Rainwater System

I am pleased to announce that our rainwater system, although dry as a bone currently, is physically in place. Many thanks to our sub-contractors with Scott's Plumbing who have been hard at work for the past 3 days to complete the installation.

Several items still remain to be completed, however, before we can start washing clothes and flushing toilets with reclaimed water. First, the gutters need to go on. Second, city ordinances still need to be officially adopted that make what we are doing legal in the City of Norris. And third, the system needs to be primed and commissioned!

We are estimating this work to be done by mid-June. The legal process to adopt new city ordinances requires several readings and subsequent approvals, as well as a final public hearing.

Installation in progress. Cistern [bottom left], pump and controller [middle], and filters [right]

Multiple water meters installed in-line will allow us to measure how much rainwater is used in the house and how much city water had to be supplied to supplement. Other important factors include total rainfall (used to calculate how much rain passed through the system and was diverted as storm-water), as well as the total city water use (to indicate how much water was used specifically by potable fixtures.

bed:chair::chair:bed

Tuesday Tour

This morning, Professor Stuth, Valerie Friedmann, and myself were joined by a group of representatives from the Tennessee Yards and Neighborhoods program. TYN is a task force, operating through the University of Tennessee Extension Service, whose mission is to "to help communities across the state meet their landscaping needs while also helping to conserve and protect our state's water resources." Their interest in the NNH project came as a result of Valerie's inquiries about rainwater and grey water processing to the Biosystems Engineering department. Dr. Andrea Ludwig, an Ecological Engineer and recent addition to the University staff, not only led us in the right direction with designing our rainwater and grey water beds, but also wanted to take an active role in promoting our project as a prime example of how the TYN program's mission could be utilized in a residential landscape. It is true to say that we love all of the interest and expertise we can get!

Our enthusiastic and knowledgeable guests included Dr. Ludwig, Beth Babbit (state coordinator for the Tennessee Master Gardener's Program/urban horticulture specialist/old friend of mine), David Vandergriff (Knox County Extension Agent for Horticulture and Urban Forestry), and Ruth Ann Hanahan (Senior Research Associate for the Water Resources Center). All four visitors were pleased with our work, our methodologies, and our ecologically-sensitive approach, and thankfully, all four had a whole lot of insight and information to share. Tricia gave an exceptional introduction to the history of the Norris community, the events that led to the creation of the New Norris House, and the design features of the home itself. Valerie then discussed the layout of the landscape, covering in detail the design philosophy, usage of water on site, and the construction methodology. I gave an overview of the planting strategies for the infiltration beds, woodland edge, and lawn areas. We definitely received four thumbs up for our hard work to date, and laid the foundation for a working relationship of project promotion and information exchange!

The Tennessee Yards and Neighborhoods website:

http://tnyardsandneighborhoods.tennessee.edu/Pages/default.aspx

Dr. Andrea Ludwig and Valerie Friedmann review the landscape

construction drawings as I gaze into the distance and contemplate

my love of Little Bluestem, bacon, and intelligent women.

Painting, Sanding, Flooring!

With a few weeks left in the semester the colors of Spring bring color to the interior of the New Norris House. This past week much effort was put on sanding, painting and priming of many of the Norris House spaces and components. The Cistern room was primed and painted with it's bright new color of sassy green and is now ready for the installation of cistern and gutter piping.

Many of the homes Anderson doors and window frames have also been primed with will be ready for there a new white coat of paint to be applied sometime this week.

In addition to painting the hardwood floors in the house were completed. The flooring is made of old wood that has been reclaimed from barns and is layed in a radom pattern. The woods unquie knots and holes give the homes floor character. Thanks to Paul with Salvage Antique the installer of the hardwood floors they really turned out great. The floors give the home a warm feeling and really make the white walls of the home stand out.

