The best laid plans… -Resources (Education)- E

Solar Home Chronicles 19

Tuesday, 20 November 2007

In his poem, “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough”, Robert Burns wrote one of his most famous mis-quoted lines: “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an men gang aft agley”. I always remembered this line as “the best laid plans…”, which is why I have associated this poem with our house building plans.

I have to admit that our own house building plans have not ‘gang agley’ (i.e. become completely ruined), like the poor mouse’s house. However, our plans certainly have not carried through as originally expected.

Last week, I told you about some of the design changes we had to make, in order for our house to feel and function as we wish. This week, I will tell you about some of the complications we dealt with regarding windows and doors.

You will remember that, for our house to function optimally to receive and store solar heat passively, it has been designed with a particular proportion of glass to floor area. If we have too much glass, then our house will overheat. With too little, then we won’t be getting as much solar energy from the sun as possible.

Of all the companies our home building has involved, it is our windows and doors salesman that we have spent the most time and money with. We selected the windows and doors early on, but these items were not ordered until the walls were framed, so that exact measurements could be made. This is because each window in our home is unique. Some are rectangular, and others are trapezoidal with angled tops. Some have to be `egress’ windows (i.e. of a particular size, so that one can exit quickly through them in case of fire), and all of them must be triple-pane, Low-E and argon-filled. This would be a challenging order to fill.

The doors began to arrive about 2-3 weeks after we ordered them. Given that our land has lots of water, ditches and cattails, Eric and I were pleased to find a front door that has cattails etched into the glass. In all, we ordered 7 insulated doors, of which 4 of them arrived as ordered, and installed easily. One of the others had incorrect glass (i.e. it was supposed to be 2/3 glass, but came with 1⁄2 glass), one was not the right size to fit the opening, and one came with grills over the glass, that we had not ordered. All of these issues were addressed by the company.

We had an accident with one door. Soon after it was installed, before it had a doorknob, the door blew open in strong wind and struck the house, damaging the door. The company was kind enough to replace this for us.

We chose this particular window manufacturer because their hardware seemed superior to others’, and they could modify their standard framing in order to accommodate our vertical cedar siding. They gave us great service, even as difficulties arose. When we ordered our nine windows, we found out that one of them would have to be reduced in size. This is because a larger triple-pane window would be too heavy for the opener hardware. Most of the windows arrived soon after the doors. Our bathroom window arrived with clear glass, instead of frosted, but this would be easily corrected.

Our large 3-window unit had its own challenges. It was delivered on a very windy day, and one triple-pane glass broke on its way over on the truck. So, the company took all the glass from the framing, and delivered it in pieces. And then, when we tried to install it, we found that the framing was one inch too tall, a couple of inches too narrow, and its angles did not fit the opening. Since it took many extra weeks for this one to arrive, we chose to re-fashion the opening and install it anyway. The glass was re-inserted, and the company would replace the broken pane.

A big surprise _ to us and to the salesman _ was our sliding glass door. We had ordered a nine-foot double-pane, Low-E, argon-filled door with 2 sliding panes. The door arrived about 6 inches narrower than ordered. We then found out that this was the maximum size it could be, for structural reasons. However, we had not been told this ahead of time. This reduction in amount of glass (coupled with the reduced window mentioned before) would compromise our overall solar collection ability by about 10%. Had we known ahead of time, we could have made up the deficit with larger windows elsewhere.

The salesman felt badly and got us a reduction on the cost. However, we are still quite disappointed with the potential effect this will have on our passive solar qualities.

Now that the triple-pane windows are in, I am surprised at how the extra layer of glass (our current home has only double-panes) reduces the amount of light into the house. I understand that the same qualities that help keep the heat in the house, reduce some of the solar heat and light from entering too. But the windows feel sturdy, look nice and will function well. We expect that once our house is warm, it will stay warm because of them.

Next time: making our roof watertight