An eight-year remodel of a 100-year old house produces a healthy home that will last another century.

When my wife Chris and I bought this nearly 100-year-old home in 2000, we knew we had our work cut out for us: virtually no insulation; original single-pane windows; a failing main bathroom; just four circuits of knob-and-tube wiring; no laundry hook-up; and a dysfunctional 12×12 kitchen with three windows and four doorways.But the pristine original red birch flooring, the rock maple trim throughout, and the double lot on a quiet street seemed to make the whole thing more than worthwhile. And being a building scientist and former remodeler, I felt up to the challenge.Avoiding re-dos and safety issuesWe planned each phase of this virtual gut rehab to keep the place healthy (during and after the work), to be as efficient as possible, and to prepare for future steps. This meant managing a radon problem that worsened as the house was tightened up, monitoring drainage issues around the building perimeter, and adding spot and whole-house mechanical ventilation as phases of the project progressed. Integrating mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work was tricky because we tackled the basement, attic, and individual rooms one at a time.阶段1：风暴窗，布线和浴室The existing windows were leaky, uncomfortable, and energy inefficient. New triple-track, low-e storm windows from Harvey Industries gave us nearly instant improvement on all three of those fronts and reduced traffic noise as well. Eight years later, the enameled-frame storms still operate as if they were brand-new. We rewired the whole house before insulating or air sealing and kept penetrations in exterior walls to a minimum. Because interior walls weren’t all affected at the same time, we had to consider how subsequent phases would line up and wire accordingly. Both bathrooms had exterior walls that needed attention. We wanted to use insulating sheathing on the outside, and we found that adding interior plywood sheathing gave us the access and shear strength we needed to do the job right.Phase 2: Attic, then basement尤其是在寒冷的气候下，堆栈效果可以将地下水分和土壤气体驱动到起居区。空气密封和绝缘阁楼before解决地下室几乎总是处理此问题的最佳方法。完成接线并进入新的浴缸排气扇后，我们有一个相对容易的时间密封阁楼穿透，然后再隔开棉布绝缘层。经过整整一年的水分监测和简单的观察，我们发现地下室的墙壁在最大的春季降雨后只是有点潮湿，但是我们从未见过任何液态水。这使我们充满信心，即2×3螺柱和蒸汽渗透的开孔喷雾泡沫绝缘材料应该是一种安全的方法，可以使地下室空气密封并将整个墙R值提高到R-12大约R-12。不幸的是，在这个现在更紧密的空间中，ra读数从6个PCI/L（已经超过4 PCI/L的2个PCI/L的2个PCI/L）飙升。作为回应，我们密封并隔离了前廊下方的通风爬行空间（为前廊成为家庭办公室铺平了道路），取下了混凝土块以使爬网与地下室通信，并添加了24/7高效排气风扇。尽管这并没有降低地下室的ra读数，但连续排气可确保一楼居住空间中的ra读数始终为2.5 PCI/L或更小。Phase 3: SIPS kitchen addition and second-floor bedrooms一个6×20的添加剂，屋顶，墙壁和地板都是码头上的结构绝缘结构绝缘面板（SIP），给了我们两件事：一整天内的天气紧张；还有一个现成的防风雨泥房，就在厨房附近。由于增加的棚屋屋顶正靠在朝西的二楼卧室上，因此我们接下来搬到了这个空间。我们沟渠，重新用于隔热，隔热，空气密封，然后重新侧面。当我们毁了每间卧室时，我们将Gambrel的膝盖空间拉到条件空间中，沿着更陡峭的Gambrel车顶线进行连续的空气和热屏障。这改善了能量性能，并增加了大约1/3的地板空间（尽管有倾斜的天花板）。Phase 4: First-floor exterior walls由于混凝土砌块的壁没有放荡，没有隔离并有许多脚裂，因此我们需要将它们完全拉入内部或将其完全放在空气和热栏线的外面。克里斯（Chris）和我对分裂面板的外观并不感到兴奋，因此，可以轻松地决定进行绝缘，空气密封和重新隔离外部的方法。一个2x2的定制系统螺栓固定在灰浆接头中的角度支架，创造了一个三英寸高密度喷雾泡沫绝缘的空间以及空间。现在，泡沫的表面用作排水平面，并用手指结合，预先摆出的雪松圈壁板将其全部盖好。10英寸。棚屋架起了二楼墙壁和现已厚的一楼墙之间的过渡。Along the way: sash weight pockets and HVAC每个房间装修,我们拿出旧的年代ingle-pane windows and installed double-pane replacement sashes. Before everything was closed up, we insulated and air-sealed the often-overlooked but very important sash weight pockets. We replaced the aging 75% AFUE forced-air furnace with an 88% AFUE boiler. This allowed us to add a 40-gallon superinsulated indirect water heater and hydronic heating in the kitchen and downstairs bath/laundry. Because we decided to stick with fuel oil, the new boiler had to be atmospherically vented (there are no sealed-combustion residential fuel-oil boilers). This means that the 24/7 exhaust ventilation/radon mitigation fan had to be dialed in to avoid back-drafting the boiler.Eight years later: improved comfort, IAQ, and utility billsPatience, planning and eight years of “working vacations” gave us a home that is markedly more comfortable and has better indoor air quality and lower utility bills than when we bought it. It looks better, works better, and has more living space to boot.