A Convertible Chair for the New Norris House

After about three weeks of intensive design --ten feet of trace paper covered in sketches, many discussions with many people, several study models, countless late nights, too much coffee, and a week straight spent in the wood shop-- the mock-up of the chair-bed for the New Norris House is finally completed.
Since the interior space of the house presents such an open and unconventional condition, it called for a piece of furniture which would offer comfort and flexibility while maintaining the uncluttered design intent of the living space.
The use of slats reduces the weight of the piece, facilitating its use throughout the house, from being a couch in the living room to a chair or bed in the swing space and loft. The goal is to build two: together they make a queen size bed, respecting the idea of standardization and allowing users to use standard sheets and blankets when using the piece as a bed. Folded, two pieces provide two chairs and two ottomans (which may also be used as coffee tables) which make a couch when pushed together. The seat’s dimension allows for slouching and curling up, as well as sitting up straight and reading. (It is also wide enough to seat two smaller people rather comfortably, and when two chairs will be put together, it should make for a decently sized couch.) The material used is ¾” oak plywood, relating to the oak floor as it hovers close to the ground, and will be finished with George’s Club House Wax, made of mineral oil and beeswax (food safe and organic).

Faithful to the New Norris House’s concept of redefining our way of living, we hope to offer a piece of furniture which minimizes the number of objects needed in the space, promotes interaction between the user and the everyday item and provides comfort to achieve the sense of Home. We essentially designed a futon; because in the end, we need something that works and befits the house, as this project constantly reminds us of how much value the Everyday holds.

Now that we have asked many questions --and found answers-- we may begin the fabrication of the final pieces. A lot of people helped us throughout the design process (as it is our very first time designing and building furniture) and Mary and I would like to thank all of them. From professor Rose and Matt Hall, Sam Bouck and Kelly O'Brien, as well as many people of the team (especially professor Stuth, Levi and Chris --with a special thanks to Chris and his long hours spent helping us with the CNC machine) we greatly appreciate the interest, excitement and help. (I'm saving the roll of trace; we can no longer tell what sketches are Mary's, mine or Levi's, and I think that it's my favorite thing about it. There's always more to things made outside of yourself.)

One Tile, Two Tile

The past two weeks, Matt Childress and I have been tiling the bathroom walls and ceiling. We began with an extremely informative lesson with 'tile master' Mr. Bob Brown. He helped us prepare the walls of the bathroom. First, we used thin set mortar to strengthen the edges and joints of the cement board and WR board. We also had to be aware of waterproofing around the long, slender window in the shower. A thin, orange Kerdi Wrap serves as a vapor barrier around the window.

The pattern of the tile makes it more difficult and requires a more elaborate plan of attack. The staggering pattern of the 3" x 3" tile has an offset of one inch, so every three rows line back up. The tile wraps from the west wall, up on the ceiling and back down on the east wall. The north and south walls have an appearance of a staggered step up to the ceiling. To begin placing this pattern, we chelked lines at every three rows to use as a reference. Mr. Brown suggested that we start at eye level on a wall and work up and down. I am sure it would have not taken Mr. Brown as long to tile the bathroom, but we became more and more efficient after the first couple of sections were laid. We have almost mastered the technique of putting a layer of glue on the wall, working the tile into the glue, and spacing it against the adjacent tiles with 1/8" spacers.

I definitely have an enormous amount of respect for tilers after this experience. Their attention to detail must be incredibly on point the entire time. Even if a tile is 1/32" too low and not visible over two, the row will look slanted over twenty tiles.

We have completed all the walls and ceiling except around the window. Maintaining a flat surface and sharp corners is essential for a smooth surface of tile. Once we finish laying the tile around the window, we can clean any glue residue and begin grouting! We have practiced grouting and tested different grout colors. The decision is between a bright white to match the walls around the toilet or a light gray to match the floor and window frame.

Here is our progress right before Matt laid the last row of tile to join the south and west walls to the ceiling.

Monitoring NNH Performance

We recently met with Jeff Christian (Director, Buildings Technology Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory) to get an expert's opinion on determining a strategy to monitor the performance of the New Norris House. We discussed some general areas of focus: temperature, humidity, energy use, daylight, and air/water quality testing. In each case, a different approach to monitoring is to be considered. Jeff was able to show us some useful examples of testing instruments, including thermocouples and thermistors, current transducers, data loggers, pyranometers, etc., but encouraged that we take a close look at our personal monitoring goals and design an instrumentation plan with the exact equipment that best suits our needs. He also extended an invitation to his lab where he could help guide us in constructing our desired testing equipment.

