Version 0.85

Double stud walls provide a thermal break between studs.

Human-Edited LLM Summary

This is a long post so here is a quick summary. In 2018, I set out to build a high-performance home, unfeasible in the Bay Area so I moved to the East Coast to find land. Early hurdles included scarce parcels, letter-writing campaigns for tear-downs, and mixed signals from a first builder who delayed contracts and demanded highly detailed plans before starting. To move faster, I assembled a hybrid team: consulting architects (including Emily Mottram), a drafter, and HVAC specialist Corbett Lunsford for a Manual J.

Construction choices prioritized performance: double-stud walls (~10“), dense-pack cellulose, ERV, and careful window selection (ultimately Pella triple pane, later regretted for low STC). Superior Walls were chosen for the foundation—later viewed as a mistake—bringing coordination issues (egress constraints, slab sequencing). Execution quality varied: some subs were excellent; others caused repeated rework, from rainscreen/flashing errors to insulation that failed density and attic depth targets, to drywall thickness misestimates, to poor deck installation and grading decisions.

Electrical leaned ambitious with whole-home low-voltage DC lighting (ATX LED), abundant USB-C/Cat6a, and Home Assistant atop a Proxmox/pfSense homelab. Solar ended up with a Sol-Ark hybrid inverter and battery after rejecting cloud-dependent options. Technology worked, but builder delays and learning curves made integration slower and costlier.

Post-occupancy, comfort and acoustics exposed tradeoffs: cooling the second floor in a tight envelope is tricky, and some plumbing noises persisted. My favorite feature is still the automated shades. I ultimately felt living quarters matter less than expected—and would consider selling/moving for lifestyle reasons.

Lessons

• Vet for elite builders; desperation is costly. If a builder doesn’t know an obvious technical like Manual J, run.
• Own the details (retain control!): contracts, specs, and QA (be onsite, photograph walls before insulation).
• Prefer cost-plus with explicit materials/standards; brand and system names must be consistent.
• Insulation and water management: verify density, attic R-values, flashing, and WRB exposure limits.
• Ambitious low-voltage/automation is viable but requires committed electricians and clear documentation.
• Consider acting as your own GC with an elite advisor if you can manage scope and scheduling.
• Design for comfort control, not just efficiency—zoning, airflow modeling, and noise.

Finding a House

The problem with living in desirable places is it can be difficult to acquire land. As a millennial, I demanded walkability, further narrowing the market. If the acquisition target is a tear-down, it will be as appealing to the local builders as it is to you. In the Boston area, I spent a considerable amount of time writing letters to people with extra land or who might be close to selling their, sorry to say, tear-down1. It was looking bleak in 2021 and 2022, so I moved down the coast when I found a house that was in the middle of everything, walkable, and had parks, restaurants, and coffee shops.

The first step was to meet with the code official to see if what I wanted to do possible. They speculated it was, but that I should have a surveying contingency. Fortunately at that time the market looked like it was on the way down so the seller agreed. It was possible to build the rectangle I wanted so the sale proceeded.

Finding an Architect and Builder

A lot of the legwork for this house started ahead of time. Once I got serious about acquisition I already had a list of resources to get the process going. The problem is that without a house you can’t plan. I discovered on the DOE website a list of zero energy home builders. From that I contacted two and one was interested. Common advice is to get an architect reference from a builder or a builder reference from an architect you like. The architects that the builder recommended were good, but I didn’t have 6 months to sit around waiting for plans. I read that 4-8 weeks isn’t impossible, so that was my goal. Around this time the builder gave me a gift: Pretty Good House, a book about building homes that approach passive house standards. I contacted one of the authors, Emily Mottram, and asked if she could be the architect. She couldn’t, but she was able to consult, which was fantastic. One of the builder’s recommendations also agreed to consult. To solve the architect problem, I hired a drafter.

Before I hired a drafter, I had the builder vet him. This is where problems started. The builder’s team was the owner of the company, the project manager, and coordinator among some other people who I didn’t interact with. The PM would actually be on site working on the project, and the owner wouldn’t have as much of a role in day-to-day activity, apparently. The owner called the drafter and had a conversation. The drafter was a former builder and he turned out to be great; however, the owner and the PM had diverging requirements. I later learned that the PM wanted very detailed building plans. So I went on a gig site and tried to find someone to build out the plans. I found one or two candidates who gave me plans they had designed, and the PM agreed that it was the level of detail they were looking for. Months had already gone by at this point. I told the builder I wanted to start March 1, and they said there’s no reason it couldn’t happen. Only there was a reason: we had no contract. I asked for a contract but they wouldn’t give me one until the plans had been secured. Since it was getting into April, I decided to look for another builder. To be fair, March wasn’t possible because the town had some red tape I had to get through to proceed, but we could have started mid-April if there had been a contract.

