Spray Foam Insulation

Today was a pivotal day in the continued energy efficient retrofit of the Tucker Green Home. Spray foam insulation was blown in against the roof deck in the attic. As it turned out, a record high for the day was broken in Atlanta! (105 deg)

Bird Family Insulation was the contractor.

Here you can see the foam insulation that was sprayed in the attic. It's about 5.5" of open cell insulation sprayed against the roof deck. Open cell spray foam has an R value of about 3.5 per inch. So this is about an R-19 shown here.

Insulation was also sprayed against an interior knee wall in the crawl space.

The process took about 4 hours and cost approximately $2700.

Radiant Barrier

Over the last two days I installed radiant barrier material in the attic over the garage. It's a pretty tough job being up in the attic space in the middle of the summer, I wouldn't want to do another one. However, I can now report that the radiant barrier makes a lot of difference on how hot it gets in the garage.

Since I am getting spray foam insulation put in against the roof deck over the conditioned parts of the house I needed to amend the attic over the garage too. I only punctured my head once, my back once, and gouged a hole in my shin while cutting a scuttle hole into the garage ceiling. Not too bad.

More Fencing

I completed the gate today (almost). The fence is almost finished but the boards are beginning to warp already because I used very green lumber. Dumb idea.

I will probably need to replace a bunch of pickets before it is all said and done. I should of used panels because they are already pretty dry, even though I would have needed to break them apart.

View from the other side.

The hill very steep.

Fence Design

This is my fence design that I came up with for the new section of fence going in on the east side of the house.

Problems

There is a hole in the eave and the wood is rotted. It seems to have been getting wet for sometime. They painted over it and hid it pretty well, but that section of the soffit has to be replaced. Good times.

Fence

Yesterday I set 3 fence posts for a new section of fence I am installing on the back of the house. The entire area was draped in Ivy and monkey grass. We laid down heavy paper and then covered it with pine straw. The blue tarp is covering a a stump that is covered with Ivy.

Covering the ivy with paper and straw will cut off the light and eventually it will die. This is a permaculture principle and I do not have to use chemical poisons in the yard. The paper will break down eventually and contribute to the organic material of the dead ivy's leaves and roots.

Frigidaire

The first major purchase for the Tucker Green Home was a refrigerator. It is a Frigidaire Gallery. It's energy star rated and cost about $960. Wife and I installed it yesterday. The amount of Styrofoam and cardboard refrigerators come in is patently ridiculous.

It is an Energy Star rated appliance.

Georgia Power's not so great refrigerator recycling program

Georgia Power has a refrigerator recycling program. The supposed deal is they give you $35 for an old refrigerator when you replace it with a new efficient one. What they don't tell you is that when you call the number on their website it rings an out of state third party contractor. I called the number and got the third party company who wasn't even aware that the Georgia Power number was forwarding to their phone. When I asked where they were located she said "the west coast". I don't think I should need to call the "west coast" to have a refrigerator removed from my house in Georgia. I called a local company instead who came and picked up the refrigerator for free.