The level of detail that can be monitored is seemingly infinite, so part of our challenge is to pose specific questions and set attainable testing goals that will still acquire enough data for a meaningful study. While our immediate focus remains fixed on the NNH, these monitoring studies could potentially apply to a much larger scope. If we can use our comprehensive data to illustrate the superior performance of the NNH in terms of sustainability, then we can begin comparative studies with older homes in the Norris community as an incentive for homeowners to retrofit these less efficient houses with similar sustainable technology.

Reclaimed Oak Floors Going In!

Thanks to Scott and Paul at Salvage Antique! Floors are looking great.

Learn more at http://www.salvageantique.net/

Nice Weather Helps Exterior Progress

The main focus lately has been on everything that needs to be finished on the exterior. Along with siding we have been working on installing and fixing the furring strips behind it. We found that the furring, on the west side towards the end, was out of plumb and had to spend several days pulling them in and out to make the siding sit properly. Another problem we ran into was that we found out that the window on the North end, that we had moved down 3/4", was actually in the correct place to begin with. So along with the furring that we attached on the North walls we also added furring on the soffit to correct the mistake without moving the window for a third time.

The siding has been almost completed on all of the sides except for the North wall, with the exception of underneath the soffit. The soffit itself stands to be a fairly tricky part since we all know that there are no perfect corners in the house, getting the siding to line up with the wall under the soffit then to the soffit and then back up the gable wall should be fun. Outside of that small hurdle hopefully the rest of it should go smoothly.

The cistern door as well as the cistern still need to be installed but that will have to happen once the drywall is finished in the cistern room. The tiling is being continued in the bathroom where they are also having problems with the walls not being square but it looks great. I almost forgot a huge milestone, paint has been started on the interior. The first coats have been applied in the kitchen and swing space areas as well as the bedroom. There is a lot of work to do the rest of this month but the progress is starting to pick up on site thanks to the good weather if it holds up.

Breaking Ground: Part 2

After two long days of work this weekend, the bio-retention beds in the landscape are underway. We had the benefit of several volunteers from across campus and the community, which made the tasks at hand much less daunting. (Plus the weather was phenomenal!) Arriving Saturday morning there were several tasks to be completed:

-Fill nearly 300 Deltalok bags

-Finish rough grading by hand

-Begin removal of invasive plant species at rear of site

-Dig 10" trenches to secure base course of deltalok into soil sub-grade

Filling Deltalok bags

Beginning to add up...

Rough excavation continues

Hauling dirt

Bags continue to pile...

Beginning excavation of trenches

Finalizing details before inserting bags

First bags go in place

Geo-grid reinforcement

Spike plates between each course

Backfilling between layers

At the end of the weekend, the bags have been filled and the first courses of Deltalok have been laid. This weekend we will push to complete the structural portion of the retention beds, with the intention to back fill with topsoil in the coming weeks! Many thanks again to everyone who came and helped!

Casework Update

The casework team has been full steam ahead over the past couple of weeks, but we still have a lot of ground to cover. Every room in the house has some casework component and we have taken on the responsibility of completing the casework ourselves, from design to fabrication to installation. At this point, we have finished the majority of fabrication for the kitchen casework and are waiting for the flooring to be installed before we install our cabinets.

In the meantime, we will be setting up a large painting operation at our warehouse on Henson Rd. We decided to use a low VOC paint product to comply with our environmental goals, but with every decision comes some pros and cons. With this decision, the water based paint dries hard - similar to the quality of a lacquer based paint - but it takes about thirty days to cure. Therefore, our small, 10x10 paint booth was simply inadequate for the large amount of painting that we have to do.

We should receive a new order of plywood from A&M Supply within the next couple of days to continue fabricating the cabinets for the swing space and the bedroom. The challenge for these cabinets has been integrating all of the necessary components within them. Integrated into all of our cabinets are the Mitsubishi mini-split units which provide the heating and air for the whole house. In addition to the HVAC, most of the cabinets include recessed lighting, so all of the MEP disciplines are coordinated into one piece of millwork. Needless to say, we will have our hands full, blitzing towards the finish line.

