Warmer and Brighter Everyday

Late last week and early this week, work has been going on that has made a great change in our project.  After months of seeing wood and metal framing inside the building, everything is turning white as a result of the insulation work, and right after it, sheetrock!  Now, the upper floor – to be our design studio – is noticeably warmer and much, much brighter.

This is the second and final step of the wall insulation.  The crews stapled a fiberglass fabric – called a bibb – across all the wall framing, then blew fiberglass wool into the cavities.  Now, combined with the initial layer of sprayed-on, closed-cell polyeurethane foam, the R-30 walls are keeping the building warm – even without a true heat source and with 35 degree temperatures outside.  The super-insulated shell is working already.

Enjoy these pictures of the studio, still retaining much of its warehouse character.  There’s so much great light bouncing around the space now that the sheetrock is going up.  We can’t wait to get up there!

Steven M. Rice, LEED AP®

LEED® Design Submittal on Target

The new office project’s design submittal came back with good news from the US Green Building Council: of the 57 points we submitted, 27 are anticipated without question and – great news! – none were rejected.  We are still tracking on what we hope will be an eventual total of 88 points – far exceeding the 80 required for the goal of a Platinum rating.  Those participating in the project’s LEED® effort are doing a great job – our Administrator Shawn Dinkuhn, assisted by our firm’s LEED® guru Robbie McNamara, Greg Belding, Jeremy Southerland and the site and office staff at Tim Ryan Construction: Adam Vega and Lee Capps, in particular. Of course, we couldn’t do it without the leadership of our mechanical engineer, Shawn Oram at Ecotope in Seattle.

Here’s a photo of the newly-arrived sun screens, installed last week.  These screens play a role in our energy model, keeping unwanted heat gain out of the building in summer months.

Steve Rice, LEED AP®

Our New Office will be a Hands-on Learning Place for Mechanical Engineering Students

One of our firm’s three major goals with this project is to forge a deeper bond with our community, and one way we’re doing that is an idea brought forward by Shawn Dinkuhn, a Project Coordinator in our firm. Shawn, who is the project’s LEED® Administrator, had the idea of introducing our unique HVAC system to the engineering program at nearby Olympic College, thinking that they might be interested in what we’re doing to become the most energy efficient office building in Western Washington.  And they were indeed interested, but what we didn’t realize is that not only did we interest OC’s program, but Washington State University’s as well.  It turns out that WSU is offering a four-year BS degree in mechanical engineering taught by their full-time staff on OC’s campus here in Bremerton. 

Dr. Marvin J. Pitts, PE, WSU’s  Program Coordinator and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is excited about having an in-town location to bring students to see firsthand how a progressive engineering solution became integral to the design of the entire office project and the achievement of our LEED® Platinum goals. WSU and OC students will be able to set up day labs in our office, monitoring and collecting data from building systems while fulfilling objectives taught in  engineering analysis and design, fluids (ME 303), heat transfer (ME 404), and thermal systems (ME 402).  Eventually, RFM will offer internships to engineering students through OC’s Program for Work-Integrated Learning. These internships will focus on collecting and analyzing energy data from software programs integral to the HVAC system, and comparing that data to the building’s pre-construction energy model.   

Rice Fergus Miller is excited about this new community connection Shawn is building for us.  Having students in the studio will be a lot of fun!

Steven Rice, LEED AP®

The Windows made an Entrance

The new windows recently arrived from Tiltco in Ontario, Canada. At approximately 500 pounds each, it was quite an effort to get the windows off the truck and into our new space. Each window is two double Tilt And Turn factory mulled units at 13 ft. wide by 6 ft. high. These windows were selected to meet the aggressive insulating value required for our super-insulated skin.

Defining Spaces

The forum space is beginning to take shape. The perimeter walls have been framed. The opening in the upper floor has not yet been cut, as the crews upstairs are using this area for staging scaffolding to install windows and drywall to the clerestory monitor above.

Getting Closed In – and right before the snowstorm

November 23, 2010

With the snowstorm that hit Monday afternoon at 3:30 just as the jobsite was shutting down, everyone is thinking about winter – how to get home, for one thing, and, looking ahead, how the new building will perform to keep us warm once we’re living inside. 

Our project’s energy model is designed around what we call a “super-insulated shell.”  The roof, walls and windows will all be high performing, meaning we’re insulating at a much higher level than code demands.  The greater insulation will keep the building from experiencing the large interior temperature swings that plague normally-insulated buildings.  Those buildings, in turn, use more heating or cooling energy to keep the interior temperature constant.  Our building is designed to use much less --  in fact, we’ll use only about 32% of the energy required by a standard new office building in Seattle and the Puget Sound region.   This will make ours the most energy efficient office building in Western Washington.

Once our R-50 roof was on, attention turned to the walls.   Our big concrete shell received its first new winter coat, late last week – a 1” thick layer of spray-on, closed-cell polyeurethane foam on the inside of the 8” thick concrete walls.  This insulation layer will be joined later by traditional fiberglass batts in the wall furring.  Together, they and the 8” thick concrete walls form an R-30 barrier against the elements.

Interior framing is underway and the office plan’s central open space – the forum, we call it – is taking shape.  This is where we’ll hold firm-wide gatherings and invite the community in for after-hours events. 

- Steve Rice, Partner

Rice Fergus Miller

The New Roof

We were able to frame the new clerestory monitor with reclaimed material from the removal of the original roof.  You can see the old roof joists re-used at the top of this photo.

The layers of the new roof are shown here. At left is the layer of insulation. To the right, the coverboard and sheathing. And, to the far right, the roof membrane is being laid.

There was a rush to have the roof complete before the rains began. Several of Tim Ryan Construction’s roofers worked in the pouring rain to finish the roof. As a side note, our roof surface is white to reduce the urban heat island effect. (Please see the previous post about our sustainability goals and approach.)