I broke the steam generator before we had even used it once.

I haven’t told D, because I was so ashamed.

It happened like this:

In an effort to have a welcoming guest suite in time for Christmas (and, let’s face it – I wanted to have a steam shower myself in this inhospitable season), I ordered and picked up a steam generator in November. With plenty of coaxing, I managed to get our recalcitrant plumber to install the little unit under the stairs. Then, our electrician came by to bring power up to it. The plumber stayed around over the next day, preparing to finally hook up our toilets to the rainwater cistern, after many false starts and re-doing over the last year-and-a-half. And, that’s the last we saw of our plumber, in spite of many (successively angrier) phone calls and emails. Here’s what the yard looks like (and why the plumber has created a safety hazard on our walkway for the past two months):

The full-height glass shower door was installed a few days before guests arrived. I thought that, even though the shower itself wasn’t hooked up, we could at least sweat it out in the steam room and pour water over ourselves. So, I checked that the breakers on the electrical panel were on, then turned on the timer. One minute… Two minutes… No evidence of steam. And then I heard a clunk and smelled a smell. (You know that smelling a smell is a scientific way of identifying problems, don’t you?)

I immediately turned off the unit, and a shot of adrenalin blew into my head. I just knew that I had done something wrong. Then, I read the instructions. (I know, I know, you don’t need to say it.) The instructions said that warranty is void if the unit is turned on before the water supply tap is opened. Sure enough, the water supply wasn’t turned on.

I waited a few minutes for any heating element to cool down, THEN I turned on the water supply. Turned on the timer/switch again, and, happily, listened to the steam vent hiss. But, no steam, then “clunk!” It turned itself off.

Lucky I was alone at the time, because I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know what I’d done.

I shoved the problem to the back of my mind, where it has niggled at me for more than a month. Today, I called the supplier, Leisure Baths in Burnaby, and confessed what I had done. I needed to know what to do to fix the problem, and assumed I would have to remove the unit and bring it to town to have the element replaced at my expense.

Jonathan, the technician, was as good as those gods who walk me through internet problems: patient, calm, appearing to be able to see exactly what I was seeing, and not talking down to me.

First, we took a look at the electrical. At one point he asked if I had a volt-meter. I said we had one somewhere, and I would find it. When I finally found it and opened its case, a feeling of “I can’t do this” washed over me.

It was a complicated-looking gadget that I have always let D handle. After all, he wired our first home all by himself (and it passed inspection). I am nervous about anything electrical. But, Jonathan told me exactly how to use it, and when I tested the contacts, no circuit appeared to be functioning, thus validating my assumption that I had blown an element. But, he said that there is an over-ride switch that turns off the power if no water is getting in, so unless some wire is fried (which it isn’t), electrical should be fine! Then, I noticed that I hadn’t pushed the black plug all the way in on the multimeter. When I did that, it proved that the unit was still getting power! (Happy Dance.)

But, when I turned on the water again, and then the timer/switch, no steam. Jonathan just kept on calmly trouble-shooting with me. “See that blue water connector with the brass hose bib? Unscrew the bib. BUT, first turn off the water supply! What kind of washer is in there?” “Well,” said I, “It doesn’t look like a washer at all, but a flat disk with a tiny hole in the middle.”

“I think that’s our problem,” said Jonathan. “There were two different washers included. The plumber was supposed to use the ring-shaped one that is just like a regular hose washer. Take that one out and replace it with a regular washer.”

The round black washer with the tiny hole in it is the wrong one. A regular hose washer is now inside the hose fitting.

I did that (only 1 small soaking when I had it on crooked.) Turned on the water and THEN the switch/timer.

And, glory be, the steam head hissed, AND real-live steam came out!!! Look:

So, I learned some valuable lessons:

1. Read instructions thoroughly.

2. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

3. Don’t be afraid to try new tools, especially after getting a tutorial and/or reading instructions. Read about the last time I learned to use a tool that I was afraid of, here.

