Measure twice, cut once.

​This week we tidied up the insulation.
Patrick, from Building Knowledge came out to give the house a checkup...

In the photo to the right, you can see him using an infrared camera to view temperature differences.
Below, you can see the device he uses to create a negative pressure in the house. It is basically a temporary covering that fits in a doorway with a fan used to move air from inside the house to outside.
This lowers the pressure in the house and encourages colder, outside air to enter the house through any weak spots in the shell of the house.

The screen shows the temperature as colors, ranging from black to red. Black, or blue spots may only be slightly cooler than the red areas, the screen assigns black/blue to the coldest spot, and red to the warmest.
If the coldest area is 70 degrees and the warmest is 71 degrees, it may look like a big difference, but really isn't. On the display, there is a digital readout of the temperature at the red laser dot you can see on the wall.

We found a few concerns in a few room. These range from the conduits we recently added for the battery backups (these were not insulated yet and made a big blue blob on the floor just above where they enter the house) to what are likely air pockets in some areas of the spray foam.

All of these issues are easy to fix now, but would be very difficult to correct later. This is why we do this now.
Building Knowledge will be back out here on site along with the insulators so we can focus on exactly the right spots.

This process backed us up a little bit, but is invaluable in helping us reach our net zero goal.

The gypcrete pour, rather than last week is happening this week.
The design for the Solar Array and battery backup system is continuing. It is taking a bit longer as we are using a new type of inverter and new battery backup solution called the PowerWall from Tesla Energy.

I am excited as the solar panels should be going up within a few weeks, and the drywall muddling and edging should be starting after the gypcrete sets.