Raise Your Heels

The APA (those wood people again) have issued a report on raised heel (AKA energy) trusses.  Typical trusses do not allow full height insulation out to the outside edge of an outside wall.  This means that the thermal envelope of your house is compromised where the roof comes down to the wall.  This would be akin to the back of your neck where your coat doesn't quite reach up to nor does your wool hat reach down to.  So consider raised heel trusses to be a scarf for your home.

Builders harumph about several issues.  Mainly plywood and siding and the extra cost.  How much extra cost, Captain Pennypincher?  Yes, it does cost extra.  But could you perhaps use all those drops from your sheathing in that extra 8-12" space?  But the taller blocking is also a somewhat valid point

The report gives some simplified methods for securing the trusses without complicated blocking.  The report is applicable for trusses with a heel between 15-1/4" and 24"; using continuous plywood (CS) as a prescriptive shear bracing method; for homes in seismic zones A, B, and C; for homes with wind exposure of 110mph or less; a whole list of other fairly typical conditions.

In essence, plywood has been found to be adequate to replace blocking between the tall trusses for all but the top chord itself.  That is, rather than using stacked 2x12's (illegal anyway) or a truss company built blocking solution, the plywood can extend to the bottom edge of the top chord.  Typical 2x4 bird-blocking can be used on top of that.

Thankfully, you as a builder do not have to figure this all out.  Talk to your designer about simplified solutions for energy heel trusses.  Here at Istockhouseplans, we're always happy to help you get the most bang out of your buck.

See the full report here (an account or login may be required):

http://www.apawood.org/level_c.cfm?content=pub_searchresults&pK=Form%20SR-103&pF=Yes

Advanced Framing Techniques in Video

The APA (Y'know, the plywood people) recently unveiled a new video outlining advanced framing and how easy it is to achieve in your building.  If you're still building at 16" o.c. with redundant studs at corners, windows, and T-walls, see this video.  These techniques actually ask you to do LESS in your building while achieving cheaper costs, a more comfortable home, environmental friendliness.  If you still balk then I won't stop you from building substandard home.  But for the future of your income, please at least consider staging these techniques into your repertoire of framing practices.

By way of reminder, it's not the number of studs that keep your house from blowing down or siding from warping, it's the use of plywood gapped per manufacturer's specs that achieves strength and durability.

Energy Star

Another month of silence.  Hmm... too much work?

There are a few new stock plans in the hopper that need to be finished, many ideas that need to be started but the amount of custom work we've been receiving has been incredible.  We've designed plans across the board for clients who come to us because of word of mouth.  It's all been about who we know.

And recently we were approached by Energy Star to draw energy efficient home design details for their upcoming release.  Once those are done and released to the public we'll direct you to the new details.  For those home designers that follow this blog, we hope those details will be useful in your designs.

Maybe once people stop bugging us for custom work we'll get on those stock plans, eh?

Hey baby, what's your... sign?

One of our local builders that we team up with, Cutting Edge Homes, is in the process of building some of our latest drawings.  Clackamas County is showcasing his homes for energy efficiency and has invited commissioners, legislators, and the general public.  The idea is to show off some energy efficiency measures and help folks understand what they should expect in new homes.  In this case is improved air sealing, improved insulation, tankless hot water heaters, and one unit with ducts inside the conditioned space.

We thought the event made perfect sense to flash a little leg, as it were.  After all, SOMEbody had to design the energy efficiency into these things and make sure they were going to exceed code.  So we had some lawn signs made up and stabbed them into the dirt on the jobsite.  You can see that our design prowess is not just limited to buildings, but advertising as well.  Perhaps.

The event will be November 10th at 3p at 14848 SE Arista Dr. Milwaukie, OR.  Come out and see what things are happening and to introduce yourself.

Follow the Blue Star

All this prior talk about energy efficiency and well built homes made us decide to do something about it. So we went ahead and partnered with Energy Star for our home designs. All of our stock plans can be simply modified to meet Northwest and National Energy Star guidelines. What does this mean? This means that our qualified plans will carry the Energy Star logo. If your home is built with the details we show, you can achieve an Energy Star label for the home. When you order a plan, please let us know that this is your intention and we will contact you about how you want to achieve the standard. We will work these details into the plan before we send it to you.

For the national scale, this can probably best be achieved by using 2x6 walls (as most of our plans are) or 2x4 with exterior rigid foam, R-38 raised heel trusses, R-30 floors and U=0.35 windows among other things. For the Northwest, we are familiar with the four BOP paths, the most common of which is the envelope upgrade. Hawaii has its own set of rules.

Now your homes can be more energy efficient when you purchase plans from istockhouseplans. Come see our catalog today.