Making Houses Work

The UAF Sustainable Village is a community for students who are passionate about the environment and reducing their carbon footprint. It is a collaboration between the UAF Office of Sustainability and the  Cold Climate Housing Research Center  to build and research energy efficient housing, renewable energy, and innovative heating and ventilation systems. Students at the Village make a commitment to sustainability through monitoring the systems, conserving energy and water, and helping develop additions like a greenhouse or community center.

On Wednesday we will celebrate the opening of the Village with a ribbon cutting on-site and words by CCHRC President Jack Hebert, UAF Chancellor Brian Rogers, student workers and student residents.

For more info contact Molly Rettig, Communications Coordinator, at molly at cchrc.org.

Wednesday October 3, 2012 at 12 p.m.

11:30—Press invited to tour the interior of a student home

12:00—Ribbon cutting & brief words by Chancellor Brian Rogers & Jack Hebert

12:15—Move to CCHRC for brief ceremony—student posters on display

12:30—CCHRC President/CEO Jack Hebert welcoming

12:40—Words from student on design/construction team – Skye Sturm

12:50—Words from student resident

1:00—Time for interviews

1:15-1:30—Optional public tour of a student home

It’s finishing time at the Sustainable Village! The devil is in the details, and we’re detailing ceilings, floors, corners, railings, trim, and everything else. The time lapse shows workers installing beautiful birch paneling on the upstairs ceiling as well as cabinets and appliances.

We continued siding, insulating, and Sheetrocking in Week 14. We began hanging a reclaimed steel siding that came from old dredge pipe in the surrounding area. It will provide an accent to the metal siding, adding a cool aesthetic and historical value to the homes.

http://makinghouseswork.cchrc.org/

The Village now has roofs. Roofers came and installed the green rubber-based shingles on all four homes in a single day. We also blew in roughly 2 feet of cellulose insulation underneath the NW roof, which will have a continuous 2-inch air gap between underneath the roof deck to keep the roof cold and dry.

We continued building REMOTE walls on the NE home, which will have 6 inches of interior fiberglass insulation and 8 inches of EPS foam board for 2/3 of total R-value on the outside.

Week 11 was a productive one at the Sustainable Village. Workers continued to install EPS foam (2 layers of 4-inch sheets) in three of the homes with a REMOTE wall system. We also sprayed polyurethane foam around the rim joist to seal it up.

Each home has a large, south-facing deck on the second floor. We finished the decks with a spray-applied elastomeric coating, the same stuff used for truck-bed liners, a durable, weather-proof material that is less material-intensive than wood and requires no penetrations in the ceiling. We sprayed foam insulation underneath the deck in the first-floor ceiling to create a warm thermal break.

This week we started hanging Sheetrock in the homes where we had already finished plumbing and electric. The interior is starting to look livable! Now it’s time to select 16 lucky students who will make the Village home. If you’re interested, visit http://www.uaf.edu/sustainability/sustainable-village.

During Week 9, we installed ceiling vapor barriers, continued plumbing and wiring work, and started working on the electrical hook-up for the homes. After heavy rain over the weekend, and the ground is still frozen a few feet down, the site was temporarily transformed into a mud pit. This made it interesting to navigate heavy equipment and dig a trench for the power line. Nevertheless, we will have electricity by the end of the week!

Takpaan Weber is a UAF student from Anaktuvuk Pass, a small Iñupiat village in the Alaska Brooks Range. She describes her experience working on the UAF Sustainable Village and other low-energy experimental prototype homes she has helped build in rural Alaska.

Framing is underway on the 4th and final house. Workers began applying ceiling vapor barriers and Grace rain and ice shields (which act as a drainage plane) to the fully framed homes. Now we’re exploring options for siding and interior finishing, looking at a combination of donated, market-value, and reclaimed materials.

We’ve made a lot of progress on the Sustainable Village this week—framed the first floor of the northwest house, started building the deck for the second floor, and poured concrete slabs for the two east homes.

The first floor of the first house was framed in a day. The 1,500-square-foot home has four bedrooms, a downstairs bathroom, upstairs kitchen, and big south-facing deck on the second story.

The beginning of the week was cold with scattered showers, so the concrete contractors waited until Thursday and Friday to pour slabs. The process took about two hours—the mixing truck and the pumping truck showed up and one of the guys poured the coloring (Santa Fe) into the mix. Then five guys worked together on the floor, spreading the “mud” from a rubber hose, moving it around with “mud sticks,” leveling the slab with a screed (or flat board), and smoothing and sealing it with a bull float (a long-handled tool with an aluminum float). Once the slab set up a bit, they went over it with a trowel (a flat, metal-bladed hand tool), which gets rid of any bumps and gives it a smooth finish. The slab is 1.5 inches with a pretty adobe color.

The crew is currently framing the second story. Next week students begin helping out on site.

During Week 3, we built floors for the two homes on pilings and laid radiant floor tubing. The homes will have concrete slabs and and about 10 inches of under-floor spray foam insulation.