Lessons Learned

We feel pretty fortunate. The problems with the original house kept it on the market for a long time and meant a really good purchase price for us. And the money we put into performance upgrades brought the cost pretty close to market value of any old house in our area.

We confronted many challenges and learned quite a few lessons along the way. The replacement sashes didn't work well with our out-of-square jambs, so more than a few windows are still leaky where they don't make continuous contact along the sill. The SIPs kitchen floor is just as high performance as the roof, but in the middle of winter, walking from the uninsulated floor with basement below versus walking on the SIPs floor is quite a shock; more insulation is needed to offset the floor being on piers over outside air.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment is in the air-tightness of the home. Despite careful planning of the overlaps of insulation and air-sealing systems, there is still a lot of untraced air leakage. Continuous pathways in the ungrouted block walls and tricky details at the four gambrel valleys are the likely culprits - more-targeted blower door testing should give us a better idea. As with most old homes, this will always be a work in progress.

General Specs and Team

Location:	Brattleboro, VT
Bedrooms:	3
Bathrooms:	1.5
Living Space:	1800
Additional Notes:	建筑成本：approximately $85,000; roughly 75% of labor was free (homeowner and family)

Construction/wiring:Peter Yost, Christian Yost, Israel Yost, Nathan Yost (sort of a New England version of Brothers Strong)
Plumbing and heating:Temple Plumbing and Heating, Dummerston, Vt.

Architect:Steve Baczek, RA

Construction

PRE-REMODEL
Walls (first floor):混凝土块;没有绝缘
Walls (second floor):wood frame; uninsulated
Windows:single-pane double-hung wood
Roof:unvented slope (steeper pitch of gambrel), vented attic (lower-pitch gambrel); old, loose-fill fiberglass in very poor condition (approx. R-5)
Basement:不保温的混凝土铸件,破碎的混凝土楼板(one section of bare dirt); vented front-porch crawl space with bare dirt; single-pane awning, divided-light windows
Garage:detached

POST-REMODEL
Foundation:basement, 3-1/2-in. open-cell spray foam in stud wall (R-12); crawl space, unvented 1-1/2-in. polyisocyanurate insulation board on perimeter walls sealed with approximately 1-in.-thick spray foam, double 6-mil poly sealed to perimeter walls (R-10)
Walls (first floor):3英寸。高密度的闭孔喷雾泡沫（R-20+）
Walls (second floor):2x4 studs; 3-1/2-in. fiberglass batt and 1-in. XPS insulation board (R-17+)
Windows:;ow-e, double-glazed, wood-framed (U=.33, SHGC=.32)

Roof:sloped ceiling, R-19 fiberglass batts with interior 1-in. XPS (total R-24); flat ceiling, interior 1-in. XPS, criss-crossed triple-layer batt insulation, one fiberglass, two cotton batt (total R-value: 44+); cathedral ceiling in kitchen addition, R-38 polyisocyanurate 5.5-inch SIPs
Garage:detached (no change)

Energy

• 88% AFUE fuel-oil boiler
• Superinsulated stainless-steel jacketed indirect-tank water heater
• 处方LED厨房照明
• CFL or hard-wired throughout home (except three cluster fixtures in living/dining room and kitchen
• Energy Star ceiling fan in master bedroom
• 没有中央空调

Energy Specs

Pre-remodel K-factor
(number of heating degree days covered by one gallon of fuel oil): 7.5
Post-remodel K-factor:15.85
Pre-remodel blower door:> 4,000 cfm @ 50 Pascals
Post-remodel blower door:1,240 cfm @ 50 Pascals(still working on air-sealing issues)
Annual energy use:77 mmbtus/yr(pre-remodel not known)

Water Efficiency

• Energy Star dishwasher
• Front-loading clothes washer
• Low-flow toilet: 1.0 gpf pressure-assist
• Hands-free electronic kitchen faucet

Indoor Air Quality

• 厨房和浴室中的高效点排气风扇
• High-efficiency 24/7 whole-house exhaust
• Carbon monoxide detector in basement next to boiler

Green Materials and Resource Efficiency

• Non-paper-faced gypsum board on all walls
• Driveway redone with free-draining, locally quarried bluestone
• All structural wood removed from home during renovation salvaged
• 2x3s (basement) and 2x2s (reclad system first floor) ripped fromReNewsalvaged lumber
• All interior trim reused
• Bedroom and kitchen shelving made from salvaged school furniture

Alternate Energy Utilization

• 佛蒙特Cow Power