The Poor Man's route to Solar Energy

You can tell it is the dead of winter and not much is happening at Humphrey House. However, this gives us a chance to give an update on some of the projects we never got around to mentioning last fall when we were too busy working. One of these is the addition of a tubular skylight into our dining room.

This is a bit of unique installation because we really have taken advantage of every nook and cranny on the second floor, which may make you wonder how we managed to squeeze what effectively is a 10-inch HVAC duct through the space to connect the dining room ceiling and the roof. Well, we really got to take advantage of some of the existing architecture, which makes the suntunnel appear as if it goes right through the second floor living space, when it fact, it does not.


I cut in the suntunnel from the attic chase area behind the knee-wall in our laundry room upstairs, as close to the knee wall as possible. This was about 4 feet from where the exterior wall would normally be. But, as you can see in the photo, the suntunnell spills into the room a good six feet from the outside wall. How? By taking advantage of the bay window that juts out of the dining room. This makes the suntunnel appear close to the chandelier light fixture towards the center of the room, and yet the tube does not pass through any living space in our converted attic.

You would think with the windows in the bay that the dining room would receive plenty of light and not need additional daylight. However, if you look through the window in the photo above, you can see the house next door is quite close to us. And worse, it's a full two-story house with a steep roof, which ends up blocking out all direct sunlight to our first floor for 7 months out of the year. With the winter months being dark to begin with, I wanted to brighten up the space naturally as much as possible. And a $150 suntunnel was an ideal solution.

When we were on the green home tour in September, I described this as the poor-man's solar energy. I got quite a few puzzled looks, and Jen pointed out that is a bit misleading as it isn't really power. However, the tubular skylight does replace the need for us to turn the lights on during daylight hours. Just look at how bright it is After, compared to Before (and note the chandelier is not turned on).

During the day, the tubular skylight channels the sun into the dining room, located at the center of our home, making it brighter and feel warmer. So the suntunnel is our small leap into what is a form of solar power - passive solar (no moving parts). Speaking of which, our friend Jim is teaching a free seminar on passive solar and architecture at the Chicago Center for Green Technology in a few weeks on March 12. If you live in the area, want to learn more, and get some great ideas, it will be well worth your time.

As for now, I think I'll take advantage of this sunny day and go read by the daylight flooding into our dining room.

Cabinetry Decisions

We're beginning to seriously (re)plan a complete remodel of our kitchen, after tossing out many ideas over the past three years. While we have a designer helping us with the layout and specifications, there are some considerations we'd like to make that are more consistent with green building standards:

• Patching and refinishing the existing hardwood floors under nasty old vinyl.
• Instead of the standard granite countertops, using a polished concrete and recycled glass product called Ice Stone. That way when I break a beer bottle on it, it will blend right in.
• More daylighting! We liked our suntunnels so much, we'll add one to our kitchen nook. More sunlight = less need for electricity. And a more pleasing open spaciousness.
• On that note, upgrading the windows to highly energy-efficient ones.
  
• Cabinets. This is where it gets more difficult.

On a routine trip to Menards shortly after moving into our house, Jen saw some cabinets that would match the arts and craft style of our home. The manufacturer, Medallion Cabinetry, got the product name right by naming this style of cabinets, the "Oak Park." They even have window panes mirroring the windows in the front of our house. Great!

Except now, in our quest for green building, we reach a dilemma. These cabinets are made of quarter-sawn oak, which, while beautiful, is extremely wasteful and not sustainable since oak is a very slow growing tree. So it takes longer to replenish this material than other woods such as Maple, Alder or Lyptus.

There are other options that would match the style of our home, such as Mission-style maple cabinets that would work - but not as well as the "Oak Park" line. The higher cost of these oak cabinets may ultimately prevent us from purchasing them anyway, but its very difficult to balance being environmentally-conscious renovators while matching the character of the home.

Nothing says Summer like Rest(oration)

Things have been quiet lately as we settle into our completed renovations upstairs. It's so nice to rediscover little things. For example, our queen-sized bed seems infinitely more spacious in our new master bedroom than it did when we had it in a tiny room in the basement (with ductwork over our heads).

And it's nice to feel some of the design decisions we made pay off so well. With summer in Chicago, we've mostly just been using our second HVAC system to keep the second floor from becoming too hot, and just Powerzoning our basement's cold air to cool the main floor. This has held up pretty well so far, unless it gets really humid out, which saves us from using both AC systems.

Also our decision to incorporate Velux daylighting suntunnels in the converted attic makes it seem brighter and more open. These amazing 10" light sources keep us from using any lights almost all day long. All that electrical work for nothing! :-)

Jen and I have discussed delving into the next major project (kitchen remodel!), and decided to postpone this until fall. We'd like to spend 1 summer NOT in the middle of a major project, and actually get to enjoy it some.

But remembering that there is no "rest" in "restoration", we will still tackle some loose ends here and there. For example, the front porch is no longer a storage area, and I was finally able to hang the 2-seater swing we purchased 2 years ago.

Other projects on the horizon include wrapping up some loose ends upstairs (trim) and installing a floor for the tiny laundry room so we can move our washer and dryer up. And I'm also planning to disconnect some downspouts and install a rain barrel to conserve water, and slow-water our garden.

Invasion of the Spheres

When designing all the things we wanted in our upstairs remodel, we thought of all kinds of neat inclusions such as:

• Centrally wired in-ceiling speakers: two in our bedroom, one in the bath, one in the spare BR.
  
• Flush globe fixture in our Bedroom, when we're not using our romantic sconces.
  
• Suntunnels, which let in so much daylight we don't turn on lights during the day
  
• Recessed lights in areas with low (7 foot) ceilings (hallway, spare BR)
• Required safety - hardwired, interconnected smoke and carbon monoxide detectors
  

All different systems that sound cool and function pretty well, and keep it from feeling less like a dark, cramped converted attic and more like bright, airy living space.

UNTIL...
You awaken from a wild dream, and, upon opening your eyes, are briefly are tortured by an onslaught of UFO's flying down to you. It's an invasion!



Had I known that these spheres would provide a celestial effect and remind me of Spheres, we might have totally exploited it and intentionally lined things up mimicking planets with moons and planetary rings, an entire solar system, or even an alien invasion! Since it may be difficult to imagine, I have a color-coded key for you:
Green = ceiling speaker
Yellow = suntunnel
Blue = recessed can light
Red = smoke detector
Purple = smoke / monoxide


Scary, isn't it? And that's without adding in the Spheres in our master BR!

At any rate, this certainly is yet another interesting byproduct of HumphreyHouse's evolution.