New neighours

I decided to go for a walk to take some photos of the fall colours...

Half the leaves have fallen, but it's still pretty!

But then I came across some distressing ribbons in the trees...

...and this survey marker in the ground.

Every now and then I hear chainsaws, and rumours about a company building rental cottages on the neighbouring lot...so this is a bad a sign that our neighbours are going to be building soon.

I'm not sure how close to the property line they intend to build, but there are no doubts that our private little cove is going to see some big changes in the coming years.

Rigid on the Roof

Keeping with my plan to wrap the entire house in rigid foam, here I am in the process of adding rigid insulation to the roof.  In the end I will have 6" of EPS rigid foam sandwiched between the plywood sheathing/ceiling below and the OSB nailing surface for shingles above.

 

The walls will have 2" of foam, that will extend up to cover the ends of the roof insulation, creating a continuous thermal barrier.  I suspect there will be gaps due to the bumpy installation of the BlueSkin, so I will likely fill the gap between the foam panels with spray foam, and tape all seams.

The rigid insulation has grooves for strapping, which I am alternating to form a grid pattern.  This offsets the joints of the foam panels, hopefully eliminating any three dimensional airflow networks.

I switched from my workboots to running shoes because of the damage I was inflicting on the foam.  I tried to keep my weight on the strapping, but my clumsiness did some damage to the foam in places.  Once piece blew off the roof before I had a chance to fasten it down, and the corner broke off.  I simply glued it back together with some foam adhesive and taped the seam.  Good as new!  *fingers crossed*
 

 

At the peak I used foam adhesive to attach the two pieces, then taped the seam on every layer.  It's important that any warm, moist air from inside cannot find it's way through the roof system.  If it were to find a path to the exterior OSB it would quickly condense on the cold surface and the OSB would begin to rot.

I've made some choices here that some may find controversial.  For one, I have no true vapour barrier on the warm side of my roof.  I have consciously made my roof breathable.  The plywood, tar paper, EPS foam and OSB are all vapour permeable to some degree, which means that if moisture gets in, it can find it's way out again.  Together as a system they act as a very good vapour retarder, which will slow the passage of any moisture through the system, and if I've put it all together well it should ensure that any moist air has time to dry and no warm air has a chance to condense on any cold surfaces.

The main reason I chose not to put a vapour barrier on the inside of my roof system is so I have the option of adding insulation to the cavaties between the rafters at a later date.  If I decide to do this, I will add a vapour barrier at that time.  But the last thing I wanted was to have a roof system with two vapour barriers that could trap moisture in the roof and cause rot.

I call this blog an "experiment" for a reason!  :)

Dragonfly

Friendly dragonfly becomes a living barette!  For a few seconds anyway...

Fall Colours

Dad and I started adding the rigid insulation to the roof today.  The insulation I chose has grooves for embedded strapping to make installation a snap.  However, the challenge was to find the rafters!  I was fastening through the 2" of rigid, 3/4" plywood, and into the roof rafters.  It was a slow process because I didn't want to miss and end up with a screw or nail poking through the ceiling.  This wouldn't be an issue if the ceiling wasn't exposed, but since I'll be seeing the bottom of my roof sheathing I needed to be extra careful.  Luckily we had mom inside keeping an eye on things!  :)

Long story short, I was too preoccupied to take photos... so here are a couple of the gorgeous fall colours!

We only got one layer finished, so there will be more insulation to come.  I promise to take photos next time!

Ceiling Up! Rain out!

First thing I noticed when I arrived this weekend, after three days of wind and rain.... the tarp was completely OFF the tiny house!  The wind must have blown it off, so yet again my tiny house was wet, wet, wet!  Luckily, this weekend I came prepared to get the roof on and the whole place weather tight!

Here is Dad helping with the plywood.  Yup, that's plywood being placed over the rafters!  I wanted to look of boards but the air-tightness and shear resistance of plwood.  I'll add a post to show how I made it happen.

This is me up on the roof screwing in the plywood.  Dad and Mike did the heavy lifting to get the plywood up there.  :)

Then comes the tar paper.  SO happy that rain will no longer be getting into my tiny house!  Hopefully it will have a chance to fully dry out!

Tar paper finished!

Feeling quite cozy inside, with the ceiling done:

I'm so pleased with how the plywood turned out!  And the colour of the rafters contrasts nicely.

View towards the front door from the loft:

Took quite a while to finish the tyvek... one tall ladder made for a slow day of moving the ladder 4 feet, stapling the tyvek, then moving the ladder another 4 feet.  Even with me up on the roof, it still took ages.  I recommend two ladders, so one person can pass the tyvek to the next, who can work while the first person moves their ladder... leapfrog fashion!

Tyvek is on, and taped at the seams. At the top the tar paper folds over the tyvek, and is then coverd with BlueSkin to ensure a completely watertight connection between the roof and the walls.

Bring on the hurricanes!  :)