It was fun seeing Warroad, MN – aka Hockeytown, USA and was very impressed with every person I meet there.   For a great article on Warroad’s love for hockey read this NYT article.   I love small town America and was reminded that it is the backbone of this great country.  I am sure it has not been without pain that Marvin has kept Warroad and the surrounding region working during this difficult economic time without layoffs – Amazing Job!

Thanks to Mike St. John and Bob Davis with Marvin Window Concepts for making the trip happen.

Above you see masons working on a brick sample, performing a technique called mortar washing.  In recent years this has become a popular way of giving  brick a look that is somewhere between painted brick and stucco.  We worked with the masons to find the desired effacement, or brick exposure, for this French-eclectic-style home.  We wanted a formality to the home with a wall that expresses age but is not rustic, so we elected to use a three step process of applying the mortar by trowel, brushing it clean, and then lightly rubbing the wall with a dry rag to expose some of the raised corners of the brick.  We really love the sample and are excited about seeing the wall completed.

Every so often we stretch our wings and reluctantly try new construction materials.  I say reluctantly because we have been burnt in the past by materials that were cutting edge and overtime ended up being major problem products: ie, PVC membrane roofing, EIFS, and most recently Tendura Plank porch decking.

However, after consulting with members of our project team we felt it was time to try an insulation system we have been hearing about for several years now – Icynene.  We decided to use it on a LEED-certified and Energy STAR qualified project in Knoxville, TN.  The Icynene system’s strength is not in a higher R-value as much as in its ability to seal the home tightly and prevent unwanted air leakage.

Iceynene explains on their wesite that “R-value measures energy moving in and out of a home through the insulation material (conduction).  But the real energy-waster is air leakage (convection) – the cause of up to 40% of a home’s energy loss (Source: U.S. Department of Energy).”

I like how quite this insulating system makes the home even before gypsum board is applied.  I also like the ability to insulate the ceiling deck so that all attic mechanical ducts are within the insulated envelope of the home providing additional energy performance.  And it is fun making hand and face prints in the stuff before the wall boards go up.  Once the insulation is installed, the house is so tight that the HVAC system must provide fresh air to keep the indoor air healthy for the inhabitants, so a poor mechanical system with this product could be a real problem.  My biggest complaint about Icynene so far is the strong odor the product emits when being installed.  Also, like most chemically created products, it consumes a great deal of energy during manufacturing.  Icynene cost about %40 more than standard Fiberglass batt insulation but the trade off is some significant payback on the utility bill.   In the end, I am confident the product will perform well for the home’s inhabitants for generations to come.

These sketches show a modular house concept we are developing based on a 14′ module. The frame of this house is built in the warehouse in 14′x14′x50′ sections, shipped to the future location of your home and assembled on site. This method of construction combines the best parts of modular homes (i.e. trailers) with custom, site-built homes. It provides the efficiency and controlled environment of a factory while breaking out of the 15′x50′ or 30′x50′, height-limited boxes that modular homes have been relegated to in the past. Just like building with legos; you’re limited only by your imagination.

The art of dormer construction has been lost over the past forty years.  Some builders get it right, but they are usually the tradition-freaks like us, who regularly thumb through old architecture books.  Above is a grid of example photos.  The “Don’t” section could be worse, but we want to refine that last 10%.  Following are a few of our rules of thumb.

• Scale: Make dormers as trim and as light as possible.  Dormers are meant to let light in, not to give grand views.  Use them to accent your overall design, not to increase square footage.
• Reduced Framing: Make your framing as tight as possible.  We omit the king studs beside the window and only include jack studs on which the headers rest.  This makes the next rule possible.
• Trim: Surrounding the window should be a single piece of trim.  The outside corner of that piece of trim is the corner of the dormer. [An exception to this is when the siding material is shakes.  A good shingler can turn the corner and trim it out in a nice fashion. See C above.]
• Fascia Scale: Don’t necessarily match dormer fascia and rake trim to the fascia and rake trim size of the main house body, it’s usually just too big.
• Gutters: Don’t.

There are many more intricacies, and each design requires its own finess, but these rules of thumb are a good start.
Notes:  a.) nice and tight, use of crown molding at roof intersection, slope of hipped dormer matches roof. b.) use of crown molding which matches scale of dormer, not of main house body. c.) shed dormer with minimal overhangs and appropriately scaled rake trim.  d.) wall dormer, nice and tight even with stone facade which continues up face of dormer.  e.) don’t use gutters, don’t put siding material on front face of dormer.  f.) trim around window is a little too big, don’t return fascia and roof on dormer.  g.) don’t use gutters, don’t use wide overhangs on dormers.  h.) don’t use crown molding that matches scale of main house body.  don’t put shutters on wall dormers where they couldn’t possibly be used.