The plans had been finalized with Emily’s input on performance. The other consulting architect added valuable aesthetic detail like lighting. For HVAC, I hired Corbett Lunsford, the YouTuber, to design the Manual J. A Manual J is a calculation of heating and cooling requirements based on insulation and heat gain from windows, people, and appliances. I made a list of builders and emailed them asking if they could build a high performance house based on the attached plans. Some didn’t respond, some said it wasn’t for them, and I had two that were interested. One of them wasn’t interested in working remotely (I was still in Boston), so that left one builder. During the phone call with the owner I mentioned Corbett and how he worked on the Manual J. The builder responded, “I think I know what you mean.” Now, I was in a position of desperation as I had been through much more than you care to read in order to finally be able to build a house. One of the first lessons learned is never, ever be desperate. If a builder doesn’t know what a Manual J is, run2. In fact, you should be very knowledgeable. There’s a ton to learn in construction. Watch Matt Risinger, Stud Pack, Corbett. Do not join a cult, but take an intellectual approach. Emily wasn’t familiar with a particular WRB (weather barrier that is attached to the plywood before siding goes on), but she advised against using Risinger’s favorite Zip System because it has a permeability factor of 1 which means water vapor can’t escape and therefore the cellulose insulation could harbor mold. There’s nuances, but not knowing Manual J after being in construction for 25 years is a huge red flag. I hired them.

Excavation and Foundation

It took the builder around a month to put together a contract. When I was at the code official’s office he told me I could be my own builder. In retrospect I would have done this if I realized just how much more efficient I’d be without this builder. I could have lit duffle bags full of cash on fire and still have come out ahead. It seemed to be a win that the builder had construction scheduled just a couple months out. The site work required engineered plans. When they started work, I got an email from the code official saying they failed a site requirement. Even I noticed this on the plan, and I asked the code official if it was a red flag and he told me that some construction workers just aren’t used to it. Nevertheless, the fact that they ignored engineered plans gave me pause. The code official ended up being less helpful than I imagined, but critical in some important regards. After excavation he requested the builder to have a professional engineer evaluate the soil and write a recommendation. I was already required to have the soil tested and knew where the water table was and the makeup of the soil at various levels, but requiring a civil engineer to write a proposal meant I was less likely to end up with a Millennium Tower situation.

One mistake that I made was using Superior Walls, which are prefabricated dense concrete (waterproof) that are also highly insulated. My plans originally called for insulated concrete forms. These are forms made out of EPS foam into which concrete is poured as opposed to steel forms which get removed and reused. The builder often uses Superior Walls so they recommended it and said it would save a substantial amount of money. I wanted to have an attached greenhouse eventually, and the basement egress window would have exited into the greenhouse. The code official said that wasn’t ok. The Superior Walls had already been cast at that point. I had to pay a reasonable fee for the window to be closed in and a new one to be cut, though I wasn’t told about this until much later.

Framing

Superior Walls was probably a poor choice for many reasons. Because of their nature, you have to build the first floor deck before you pour the concrete, and when you pour the concrete there have to be 2x4s around the perimeter. Emily was dismissive of the idea that we insulate the foundation, which I wanted to do with EPS foam. The reason being that the 2x4 perimeter would yield a path to the earth temperature which can be in the mid-60s (18-19C). I noticed a buckle in the deck, told the builder, and the framers fixed it. This was the beginning of my question: who’s the builder?

After the slab was poured the framing continued. My plans called for double stud walls about 10“ thick. There are two advantages of double stud walls: a lot of insulation and elimination of thermal breaks. Most walls today are constructed with 2x6 studs and have an insulating factor in the 20s. Studs have an insulating value of about R-2, so they provide no thermal break.

Windows

Passive houses tend to have few windows placed strategically to take advantage of southern sun for heat gain in the winter. In order to find suitable windows I checked the Passive House Institute US website for PHIUS certified windows. Zola has some high end European style windows and they were on the list. They had a minimum order amount and it was beyond what I’d consider paying. Pella was also on the list. I knew the name from Risinger’s channel but didn’t realize they had PHIUS standard windows. A nice thing about Pella is you can estimate window cost using their online tool, and it yielded a reasonable sum.

Unfortunately you still have to deal with sales, though this was one of the better sales people I dealt with. When planning a house, if you are all in, it is impossible to be excellent with every detail. I assumed because I was purchasing triple pane PHIUS certified windows they’d be essentially soundproof. After the house was done I asked what the STC rating was. STC is typically between 26 for basic windows and 37 at the more sound proof end. Zola, who I inquired about before Pella, has windows upwards of 40, but they won’t engage unless you have an order of over $50k. Pella told me their STC was 29, pathetic.

