20Kv22 Home

With July drawing to a close, our team is coming to terms with the reality that this phase of our project is also coming to an end. We’d like to celebrate the paths of each teammate as they move forward from the legacy that will be the 20Kv22 project, while also ensuring that our research and occupancy studies live on at Rural Studio.

Sarah has very recently been inaugurated as AIAS’s National President. She has already moved to Washington, D.C., where she will complete her year-long term as President. During this time, she will work to improve issues, programs, and policies essential to architecture and the experience of architecture students, while also traveling across the country and visiting dozens of AIAS Chapters. 

Chelsea will remain at Rural Studio and begin working as a Third-Year Studio Instructor, with Emily McGlohn. She plans to continue analyzing and living in one of the homes (either the Baseline or the Revised Home), while a future graduate student stays in the other. They will collect data from the homes and ensure that our team’s research is continued and utilized by future 20K projects. 

Kenny will join Community Rebuilds as an AmeriCorps VISTA. He’ll move to Moab, Utah where this group has been building affordable, low-carbon straw bale homes since 2010. As the new planning and development coordinator, he’ll help them evaluate their built houses, build new houses that meet the Living Building Challenge, and expand their work throughout the Southwest.

Michael is preparing to move to New York City and work alongside another Rural Studio alumnus, Lucas McCarrell, at the highly-praised, Manhattan based, architectural office of Cicognani Kalla.

We’re excited to see how our studies continue throughout the progression of the 20K Home, and we hope to see a change in the way homes are built and a decrease in the overall cost of dignified homes.

Please enjoy the following photographic tour of our project’s timeline:

These past couple of weeks, while we’ve been collecting and analyzing data, we’ve also been doing a bit of construction work. We built a stoop for the back entrance of the Revised Home!

The back stoop, made up of a wooden deck-board platform and a concrete step, helps bridge the tall transition from our back door down to the ground plane.

Construction for the stoop only lasted a few days, and we can now enjoy a safe exit as well as a nice place to rest behind our house.

Never leaving the stoop,

It’s hard to believe our team has yet another Pig Roast under its belt. Although our final Pig Roast together was bittersweet, we also felt incredibly proud to witness and celebrate everyone’s accomplishments.

Starting at 8:30am, we caravanned nonstop from Newbern to Moundville to Faunsdale and back. We visited each of the ongoing projects and even stopped at the recently-completed Faunsdale Community Center. The last, and hopefully not least, stop of the day was our project!

For our presentation, Sarah, Chelsea, and Kenny donned their jumpsuits (which are meant to keep our clothing value constant during our occupancy), while Michael “accidentally” slept through guests’ arrival and jumped out of the home to join us.

We provided the audience with a brief explanation of our project and then gave everyone a chance to tour our recently-finished home.

The day concluded with open houses at Chantilly for Elena’s 5th-year chairdrawing class and at the Woodshop for Steve’s 3rd-year chair building class. Then, everyone meandered to Chantilly for roasted pig, catfish, hushpuppies, and more. For the evening ceremony, Andrew figuratively roasted the current 5th-year thesis students, Emily bid farewell to her wonderful assistant coordinator Alex, and illustrious Todd and Billie Tsien both gave inspirational valedictorian speeches to all the students and their families.

We’d like to thank Johnny yet again for the most magnificent fireworks show and the bands, Alabama Blues Project followed by Debbie Bonds with Radiator Rick and featuring Little Jimmy Reed, for such quality dancin’ tunes.

Thank you Todd and Billie,

With our HVAC systems finally completely installed (shout out to Mitsubishi, Air Engineers, and Anderson Plumbing & Electric), both homes are finished!

*drumroll please*

Our team has officially moved into the homes! Sarah and Chelsea are living in the Revised Home at the Spencer House site, and Michael and Kenny are living at the Baseline Home at the Model Homes site. We’ve started recording data, journaling, and taking our thermal comfort questionnaires.

Soon we will begin synthesizing the data we collect into a conclusive research paper, including charts, graphs, and suggestions for future Rural Studio home construction.

Which home do you think will save us the most money?

Movin’ on up,

We’d like to thank, yet again, the incredible Johnny Parker, without whom we would have a little more than an empty shell of a home. Last week, Johnny helped us put together our rainwater collection system, in addition to all of the electrical and plumbing help he’s already done for us so far.

The rainwater we collect will be used to flush the toilet, which could save us hundreds of gallons of water usage a year.

The system works as follows:

A gutter directs rain from the north-facing roof plane into a 600-gallon cistern, which sends water through PEX into a small pump box. Once in the box, water travels through a small filter, after which a meter records the amount in cubic feet of water passing through the pump. The rainwater is then pumped through a solenoid valve, which talks to a float switch that’s inside the cistern. The solenoid valve knows when the cistern is empty and when we need city water, as well as when the cistern is full and when use collected water.

As soon as our gutter arrives this week, we will be able to finalize the system and begin our water collection process. During the next four months, we will record how much water we actually saved by recycling rainwater.

Ready for April showers,

As we put together the final pieces of our home, we were able to do a bit of last-minute design work for our porch. The porch was built to be enclosed with a screen--just like the original iteration of Dave’s Home--but we have chosen to leave it screenless in order to create a more direct connection to the eastern side of Spencer House. As a result, we had to create a new entry threshold, which meant that we needed to determine a method for integrating the existing sill plates into the revised porch design.

After a series of charrettes, we decided to open up the front (west end) of the porch by cutting back the sill plate. To complement the completely exposed and screenless facade, we chose to partially enclose the rest of the porch (the north and south faces) with benches, keeping those sill plates intact. After a mocking up a few bench iterations at Morrisette, we constructed the benches on site.

We’d like to thank everyone who helped us choose our final bench design by testing out our mockups! May you always find a comfortable place to rest your weary bones (and if not, you’re welcome to pop a squat on our benches anytime). 

Comfy and Yours,

Ours is! Thanks Lowe’s for helping us catch it.

Last week, we were sent a huge delivery from Lowe’s! They brought not only all of the appliances for the Revised Home, but they also brought the appliances for all three of the model homes. This was a whopping order of 4 fridges, 4 stoves, 2 microwaves, 2 washers, and 2 dryers. 

Tired of trying to catch fridges,

Toward the end of last week, we used the trencher and a couple of shovels, (ok, let’s face it, we mainly used shovels and a ton of elbow grease) to trench out for our electrical and plumbing piping. We ran wire from the electrical panel in the house to Spencer House’s main power box, PVC from the house’s plumbing fixture’s main drain to the septic system on site, and plumbing supply PEX from the house to Spencer’s plumbing supply.

We’d like to give a huge shoutout to Johnny Parker for helping us hook up our plumbing and electrical systems in one morning! