Snow melt

Walking the kids to school and back one passes all manner of roof ice and roof insulation problems. The neighborhood is marked by gutter freeze, and big honking icicles. What people tell the world about their homes, and particularly their attics through the snow melt.....if only they knew.

Frozen gutters. Extensive icicle growth.
Icicle formation requires that the outside air be warm enough to allow the escaped heat to melt the snow, yet cold enough to refreeze the water before it falls to the ground. The less effective the roof insulation, the warmer the roof, and greater the snow melt. Super insulation will minimize melt and icicles by cooling the roof surface. There will still be melt during warm sunny days, but then icicles are impossible.
January 21: neighbor

January 21: neighbor

January 22: neighbor

The lower roof melt areas here are wider than the higher ridges. Guessing, the insulation in the attic is on the floor and the area between the roof rafters are uninsulated. The heat that does escape into the attic travels to the roof and passes more easily between the rafters (the wider areas) than through the somewhat more insulating rafters (the thinner areas).
January 22: neighbor


I would guess this to be the opposite. Insulation is in the roof rafters. The rafters here are the weak link and show the greatest melt.
January 22: neighbor

Another example of attic floor insulation, shown with the wider melt areas, demonstrated with a kind of shingle lithography. The thermal properties of the roofing shingles comes right through.
January 22: neighbor

The roof area to the right of the downspout in this December 7 photo is a new addition with a cathedral ceiling, and one assumes extensive insulation in the rafters. You can see that the rafters on both sides of the skylight are doubled up as is the practice, and we can guess that there are two recessed lights, one on each side of the skylight. The roof to the left of the downspout is a cold attic insulated on the floor and sealed from the cathedral ceiling. The diagnal telltail? No idea.
UPDATE: Read the reader comment below for a brillaint sugestion for the cause of the diagnal telltail.


This is our roof in a photo taken January 21. Like a Westminster Kennel Club winner, this blue ribbon roof has a nice shiny coat of snow, and is completely house-broken with only a few stray icicles. A roof like this should have a very small range of icicle producing temperatures.

Giddy

Near zero temperatures, and 2 or 3 pretty incredible snow storms. Contractors miss 2 days but it's not a complete loss; the pond skating is fantastic as long as you dig out a spot.



The sun room wall is fully insulated and actually quite cozy, and the new tiny windows are slick.

The team starts on the front of the house zipping towards completion of insulation. The boiler is spending long periods off.....even when outside temperatures are frosty. We're using less oil, but some post-project number crunching is required to know exactly how much less.



I have a new hobby. I'm driving down the street looking at the contours of other people's roof snow. You can figure out alot about a house's attic layout and rafter insulation just by looking at snow. We'll get some pictures up here soon.

Our Story Goes Regional, National and Global

Associated Press reporter Jay Lindsay releases the story to the wires:
Mass. hopes to learn from 'super insulated' house
ABC.com
It found a home at a few national outlets; ABC.com, MSNBC.com, a few global environmental websites, a slew of regional newspapers, and something in Australia. It wouldn't seem to me that Australia has a problem staying warm.
Homeowner Alex Cheimets shows the two-inch-thick insulation on his house in Arlington, Mass. Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009. Cheimets' house is part of a super insulation pilot project designed to conserve energy and control heating and cooling costs for the homeowner. (AP Photo/Winslow Townson)

The timing could not have been better for the story of the super insulation research taking place in Arlington Massachusetts and the team of supporters and sponsors behind it. The story hits after several days of "tuchas" freezing weather across great swaths of the United States, and just days before Barack Obama takes his place, and turns the page on alternative energy and conservation and our expectations of government and ourselves.

Also picked up by the websites of the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Worcester Telegram, WHDH channel 7, CW channel 56, Examiner.com, The Danbury CT News Times, Fosters Daily Democrat of NH, The Day from New London, CT,

Windows, Doors, and Lights

DOORS
The glorious custom Lemieux oak doors are installed, dusted and polished, and the door's low-E windows have been cleaned of the residue urethane and cherry stain.
They look so good, feel so solid and heavy, and work so well in comparison to the doors that they replace, that they carry the entire house several notches up the status chart. Even without the siding, they make a huge contribution to the view from the street.

WINDOWS
The project includes window size reduction in the Unit 1 and Unit 2 sun rooms, converting a wall of windows overlooking the driveway to a mostly insulated wall that could be lined with bookshelves, or upgraded with a wood stove, or simply a space to hang a poster showing your basic cuts of beef. The sky's the limit.

The plan was to re-use the trim so that the new low profile windows look like they were always just that way.


ELECTRICAL
Notice the beige surface mounted outlets below the window in the first photo? Now seems like a bang-up time to rip those out and re-locate 12" higher in the new window voids. Only 3 outlets? Heck I can do that myself. I even know to shut the circuit breaker at the service box so as not to jump-stop my already beating heart.

The sunroom is directly over the basement electrical box, so I plugged a work light into the sunroom outlet and dangled it out the window 12 ft to the ground. In the basement, I switched off the circuit breakers until the light outside the basement window went out.

Circuit breaker 11 did it. Great. Returned upstairs to do my electrical magic only to find to my surprise that most of the house was dark. Breaker 11 is one busy little circuit breaker, with its tentacles secretly controlling nearly everything we do. Just look at this inventory of its domain:

• 2nd floor sunroom ceiling light + all of its plugs
• 3rd floor storage room
• 3rd floor front bedroom ceiling light but none of the plugs
• 3rd floor stairway light
• 3rd floor master bedroom and one of its plugs
• 2nd floor dining room light and one of its plugs
• AND the power to the kitchen range hood and gas oven

How have we put most of our lives in the hands of breaker 11? Were we asleep at the switch?

Since all the lights are now CFLs the electrical load has never been lower, but still this is kind of whacky, and needs to be fixed. If only we can keep breaker 11 from learning our plans.