Pella is not recommended. I emailed the CEO about the lack of upsell. I would have bought a thicker outer pane which is what’s required for a better STC rating. I think 37 is probably the minimum.

Pella couldn’t accommodate a triple pane basement egress, so I decided to find a tilt turn. It was double pane, but made in Poland.3 I very much like tilt turns and also told Pella they should adopt them. The CEO made no remark so I don’t think we will see anything promising from Pella.

Exterior Doors

Risinger demonstrated a triple locking door to his garage, so I decided to install Thermatru triple locking doors. Triple locks have a mechanism connecting latches at the top and bottom of the door. When engaged, the two latches push the door tighter against the rubber seal so the door is more airtight. Thermatru doors are also insulated rather than a solid slab.

I don’t recall whether the builder or framer initially installed the doors. While waiting for the trades to come in, it rained hard many days in the autumn and early winter. There’d be puddles of water on the inside of the house, even after the roof was up. When I brought this up the builder and code official said it was normal until the siding went up. I’ve watched a lot of videos and I’ve never seen this after the WRB is up.4 I started looking at it in greater detail.

The house has a rainscreen for two reasons. One for its intended purpose to allow rain that gets behind the siding to escape and dry out. The other is because the double stud wall builds up moisture in the winter and needs to dry out via WRB vapor permeability. The builder initially wanted to use hydrogap which has 1mm raised bumps allowing moisture to escape. I saw some multi-million dollar homes being built with this, and what I noticed is it was wrinkled in several places, which leads me to believe the moisture would get trapped. But also it didn’t solve the second problem of allowing vapor to escape. We used furring strips. For some reason, the builder and framer put 8“ wide furring strips around the windows and doors before they put the flashing tape on. This meant that water was getting behind the furring strips and into the windows and doors. Just look up a YouTube video. You pay for inexperience with time.

So they had to put on enough tape to cover the wide planks around the doors and windows. It looked ridiculous and wasted a lot of tape. Even after that there was still water coming in the door. Since I haven’t studied exterior door installation in depth I’m still not sure what the issue was, but I’m also not convinced it was totally solved. They had one of the trades cut a drip pan for under the door. That didn’t work so I asked them to just buy a prefab drip pan so any water that collected under the door would be ushered outside.

HVAC

HVAC is the heart of a high performance home. It’s why I hired Corbett who is an HVAC nerd. Like the builder, the HVAC company was accommodating. They fulfilled all requests. When I did the initial walkthrough I naively thought the two main guys were going to install it, but it was some other younger group of people. I told the two main guys, for example, that I wanted the exhaust of the ERV in one location and the intake in another, but it was backwards when installed.

At rough-in they only installed the main ducts and pathways for return, but they also delivered the indoor air handler which ended up sitting a basement that would flood periodically. One mistake I made, maybe, was informing the HVAC installer that one of the ERV ducts was dented (due to a knot in the wood) and they snapped at me over email saying their installers wouldn’t do that (it was before Thanksgiving so maybe influenced by other factors). I should have just told the builder, who seems to frequently blame any problem on “the homeowner” to save face. I wonder if I were my own builder how would I handle it, but I realize that some people are just that way. “It was an act of God that bent the duct!” Incidentally I sent photos, and it should have been clear that it was due to a knot, which I don’t blame anyone for because knots are a pain. And I ran it by Corbett before asking. One truth about ducts is that to get good airflow you want to have as few turns as possible, no more than 1 or maybe 2.

Plumbing

I handled the plumbing fixtures myself and before the plumber arrived I was told to order the bathroom fixtures. Managing this project through software would have been advantageous many times, and this is a perfect instance of why. I ordered the toilets and tubs and all of them arrived.

The plumbers did a walk-through like HVAC, and I indicated I wanted to have copper pipes coming from the water line into the kitchen, which wasn’t far. Otherwise the whole house would be PEX, which is standard today. I also explained we were putting in a water softener, whole home water purifier (like a large Brita filter), and a fun reverse osmosis setup. I looked into reverse osmosis systems and the old school systems have tanks. There are newer systems that produce instant water. My plan was to have the reverse osmosis system feed into the refrigerator line and pot filler line.

The plumber came back and told me he asked his boss and said the copper line would deteriorate due to the reverse osmosis system. I explained that the reverse osmosis system would have a mineral replenishing device attached so the pH level would be sufficient. But, I also reasoned that even though PEX doesn’t use plasticizers, even if plastic particles were to get in the system the reverse osmosis system would take care of it, and also reverse osmosis itself is full of plastic components (you can either have PFAS or microplastics, I said).

