Another Year Older

08:13 Tuesday, 2 June 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 54.54°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 75% Wind: 2.75mph
Words: 562

But not, "deeper in debt."

Yet.

If you're interested in AI, and not just reflexively opposed to it, there's a thread over at the Tinderbox forum I commend to your attention.

Spent some time in Siegenthaler's book yesterday. Lots more to read and think about. It's interesting that a basement slab loses most of its heat through the edges. It's because the edges are closer to the atmosphere where the temperature gradient is greater and the path is shorter. Our slab is insulated below, and at the edges, because the slab is poured after the basement walls, and the edges meet the wall at 3.25" of EPS, so they never "see" the ground. Which is all great, because we're putting radiant heating in the slab.

The concrete in the walls meet the footings, which of course are in contact with the ground; and that's a large thermal mass as well that represents a great deal of hysteresis, or inertia, in the system. Because whether it's hot or it's cold outside, it's nearly always around 50°F at the footings. So as heat escapes the house, it will "flow" (warm) the concrete walls, down to the footings, before it makes its way through the 3.25" of EPS on the exterior of the wall.

That's not to say the house never gets cold, because heat also escapes through the windows and doors and to some extent through the ERV ventilation. But they've plotted the performance of heating systems in ICF houses constructed identically to stick frame houses with identical R-ratings in insulation, and the ICF heating system lags the stick frame, and the magnitude of the changes is less, which is what you'd expect in a system with significant hysteresis, dampening the response to external temperature changes. The key component being the reduced magnitude (energy consumption) of the response.

Still waiting on the plans. Brad the Builder is in communication with the architect. We decided that all communication should go through Brad until we have the finished product. Then we'll review them closely with Brad, and if we have any feedback provide that through Brad as well. One of the things we learned with the designer is that, even with everyone present on the same Zoom call, what the designer heard wasn't necessarily what we thought we were saying, because a number of people were talking and not all necessarily saying the same things.

I think, if we were to do this again, we'd try to structure the meetings more, so that at the end we would go over a list of things that were decided. The meetings were supposed to be limited to an hour, and there was a lot to go over, and we always felt like we were bumping up against that one-hour time limit. My bad, because I know better. But this felt different than other meetings I've been a party to. More like a collaborative effort, and less like a decision-making, direction-giving process.

While we're marking time, I'm trying to wrap my brain around the HVAC piece. I still have to get smart about how to size the ERV and the dehumidifier.

Anyway, I'm optimistic that this time next year, I'll be posting from the new Dave Cave, in a windowless room in the basement. That probably doesn't sound appealing, but it is to me.

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