This picture has nothing to do with my post... but its beautiful.

Reflections on a Visit to the NNH.

Two weekends ago alumni from the Estabrook Reunion visited the Norris House to see our progress. Estabrook housed the architecture school until our beautiful building was finished in 1981, and alumni from all over the country came to reminisce the good ole days and view first hand the progress at the College of Architecture and Design. Matt L., Levi, and Professors Stuth and French presented to the alums early on Saturday, showing the evolution of the project and the design|build program at UT. Later in the afternoon, I joined them and some alumni out on site so they could see our work for themselves. They were very impressed with the execution of the project, especially since we are students learning as we go.

It was exciting to hear positive opinions about design build from members of the architectural community and gave me hope for the continuation of more projects like the New Norris House. The ability to see a project through to the very end has taught me so much about the design process. I now know the extents of what architects consider when designing, especially when it comes to details. Mies van der Rhoe may have been right when he said, "God is in the details." At very least, good architecture is in the details. They are so important to any piece of architecture, yet barely discussed in school. I am so thankful I have gotten the chance to through this house!

On a much lighter note, the New Norris House crew should be very proud. All of our hard work has been noticed by our fellow students. Our donation to spend a night in the house has raised the most money in the TAAST Auction!

Saturday Work Day

Today we had an official Saturday workday - and what a great day it was. The rain finally subsided and warm temperatures allowed for a great deal of progress on the landscape front. A number of landscaping students came out today to help with filling Deltalok bags and forming the retention beds in the backyard (as spoken of in Valerie's blog). Other exciting achievements include setting the west deck and ramp along the side of the house - in addition to cutting the bottom edge of the siding along the north (front) elevation.

Chris and Matt C. set the range-hood vent and continued siding along the East elevation, while Katharine and I finished up paint on the ceiling in the loft and living/kitchen areas. The house has been cleaned out to allow for a clean painting environment, and we began priming the window frames and casements. Arya and Matt have also been making an amazing amount of progress on the tiling. We can certainly see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Painting various wood materials in the house have caused a great deal of conversation over the past couple of days. There is exposed structure (joists, structural decking) in the bedroom - and it has been discussed as to whether that material should be left exposed or painted white as originally planned. With delivery of the reclaimed red/white oak flooring, in addition to the painted "Yarborough Yellow" accent wall, it seems that we must decide whether the wall or ceiling will be the accent. Between the oak wood floor, yellow wall, and pine ceiling - there may be too many materials with competing tonal/accentual values.

Though it was tough to paint the beloved Atlantic white cedar fixed window frames this afternoon, after stepping back it became obvious that it was the right choice to paint these the same white as the walls. The frame begins to disappear into the wall and the landscape beyond becomes the main foci. This began to clarify the fact that materials may be beautiful individually, however their place in the overall scheme or palette may not work effectively to emphasize the intended effect.

In other news, progress has been made on the East/West door hardware. Phil Clawson, our Andersen representative will be coming up to the site on Tuesday to help us re-evaluate our integration of Andersen door hardware into our custom doors. He and Sam Ledford of Hiwassee Window & Door have been a great deal of help to us in coordinating this initiative. God-willing, we will procure the hardware and start construction on those soon.

Breaking Ground: Part I

Tomorrow is a big day for the New Norris House Landscape. Our team has been working to gather all the materials, get all the drawings finalized, and rally volunteers for our first big work day in the backyard. Thanks to the hard work Blake French did over the past week getting our terraced bioretention beds roughly graded and to the continued guidance from Alan Messler and Rick Cawston at Deltalok, we are ready to start installing the retaining walls that make up one of our biggest design features in the landscape. We look forward to having volunteer workers join us tomorrow as we fill 300 Deltalok bags with a special soil mix, and then stack them to form a series of retaining walls. It's not going to be easy - when full each bag weighs about 70 pounds, and unfortunately that is not an April Fools joke! We will post a full report of our work day including before and after pictures soon, so watch for Breaking Ground: Part 2!