For a hot water heater I installed a heat pump electric hybrid. For an outdoor water spigot I went with Aquor which has a quick-connect attachment to the hose so you can easily connect and disconnect it.

The toilets and shower fixtures were mostly known brands, but certain things like the tub filler and the kitchen faucet were not because the cost difference was so great.

Back to rough-in. I went over one day to see the tubs in the bathrooms though uninstalled. It turns out that the plumbers had planned to install their own tubs. This ended up being a big issue for various logistical reasons, but in the end it was resolved. How much time is wasted and how many resources are used due to flubs like this?

Everything worked out with plumbing, except there is a knocking noise at one of the drain pipes behind the wall when hot water runs through it. The inexpensive fixtures worked out, and the reverse osmosis system works well.

Electrical

Even though the builder had difficulty going outside their usual scope and learning what it meant to build this kind of house, the subcontractors I would say were solid. Maybe 70% or more of them were excellent. The electrician was accommodating and they didn’t have to be, so I appreciated working with them.

I came across a YouTube video about whole home DC lighting. Normally lighting systems run thick AC wires and convert at the ballast for DC LED lighting. ATX LED had a whole home system that converted AC to DC at one location and ran low voltage wiring throughout the house. Additionally, they had USB-C and USB-A outlets which is something I’ve wanted for a long time (you ever notice how many wall warts there are?). This was super exciting, but it depended on the electrician, and luckily they agreed to do it.

Matt Risinger, based in Austin, had a video where viewers asked why he has Romex for his lighting instead of low voltage. There are times when I could take a hint but failed to do so. I asked Murray, founder of ATXLED, why Risinger wasn’t a client and his response was something about money for exposure. But if Risinger wanted the product, why wouldn’t he just install it and not advertise it? Murray and I worked on designing the low voltage system based on the plans. In addition to the lights I had close to a dozen low voltage outlets and also spent extra on an automation system.

The rough in for the electrical went slowly. It ended up taking months longer, and I don’t know if it had to do with the builder trying to figure out the basement water issue. In retrospect, it should have been straight forward but in the end the electrician told me there was a lot of confusion and a lot of calls to Murray. The low voltage system is about 6W per light with 100W per hookup. You connect a 5 wire low voltage wire to the port and run it to a switch. Each switch also has a daisy-chain port so you can connect the low voltage to another switch (each switch has a microcontroller). Two of the wires are power, one ground, and two are data.

Ready for books.

Interlude: A Firing?

The day before Christmas I went into the house to install an outlet so that the solar installer could get the system operating before the end of the year and we could run the sump pump using solar. I went into the basement and it was completely filled with sewer gas. No one could work in that environment. I set up the outlet box upstairs and then ran down a few times holding my breath to install it. The builder had duct taped over the sewer pipe and someone partially ripped the duct tape off.

I went to the mountains later that week and decided I should see if the original builder would be interested in taking over. The current contract didn’t look like it was written by a high priced lawyer and had language like, “if we can’t agree, we will amicably part ways.” The original builder agreed to be on site in the new year to look at the project.

We toured the house, and I sent an approximate remainder of the budget. I hadn’t heard back for a couple weeks, then the project lead was on vacation in the tropics, then their work shop burnt down via the next door business. If things had gone more smoothly and they said they could do it for the amount quoted, I would have fired the current builder. One holdup was that the water in the basement hadn’t been addressed yet. In retrospect, I should have gathered estimates from sub-contractors myself, paid the original builder an advisor fee, and fired the current builder.

Insulation

Early March, they finally got the rough-in inspection. This inspection is for everything visible including framing and plumbing so insulation could go forward. One anti-feature of the builder is he was never there for inspection. He always doled it out to an underling. But, the inspector told me this house was well-built and the same couldn’t be said for many of the houses he reviewed. Just from driving by new construction I believed him. You see houses with janky framing, OSB instead of plywood, or wrinkled Hydrogap instead of fully adhered WRB – and these are $3 million houses whose unsuspecting future owners merely see the Dekton or seemless baseboard.

Mid-March the insulators were coming, so I took videos and photos of everything on each level inside the walls and ceiling. This proved useful multiple times both before and after the house was finished. As the insulators arrived they started spray foaming. I was confused, because dense-pack cellulose does not require spray foam. Fortunately, the builder got themselves a stop-work order posted on the door threatening arrest, and when I told the insulators they took off. This gave me time to talk with the builder and code official.