4. Professional tradespeople make mistakes, too.

5. The Relax-A-Mist steam generator is well-designed, to withstand the abuse of incompetent users and tradespeople.

Now, if you’re still reading, you may be asking yourself “What does all this have to do with building green?”

Truth is, not so much. But, consider this: I am just an ordinary person who is building a green home. I’m not formally trained in anything except Home Economics and design. I am organized and persistent and can do some pretty good research.

The purpose of this blog is to help anyone who is interested in building green gain insight into the mechanics, technicalities, philosophy, costs, and processes involved. I want to make it easier for people to build the way we all should be building (OK, preachy, I know.) I wish I had such a blog to read before we started this project 2.5 years ago. I have approached this massive task as an ignorant person who can be stubborn and get things done, sometimes by myself. In these pages you can read about all my relevant research and far too many mistakes. I hope it will encourage anyone to be courageous and try new things.

And, by the way, I looked up the current Hydro rates and calculated how much it costs to run the steam shower for 30 minutes. $0.29! (and that’s at the higher BC Hydro “step.”) So, not such an energy hog as you might expect.

Heat pump

In a previous post I reported on a green building forum presented by the Sunshine Coast Regional District.

I didn’t tell you one of the most important things I learned from Murray Frank, the speaker from Constructive Home Solutions.

He told a story of his British father-in-law, whose lifelong habit was to turn down the heat every night, to save energy. After his home heating system was updated to an air-to-air heat exchanger (or heat pump), he continued to turn down the heat each night before going to bed. His son-in-law advised him not to turn it down, but he continued to do so, while steadfastly denying that he was. When s-i-l saw him turning it down, he devised a plan. He installed a fake thermostat in place of the thermostat f-i-l adjusted each night. Then, he installed the functioning thermostat in a hidden location, set it to f-i-l’s daytime temperature. F-i-l continued to turn down the fake, but reported to s-i-l that the system was finally fixed, because his heating bills were considerably lower!

What gives?

Well, the heat pump works on the differential between the air inside and the air outside. If the thermostat needs to jump 2 or 3 degrees suddenly in the morning the (necessary) back up heating system (a furnace) jumps in to get it to the higher temperature quickly.

The furnace - back up heating system

Last winter, I observed the “auxiliary heat on” notation on the thermostat every morning, and was frustrated because the outside temperature wasn’t very cold. Wasn’t our heat pump working as promised?

Now that we’re not turning down the thermostat every night, the heat pump doesn’t have to raise the inside temperature suddenly, and our heating bills have gone down. (An aside: Since last winter, we have installed a simple electric heater with a blower fan in the studio, so there are additional electrical demands, too. Our heating bills should be higher, not lower.)

So, I conclude that turning down the heat at night doesn’t save energy. Take that to the bank.

At least, if you have a heat pump!

We’re not anywhere near close to “off the grid” with our project, but you may be interested in reading an entertaining blog from Dave, who is living off the grid on an island on BC’s coast. This particular post is about alternative energy sources.

Although electric under-floor heat in the bathrooms uses a fair bit of energy (9 watts per heated square foot), it is a little luxury that we can choose to use or not to warm our feet in the cool of our winters.

We bought the Flextherm heating system kit, which includes the appropriate length of green-covered heating cable for the size of the room, as well as round guides for the wire. The thermostat is purchased separately. I chose to donate the guides to the Habitat For Humanity Restore (whence cometh many of our building materials).

The Flexsnap system

Instead, I purchased the Flexsnap 12″ gridded squares to clip the wire into. It is easier, will raise the level of the tile equal to the 3/4″ fir flooring that meets it at the doorway, and at $2 each, for a small room, I thought I could justify the expense. Another advantage is that they stabilize the floor so that a second layer of plywood is not necessary before tiling. Some internet research suggested that one could just hot-glue the wires in place, forget about the guides or gridded squares. I’m very glad I didn’t try cheaping out on that step. It would have been constricting, and I would fret over whether I was damaging the wires.

