ASHRAE Journal -November 2012 - 53

Photo 4 (left): Energy Trusses. “High heel” trusses and an R-60 vented attic with an airtight lid. Photo 5 (center): Exterior Rigid Insulation. Large plastic washers and mechanically attached 8 in. (203 mm) thick expanded polystyrene (EPS). Photo 6 (right): Go East Young Man. Wood frame perfect wall in the Eastern Townships outside of Montreal in 1981.

Photo 7 (left): Slab 1. Grade prepared for first layer of concrete. Notice the foam form. Photo 8 (center): Slab 2. Foam core is embedded into the first layer of concrete as the first layer of concrete is placed. Photo 9 (right): Slab 3. “Foam bathtub” ready for top layer of concrete. windows. Airtight. Heated by a wood stove in the basement. No ducts, just transfer grilles in the floor. Old school. We used to do that before there was forced air. Combustion air ducted to the wood stove. Also had a fireplace. Combustion air ducted to the fireplace, too. Got one of Greg Allen’s§§ first air-to-air heat exchangers. Build tight, ventilate right. Doing it before Jim White coined the phrase. Built another one in Collingwood, Ontario, the next year. Used “energy trusses” before there were energy trusses (Photo 4). My old truss engineer said it was dumb to squeeze the insulation at the roof perimeter. He sketched up his idea on a napkin. Another napkin I should have kept. The rigid foam on this one went up “slick as snot on a glass door knob”## (Photo 5). I had a system, and it was working. I built a couple more in 1980. Problem was, it was expensive. And it was slow. Needed to make this work with wood. I got a chance to give it a shot in the Eastern Townships outside of Montreal in 1981 (Photo 6). The site was beautiful and on the edge of a lake. The site was also ugly because of the bearing conditions of the soil. I needed to spread the load. I needed a very stiff plate foundation, and I needed the plate to be lightweight. And I needed a thermal break. And I needed a shallow foundation. I was a Toronto boy. The U of T had another unheralded genius, Eli Robinsky. He was a professor in the same department as JT. Professor Robinsky developed the shallow frost protected foundation that the Swedes get credit for. I actually took his class. I remembered. Check out Photos 7, 8, 9 and 10. Got a crazy lunatic U.S. engineer, Tony Karwoski, to do the structural calculations as no one I knew in Canada would touch it. “TK,” wherever you are, you are my hero. Two thin reinforced concrete slabs sandwich a foam core that saves weight and acts as a thermal break. A slab on grade foundation with a high moment of inertia without a weight penalty. Stiffer than a week-old corpse. I put a conditioned crawlspace on top of the slab and used a wood frame version of Professor Hutcheon’s masonry wall. Check out Figure 4. Professor Hutcheon meet Professor Robinsky. Introduction courtesy of “TK.” The walls were wood frame sheathed with a new product called “oriented strand board” (OSB) (Photo 11). A polyethylene water control layer, air control layer and vapor control layer was installed over the exterior of the OSB. R-30 EPS (8 in. [203 mm] worth) was installed over that and held in place with wood furring and long screws (Photo 12). The wood siding was installed over the furring, providing back venting and drainage. I had Kirby Garden’s “rain screen” (Photo 13). The frame wall was insulated with unfaced fiberglass batts. And, presto! I had an R-40 single stud wall. All this was before R-2000.

§§Greg Allen is one of those quiet geniuses who hasn’t gotten the recognition he deserves. University of Toronto grad. Same program as me, engineering science; graduated a decade earlier than me, and much smarter. We never became real friends, probably because I went out of business before I paid for those first heat exchangers he made. ##Canadian expression from the farm country around Waterloo, Ontario.

November 2012

ASHRAE Journal

ASHRAE Journal -November 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ASHRAE Journal -November 2012