Next, the insulator came back and started adding the cellulose. Only, they were dumping it in the wall cavity like Randy Quaid hosing excrement into the storm sewer in National Lampoons Christmas. I sort of lost it, because this was one of the most critical parts of the house. Had I waited 5 minutes the builder would have been there and I could have channeled my frustration at him. Instead, imagine telling a professional they are doing it wrong. (They didn’t like it.) I ripped off the mesh keeping the cellulose in place on one of the “completed” cavities and it fell out of the wall. Dense-pack doesn’t do that. Plus, there was a baseball sized gap. A poor job, indeed.

Despite showing the builder YouTube videos on how to do it, the insulator ended up packing the walls better but they just didn’t apply the right technique. Later on, there was more drama with the attic insulation.

Since I couldn’t trust the insulators, I went into the attic and marked the height which represented R-60 with a sharpie on a handful of trusses. Sure enough, after they insulated the level was so low in some places that it didn’t even meet code. The builder went up and looked toward the middle of the house and after several minutes said, “Yeah, we’ll have to get them back here. We’ll take care of it.” The second time they came back, apparently they didn’t tell the builder. One day the builder looks up in the attic and says with a very poor performance, “Oh. Oh! It looks like the were here already.” I measured and it was off by inches of insulation. That can have a real cost over years of heating and cooling.

I told the builder he should have someone from the company check the work of the insulator in real time. I said this in front of one of the employees who volunteered. The third round was scheduled for a Friday morning. The employee kept asking the builder about it who gave shady responses, as if he wanted the employee to quit talking about it. The insulator didn’t come that day. Instead, they came some day I wasn’t available. I asked if he verified the level of insulation (within some margin is fine), and the response I got wasn’t, “It’s within reason,” but “They blew in everything they had!”

At some point around this time I learned from Stud Pack that there is a Greenguard Gold spray foam insulation. Had I known that, I would have gone with it. It’s kind of difficult to fake spray foam. One major reason the Pretty Good House people like cellulose is that it is recycled and therefore “green;” however, it is not green if the installer commits fraud and you end up spending more on energy in the coming years.

Siding

One thing I found odd was that both builders I considered asked about siding and insulation as if it would break the bank. The only viable options in my mind were Hardie and SmartSide.

You may notice that high end homes tend not to have seams, at least in the front of the house. This is because they design the house to accommodate the max length of the siding so they do not need more than one plank on the horizontal. This mattered to me a lot originally and so I chose SmartSide which has a slightly longer plank. When the design came in, I decided it wasn’t worth it over the function of performance home principles and went back to Hardie. SmartSide is easier to cut but it requires a gap between planks because it is engineered wood. Hardie doesn’t require the same gap and is the best for fire resistance.

The WRB has 150 days of exposure to sunlight allowed with no guidance after that. The siding went up right around the deadline, except for one side of the house. The builder should have known that the WRB would expire and at least put a tarp over it. I pointed out that the one side was no longer guaranteed to do its job so I asked that they remove it and replace it. The WRB is extremely sticky and doesn’t want to come off. The company rep on site started to remove it, but when I came back later I noticed he just put another layer on top of the old layer! You can’t do that because the cellulose insulation needs to breath. I’m still not sure if the rep did it on his own or not, but I asked the builder to remove both layers and install a fresh layer of WRB. It took multiple guys several hours but they eventually did it. They told me the rep was fired not just for performance on this project but for other issues as well.

Greenhouse

One feature I wasn’t sure about installing right away was a greenhouse. BC Greenhouse had been selling greenhouse kits for decades so I got a quote and it was reasonable for the size. It was engineered for 120 mile an hour winds, a formidable structure. It was also accessible directly from the house via vestibule. The builder flipflopped on building it but eventually subcontracted it out. The instructions weren’t great and there were missing parts but they were able to sort it out. Definitely glad I did this at the time or it may never have been built.

Drywall, Doors, Flooring

The drywall was a disaster. In general it looks fine, but it wasn’t finished anywhere near flush with the wall, something I’ve never seen before. I asked the electrician about it who said they’re used to it while installing box extenders to make up for the gaps between the outlet boxes and drywall. The backsplash had to be recalculated. And the cabinets wouldn’t fit in the kitchen because the estimate of the thickness of the drywall was double.

One day the code official stopped by to check the drywall. I watched him tell the company rep on site (the same guy who was fired following the WRB incident) that the drywall was missing some screws but otherwise it looked good. The rep said “OK” and continued his unrelated work. He never told the drywall installers anything.

