To make up for time lost to the predictably unpredictable New England weather, the HyggeHaus team held 3 build days over Spring Break week.

This week’s build focused on finishing interior framing, sheathing the lower section of the house, taping the CDX sheathing, prepping for roof and window installation, and installation and air sealing of a Weather Resistant Barrier (WRB).

Two ongoing design challenges for us as we wrap up the framing phase have been the interior loft layout and the question of installing a clerestory window near the high point of the shed roof to bring more daylight into the interior. Both aspects of the design are complicated by uncertainty over the final siting and orientation of the house, meaning we have to plan a design that can work for two opposite shed roof orientations. This is a challenge for the loft design, since the water heater we planned to install in the loft area must be located near the high point of the roof to have adequate clearance. We solved this by framing two access hatches into the loft and then laying the subfloor over both; this gives the option of installing the water heater on either side of the loft while maximizing available loft space, and the subfloor over the corresponding access hatch will be cut out to provide access to the space when the building reaches its final destination. We used the framed and decked loft as a working platform to prep for the roof installation.

The shed roof’s structural components will be wooden trusses, which will rest on a short knee wall of 2x6s with an LVL bottom plate at the peak, and directly on an LVL plate at its low point. The LVL plates will provide added strength and stiffness to the roof assembly when the building is disassembled into separate roof and body sections for transport. The lower LVL plate rest on top of the lower wall’s LVL top plates; both extend past the plane of the walls on the interior to provide an attachment point where the two sections of the house will be bolted together. The idea of adding a clerestory window to the upper section of wall below the roof was challenged by the difficulty of finding a location that would still work if the roof was rotated 180 degrees. Eventually, we decided that the existing windows and doors would provide enough natural light that the clerestory window idea wasn’t worth pursuing further. 

Our short-term goal is to get the house “dried in” as soon as possible; to that end, part of the team devoted a significant chunk of time to prepping windows for installation. Our collection of 7 donated windows got a fresh coat (or 3) of black paint, to harmonize with the warm gray paint color we picked for the siding. The WRB membrane we used was Solitex Mento 100. This durable, fabric-like product which was detailed with both Tescon Vanna and Ectoseal Encors. When details with the window and door connections are completed the entirety will act as the primary air barrier, preventing air leakage through the building envelope and the accompanying unwanted heat gain/loss., reducing the chance of condensation within the wall assembly, and is the drainage plane for the vertical surfaces of the building.

To work effectively, this weather resistant barrier must be detailed properly; this includes allowing sufficient overlap between courses, lapping to the weather, minimizing stapling in the field (creates holes), avoiding bunching or wrinkling of the membrane, and taping at joints. The taping process, as we found out, has its own learning curve. The challenge is to apply the tape without wrinkling it, wandering off the line, or having the tape stick to itself — easier said than done! But for the purpose of building a high-performance home, every minute we spend getting these details right really does make a difference.