenue Arts Fest. It is a great neighborhood event that features artists and crafts people selling a huge variety of interesting stuff. There is also plenty of good food and beer, and the famous Kinetic Sculpture Derby, an event not to be missed. The whole thing kicks off at noon and if you live in or around Philly, we suggest you make an effort to come.

Cool, you say, but why mention this on the 100k Blog? What does this have to do with Postgreen or sustainable building? Well, there are two good answers to that . . .

1. This event is a great opportunity to see why we build houses in this neighborhood. We think this festival exemplifies much of the spirit and energy we love in Kensington. It is something we are looking for as we research projects in other areas.
2. It is a great time to see the newly installed facade on the Skinny Project just half a block away from the festivities. This project features house tattoos by the talented Candy Depew and is an impressive sight. The entire facade is not quite finished yet, but all the panels are up and it’s definitely worth a glance.

We hope to see those of you in the Philly area out on Trenton Ave. tomorrow. If you want to find me I’ll most likely be at my wife’s booth on the NE corner of Trenton and Susquehanna. Stop by and chat if you’re out and about. Now here is a little teaser to entice you . . .

As always, the comments are a good place to announce your plans to attend or apologize for the logistics of distance and/or obligation that prevents you from doing so.

It occurred to me that we haven’t really written a good post dedicated to vented rain screen assemblies. A rain screen is basically a gap created in between the sheathing of a house and the exterior cladding. It is considered by most building experts to be the most durable method of building an exterior wall and almost all commercial cladding details implement some type of a rainscreen. We have decided to use a vented rain screen on all of our Postgreen Homes and will talk about what we have learned to date in more detail below.

Benefits of a Vented Rain Screen

There are a couple of key benefits to using a vented rain screen assembly on any building that improve the performance and durability over the life of that building. Let’s put them in list form.

1. Equalized pressure means less air infiltration inside your building. Since there is an air gap between the exterior sheathing and cladding, the pressure is equalized with the exterior atmosphere. I’m no scientist, but basically this means that air is not going to be fighting hard to enter your building when it hits the cladding because the rain screen has eliminated the large pressure difference that usually exists between the exterior and interior of the home and various layers in between. This helps when you are trying to build homes as air tight as we are in order to achieve maximum energy efficiency.
2. Water the makes it past the cladding will drain and dry out, keeping the guts of your walls dry. This is where the durability claims come from. Water will eventually make it through any and all cladding assemblies on a building. The vented rain screen makes sure that when water does get through it is able to drain down the face of the Water Resistive Barrier and out the bottom or simply dry out on its own due to the air gap behind the cladding. This not only helps to keep moisture from getting into your walls assembly (which is bad), but it prolongs the life of whatever cladding is used by allowing it to dry out when wet from both sides.
3. An extra layer of air keeps your building cooler. In most homes, the sun hits your cladding which is in direct contact with the sheathing. The heat from the sun is transferred directly from the cladding into your walls. This makes your building warmer than necessary. The air gap created by a rain screen keeps the face of your sheathing much cooler. This is more important in the South where cooling loads dominate heating loads, but it’s still a nice feature in the north.

How to Build a Vented Rain Screen

There are many other people on the interwebs that I have linked to below that have described the how-to’s of rain screen building, so I’ll keep this brief. Here are the basic elements of any vented rain screen assembly:

1. Furring strips or a Drainage mat to create the air gap in between your sheathing/WRB and your exterior cladding. We list options for this material below, including our new favorite, The Furring Master!



2. An insect barrier at the bottom of the rain screen assembly gap with proper mechanical flashing. You want to keep the bugs from nesting in your rain screen from the bottom and water from draining into your basement.



3. A path for air to flow at the top of your cladding assembly. If you seal the top of your cladding to your roof cap or top trim piece, the rain screen is compromised by insufficient air flow from top to bottom.



4. A bit of extra care and planning at all window and door openings in terms of proper flashing. A good designer or flashing expert can help out here, but there are many details online for this as well that are simple to follow if planned for.

Material options for implementing Vented Rain Screens

There are many simple material options for creating the vital gap needed to build a vented rain screen system in residential buildings. There are much fancier systems implemented in commercial construction that we are no going to get into here. Some of the choices and their pros and cons are listed below:

• Pressure treated lumber – This option is one of the most popular as it is a familiar material, readily available and not too expensive. Rips of pressure treated plywood can be used or 1x material. This is what we used on the Passive Project. The main drawbacks are that the wood is not consistently flat and straight for precise cladding applications and water can be trapped between the wooden strips and the WRB with no room for venting where all strips are located.
• Mesh ventilation product – There are many mesh products available that are thin and easily applied in roll form over your WRB with a slap stapler. These products work great and eliminate the problem of trapped moisture completely that occurs with wooden furring strips. The main cons are the price and the uneven compression that can result in wavy cladding when fasteners are attached with different pressures. This is the product we used on the 100K House.
• Metal furring strips (The Furring Master) – Metal furring strips are our current favorite option due to a number of factors. The price is much better than the mesh products and not that higher than wood, depending on what type of wood strip you are using. They are perfectly straight and rigid which lends itself to the best finished installation of siding. One of our favorite aspects of it is that it has a hollow channel behind it that allows water and air to flow behind the surface, unlike wood. Lastly, it’s made of galvanized 22 gauge steel that is recyclable and can be left exposed in certain joints if desired without concern for UV degradation, decay or rusting.



Above is a picture of our installed Furring Master strips. We have studs at 24″ on center on the Skinny Project, but we installed the furring strips at 12″ centers. The strips in the middle that are not connected to studs are basically just maintaining the spacing from the wall and keeping the somewhat fragile panels rigid and secure.

• Miscellaneous other products – Although less common, we’ve seen others use creative products like corrugated plastic, rigid insulation and fiber cement strips.

Better links to Vented Rain Screen Instructions

Best post on Rainscreens ever by the BUILDblog – Fantastic diagrams and pictures from guys who really know what they are doing.

Green Home Building’s take on Rain Screens (PDF) – Good info, details and lots of hose wrap bashing. What more could you ask for?

Rain Control in Buildings by Building Science Corp – All sorts of good info about how rain and wind are trying to destroy your building and how to prevent them from succeeding.

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