I noticed the finishers were not installing corner bead around the windows. This gives the modern drywall return a nice clean look. While it wasn’t in the contract the builder and I discussed it, and I told him we talked about it pointing to the spot where we had the conversation. They were planning to just put caulk on trimmed drywall which would have looked bad, so when I insisted on the corner bead they charged me extra for it. This was one of the few disputes, so I looked into how to handle it. When you have a dispute like this, you can propose meeting them half way. I went to their office to discuss it and they agreed to cut the cost in half. Another builder might point out that it wasn’t in the contract, so definitely have such things spelled out in the contract.

When attending open houses I could spot solid wood floor work and shoddy work. I vowed to make sure the wood floor was well done. There were multiple factors at this point, particularly lack of time and also the estimate from the builder for the floor was incorrect. I found a floor installer myself who I didn’t vet and this was a bad idea, though a worse idea was hiring this builder in the first place. The builder and installer met and we decided on a date for installation. The installer was clear that the wood needed to be conditioned a week ahead of time. Of course the builder did not have the HVAC ready in time so it had to be pushed back, which of course upset the installer as they’d lose work.

It was rescheduled and the wood was delivered; however, only the heat pump was running and the whole home dehumidifier hadn’t been installed yet. So the wood was sitting in sort-of conditioned space for a week. Further, the planks are wider than usual, and that means the tolerance was low and they should have been sitting for slightly longer than usual. I didn’t learn this until later. At installation the floor looked incredible, but with a stable dehumidification system the planks shrunk. Legal consultation says: use your builder’s risk insurance, but because of deadlines that wasn’t feasible. In retrospect, since the installer was actually a middleman I should have just paid him a finder’s fee and hired the installation company directly. But also this wouldn’t have happened if the flooring had been installed on time in spring rather than the sweaty humid summer.

A couple of fun stories regarding tile. The builder didn’t have the water turned on so the tile installers found some stagnant dirty water and used that to mix their cement. For the shower, I wanted a curbless so I had them install a drain in the center of the shower. For some reason the builder moved the drain to the wall, which doesn’t make any sense because either you’d need a curb for the slope or the wood floor wouldn’t be level with the tile floor. This was discovered and reversed so it sloped in the opposite direction. I assumed the tile installer would install the drain correctly for this setup (maybe I was tired at this point) but of course they didn’t. I have a temporary solution but eventually that will need to be redone.

Lastly, the doors. I’ve never seen a door with a halo before. I don’t know if the builder installed the interior doors themselves but I can only assume since they installed the exterior doors. Every single door has some kind of issue from a strange crunch when closing it, divergent gaps along the hinges, halos. Of course they used the thinnest door possible to save money. Had I researched interior doors I may have my luxury builder’s license by now. One other thing is that I paid extra for solid wood doors. One day I noticed one of the doors was made from MDF. I looked around and there were about 6 of them. “I don’t know how that happened” the builder says. Keep an eye on your builder and subs, especially for things that you would never know otherwise. Once the doors had the hardware installed it’d be more difficult to notice.

Cabinets and Finishes

The cabinets started to go in right before I traveled for several days. You can buy decent cabinets online, so I had pre-built cabinets shipped. They arrived about a month and a half early sitting in a humid garage. When the cabinet installer came he told me “this is my wheelhouse” which got me excited. As he started installing the cabinets he realized they wouldn’t be centered and wouldn’t fit in the space, partly due to the fact that the drywall was over 1“ total thickness between the two walls. The builder told him to wait until he arrived, which was hours later. A ridiculous waste of money – there was an auxiliary cabinet setup that the installer could have worked on. Days later I walked in on one of the builder’s employees installing the auxiliary cabinets, without finish screws! Since I was away I don’t know who ended up installing the cabinets but it largely worked out. If you have sparse cabinets you can DIY, but if you have a complicated cabinet setup you probably want to have a reputable pro design and build it.

The electrician came through and tried to get the DC lighting system working. Because of the builder’s delays it had been months since they worked with the system so they probably forgot how it is supposed to work. Murray from ATX LED has a “How to Wire” guide and it should have been clear, but I was later told that they lost money because it was too complicated. I installed a lot of low voltage wire for art lights, bookshelf lighting, and future projects.

I learned that paint, even if greenguard gold, can have PFAS. I opted for a latex paint that supposedly had no offgassing nor PFAS. One day the painter came back to do touch-up paint and finish an area that hadn’t been painted. He told me something like, “This [paint] is better. That other stuff doesn’t have volume.” I can only take that to mean he used a different kind of paint for that area. I think the builder not only lies to the subs, but also to his own employees, putting words in my mouth. The lying throughout the project from various people made me sad for humanity.