The orange Flexsnap blocks are quick to install directly onto the plywood sub-floor with screws.

The heating cable clips into the tiles, 3 or 4 inches apart. It starts near the thermostat.

After installing, the wire needs to be checked with an ohmmeter (or multimeter) to make sure it is conducting electricity/verifying the resistance/not broken.

I’ve spent far too many hours cutting the white 1″ square tiles out of the all-white 12″ blocks of tiles and replacing them with brown ones. 88 x 25 = 2200!

The "renovated" bathroom tiles.

I hot-glued them into place, but found when it came time to install them, many of the brown tiles fell out of the blocks. Just made more work. I learned that only good-quality large glue sticks work, not the little craft sticks.

All the voids in the Flexsnap tiles have to be filled with the flat part of the trowel before the notched trowel is used to raise the mortar to accept the ceramic tiles. The 88 square feet of floor used up four 50-lb bags of polymer-modified mortar.

Raff came to help, mixing the polymer-modified mortar in the wheelbarrow for me, so I could steadily apply the tiles on top of the Flextherm  heating wires. This made the job go much more smoothly.

The bathroom floor

After a week of waiting for trades to show up when they promised earlier in the week, they all showed up on Friday.

The upshot of the day’s labour is that we have LIGHTS,

These are temporary light fixtures while we do all the finishing activities that might break the permanent fixtures

we have HOT WATER, and we have a massive cabinet in the bedroom/bathroom.

The cabinet/furniture maker is Vincent Lang, who has a workshop near Sechelt. He has built the unit (and the kitchen cabinets) out of formaldehyde-free 3/4″ plywood. I was able to choose the alder veneer before it was laid up, and Vincent custom-mixed the stain, finishing the cover coat with a tough, green finish, as well as designed the doors to match a photograph of a cabinet I showed him from a magazine. Local trade, quality construction (included mortise and tenon drawers, soft-closing hardware, etc.) No particle board in our house if I can help it! I confess that a flood in our apartment convinced us that particle board cabinetry, such as the IKEA cabinets, falls apart when it gets wet. Not sustainable.

The bedroom side of the cabinet

A view of the bathroom side of the cabinet. Hardware is yet to be installed.

Plus, I filled in my spare time cleaning and cutting flooring to its useful length. Very satisfying progress.

On demand hot water heater

Let me tell you about the hot water heater. It’s a Navien CR180 on demand gas fixture, which claims 98% energy efficiency, “the highest in the industry.” And “best gallons per minute performance when comparing input BTU.” It has to be vented on an outside wall. We considered a re-circulating booster, which would deliver the hot water instantaneously, keeping all the pipes filled with hot water.  We decided against it because of course, it requires more fuel to keep it instantly ready. So now the question is: do we just let the initial (cold) water out of the faucet go down the drain? When we get the $ together to install a solar hot water booster, the water going into the tank will be hot on sunny days, but it still won’t deliver hot water until the pipes have been emptied of their room temperature water.

There hasn’t been much progress in the “green” department. We’re just painting and cleaning forever, and D has installed the T&G bedroom ceiling.

But, this week, John the electrician has been wiring the studio building, which readers will recall has been formed with Logix insulated concrete forms. There are 3 inches of styrofoam on the outside and on the inside walls.

So, the usual installation methods don’t work. Rather, John has become a styrofoam sculptor, carving out the shapes of the fixtures, affixing the wires somehow, then covering up the work with new styrofoam.

100 amp panel just for the studio

carved styrofoam channel for wire

Single or double wires just sit there. More wires in a channel need to be affixed to wood.

Then a new styrofoam strip packs the cavity to keep the wires out of harm's way (wall finish)

(….pause while I chase a mouse)

One of my tasks when I arrived back on site, after vacuuming out all the wall cavities, was documenting the “house guts” before they get covered up by insulation and drywall. Alice arrived on her bike to help (well, she arrived to observe the studio concrete-forming process, but as Raff so astutely observed, visitors are quickly pressed into service.)