Deck, Driveway, Final Grading,

The deck, driveway, and final grading were all ridden with issues of course. The builder installed the deck themselves, and I’ve never seen such a horrendous job. If they had watched just one YouTube video on installing composite decks on the ride over, the deck might have been a “B” but instead I don’t even know how to grade it, I’ve never seen something so bad. They didn’t put spacers between the boards, nor filler in the screw holes, they used the wrong size post, and they cut the composite material as if it were lumber, which isn’t how you do it.

For final grading I saw the excavator trucking out what looked like native soil and trucking in rocky soil. I asked him about it and of course I received a likely untruthful answer. I realized what was going on: the builder was worried about water penetration and wanted to make the soil as impervious as possible. Only now having a layer of rocksoil instead of topsoil makes any landscaping more difficult in addition to preventing even growth.

Technology

Even though I’ve developed bluetooth on NRF52 and iOS, I hadn’t kept up with low energy systems. In Mountain View in 2015 there was an event sponsored by Intel that reviewed the contenders for the space. I recalled some of them now that I was researching what to use: Zigbee, Thread, Z-Wave. Choosing just one seemed to have advantages like stronger network and less potential for interference. Most products appeared to support either Z-Wave or Zigbee. Zigbee was an open protocol design so I decided on that.

During the doldrums of construction I bought some essential items and tested them out with a Zigbee controller to make sure they worked. I almost made a mistake buying a battery-powered deadbolt. The deadbolt would have hit the triple locking mechanism, so I returned it. Instead, I was inspired by someone who made a custom lock for his home office. I bought a fingerprint reader (with future plans for facial recognition) and a solenoid lock I planned to control with an ESP microcontroller with a built in Zigbee radio. I installed all of the wiring but realized due to the triple locking mechanics the dead-bolt would have to be permanent, which means I need to move the solenoid (easy) and develop a way – perhaps grounding – of unlocking from the inside.

When trying to plan for tech, I watched several IoT YouTuber videos. One thing I couldn’t grasp was how they had so many devices. I now know that this simply sneaks up on you. Interior shades, exterior shades, window film, art lights, can lights, exterior lights, air gradient, RATGDO, etc.

For physical connections, I put USB-C (from ATXLED) and CAT-6a in many of the spaces. The “security” cameras, including the doorbell, have CAT-6a connections. I say “security” because realistically home thieves wear all black and are in and out within seconds, so cameras are useless, despite what the aspiring despots at Amazon may claim. Instead, cameras are useful for just being lazy and not having to go to the window to look outside. The USB-C has proven quite useful for charging my laptop or phone anywhere, including the greenhouse.

Without having a homelab before, much research was needed. I determined a used Dell Optiplex i7 newer generation with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD was sufficient for a server. Zigbee operates via a Conbee II USB. Proxmox as a VM manager was new to me, as was pfSense for routing. Home Assistant seems like unnecesarily complex source code, but as an application it works well. For NVR software, I’ve tried a few but none are great.

I bought a 6-zone network amplifier refurbished, and luckily it worked with Home Assistant because otherwise I’m not sure how it was supposed to operate.

ATXLED sold me a home automation package. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to use it because it requires connecting to some random server which is against the policy of the home (higher paygrades and such). Murray told me the root password for the controller which is just a Raspberry Pi with a hat, but haven’t had the time to figure out how to get it to work with Home Assistant. I had to modify some of the vanity lighting in the bathrooms by ripping out the transformer or installing a step-down DC-to-DC converter to work with the 48V source. And as for my custom LED systems, I ran a lot of 18/2 from some of the shade terminals to power art lights and cabinet lights. Despite 72 feet of LED strips in my bookcase, I hardly use it. More interesting is a the lighting I installed for a post-occupancy custom closet cabinetry install. The light switch was covered, so I installed a door sensor that turns on the cabinet lighting when it is dark via Home Assistant. The few door sensors I have installed have had their moments of general utility.

Internet inspiration. Reality: clearcoat maple cabinets, black trim, and LED.

Originally I wanted either a solar roof or solar shingles. I reached out to Tesla multiple times for solar roof and powerwall and they didn’t get back to me. Certainteed shingles seemed interesting, but I ended up going with regular panels. The solar installer recommended Enphase, but I learned it conflicted with the house policy; specifically, Enphase requires cellular data to operate. No bueno. The installer introduced me to Sol-Ark which makes a hybrid inverter, a perfect solution for me. The hybrid inverter lets you tie together solar, battery, and grid connections seemlessly. I bought a 14kWh battery and the installer had an electrician wire it up. Unfortunately, they installed it incorrectly. After a few power outages I finally was able to solve the issue.5 I can technically add more panels or even a wind turbine in the future.

Conclusion and Future

After the house was built I was asked what my favorite feature was. “The automatic shades and not hearing the sump pump,” I’d reply. The automatic shades are still my favorite feature. Every evening just before sundown, they operate and it makes me smile.