Basement hallway

The process involves laying two tape measures along the walls at right angles to show where all the wiring/plumbing/heating elements are located before we cover them up with insulation and drywall.

insulation in basement hallway

This is the first time, and hopefully the last, that a Hummer parks in our driveway. It’s the guy doing the pre-wire for audio/tel/internet/video.

In fact, you can tell how much activity there is around here by the number of vehicles on the road:

Aaron and Ron form the hobbit entryway

Two types of work are happening today: In preparation for the first of three more concrete pours, some smaller forming jobs, such as heat pump pads and entryways and the deck and garage floor.

A view of the deck and soffits from the southeast side

And we’re finishing up the little framing jobs inside in preparation for the insulation.

Last minute wiring of the security system, phone/internet, built-in vacuum and similar prep.

The progress on the house is not all that apparent this week. It’s not showy. Rather, it’s the systems we’re working on, which will all be concealed behind drywall and other finishes.

red and white water

The plumbing: No, it’s not just Canadian flag-waving here. The water pipes need to show that there are two completely different systems: the red for the collected rainwater to flush toilets, and the white for potable water to the rest of the house.

Neil adds another duct to the montage

The heating and Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV): It’s a complex system, with the attic ductwork needing insulation, and great and small ducting pipes trying to hide in closets, walls, ceilings, floor joists, crawl space. The crew has been working for 3 weeks on this. The irony: it’s supposed to be a back-up heating system (heat pump and air handler). The goal is to have the thermal mass fireplace (TMF) provide the majority of heat in the cold weather.

smoke gets out where it's not wanted

(At this point, the aforementioned TMF is a dirty word in our house. On our first small firing, it smoked mightily, from around the door. I’m quite sure it’s been installed according to all the instructions, but clearly the air inflow or outflow is not functioning the way it should. In theory, the smoke exits at the bottom of the unit, through an 8” masonry chimney pipe from the side of the burning chamber. Kerry, the fellow who sold the kit to us (Lakeshore Design in Ontario) assures us that we don’t need any braid gasket around the door, and that it’s “easy” to straighten out the door. He’s not a very good listener, nor does he know how to provide good customer service. He just repeats the info in the installation guide and talks over us. He says we need to take off the chimney cap that our stonemason took half a day to install. I don’t believe the chimney cap is restricting any airflow at all.)

the "offending"? chimney cap

Electricity: John and helpers have also been here for nearly 3 weeks. The various systems are rather interdependent, needing wiring for the fan or hot water heater, or space around plumbing pipes for the ductwork, for example. John estimates 4000 feet of wire. We’re trying to think ahead to end use and comfort. Lots of lighting for older eyes, plugs on the living room floor for table lamps, pot lights where we might need them. It’s hard to know how the house will be used sometimes, so we just have to make our best guesses. One interesting new item in the BC Electrical Code is a garage plug-in for an electric car!

back-framing

Back-framing: Now that the systems are getting close to done, Ron’s crew can finish the framing around ductwork and plumbing, dropping the ceiling or boxing in smaller spaces. I have also been asking for nooks and crannies and lowered ceilings and bookshelves and grab bars and towel racks, etc. The “tin-whackers,” as Ron calls the heating guys, asked for the workshop wall to be insulated and drywalled so that they could finish the big duct on that wall. I asked for plywood as a finish, so that D can screw all manner of storage solutions anywhere he wants, without having to find studs behind. I’ll also use that approach for the kitchen wall, where cupboards and tiles will hide the plywood.

insulated shop wall

So, I leave the house for 10 days. I will have withdrawal symptoms, I’m sure, but I’m getting a bit of cabin-fever, and I could use the break. Ron and the boys will look after it just fine for us. I’m grateful that I could be on site for so many of these critical decisions.