There were few issues after move in. There was a noise around the floor above the water heater, like an expansion. The plumber came out and couldn’t figure out what was going on. Also a drain pipe made similar noises.

The HVAC was probably the biggest issue. High performance homes are designed for retaining heat. Little did I realize how difficult it would be to cool it properly. Like a more decadent passive house on the east coast, sleeping at night can be a problem. Generally if outdoor temperature is above 32F/0C, I don’t need to run the heater. But even with such low outdoor temperatures I may have to cool the 2nd floor with the heat pump because it is 70F/21C in the bedroom.

One of my favorite concepts in computer science is the idea you can run any program with a single loop. The HVAC system has several components that each have their own motor. Instead, it should be one big air loop.6 There is an avant-garde home called an earthship which has a huge tunnel of air, so if your earthship is too hot or too cold you open the vent and your home becomes mild. The creator of earthships says your home will be 68F/20C year-round – as it should be! Having an electronic damper to allow your home’s air travel through an underground pipe network means, depending on where you live, you could condition your air to within a margin and then heat or cool it from there. Lastly, I think there should be more dampers and vents. Air flow should be precisely engineered in a simulation. The current state of the art is quite nascent, imo.

There are some obvious lessons here. One, if you hire a builder make sure they are elite. Two, make sure the contract spells out the details as much as possible. There is a case in contract law from the early 20th century where Reading pipe was specified in the contract and the builder used a different pipe. The client demanded it be replaced. The client lost the court case. I learned that contracts are one of the weakest areas of law. I asked an attorney if I could recover the market value for renting it out and was told, “Did you have plans to rent it out?” The only thing I could recover were costs like the amount of rent I had to pay for the months outside of the contract. I decided to wait until the last minute to drop that on the builder, otherwise they might have inflated some other cost for the last payout. Matt Risinger, an elite builder, refuses custom contracts. It doesn’t hurt to try to specify details and consequences of failing to adhere to those details. While pipe may have been irrelevant decades ago, there are a lot of reasons today that subsitutes are not identical. OSB and plywood are different for both health and air barrier reasons. One solution to this is taking a cost-plus approach. You pay for all of the materials and the builder takes a percentage of the project.

If I could have done it all over again, I’d have been my own builder and hired the first builder as a consultant. I’ve never seen such incompetence in the tech industry, so perhaps that’s why I was so naive. For any future projects I’ll hire an elite team. Fortunately, I can take my time for any future projects and complete due diligence.

One realization I had when the house was near finished was living quarters don’t matter that much. Sure, excellent air quality and having different spaces to retreat is nice, and there is a positive psychological effect to reading between a piano and a built in bookcase. But I didn’t mind my college-grade rental. I wanted to sell my newly finished home and move to the Bay Area. I found some homes on the peninsula for just over a million which needed some serious renovation. The plan would have been to seal any obvious penetrations with tape and run aerobarrier. In 2018 and 2020, wildfire smoke lingered for over a week, so air sealing a home there is a must.

At move in I had no interest in construction. A month later I was checking up on Stud Pack. Somehow I came across a project by an architect in Belgium who built his energy efficient home inside a large greenhouse. This fascinated me because greenhouses give you a microclimate which you can influence. I’d like to one day build that home.

Recommendations

• Samsung All-in-One Heatpump Washer Dryer 🔥🔥🔥
• Graywind Blinds 🔥🔥🔥
• Plumbing Deals 🔥🔥🔥
• Hunski Hardwoods 🔥🔥🔥
• Sol-Ark 🔥🔥
• Nu-Aqua 🔥🔥

Anti-Recommendations

• Pella 👎🏻
• Ferguson 👎🏻
• Broan ERV 👎🏻
• Tesla 👎🏻
• Cellulose Insulation 👎🏻
• Fast-Growing-Trees 👎🏻

---

To illustrate the extent of my desire: I created a database of places I wanted and created a website that promised to help people get the most value of their home. This wasn’t sinister as I planned to genuinely consult with them. In anycase, I never fully executed on this but one of the houses ended up in the hands of a builder and another person as a result of letter-writing responded a year later. ↩︎ 1.

Run until your muscles burn and veins pump battery acid. Then run some more. ↩︎ 1.

It was a family business and the person helping me when I picked it up was speaking Polish. ↩︎ 1.

There was an instance on Stud Pack. It turned out there was an issue with the installation. ↩︎ 1.

They installed an Automatic Transfer Switch, which Sol-Ark does not recommend and YouTube setups I’ve seen only use a manual transfer switch. ↩︎ 1.

An exception may be HEPA. ↩︎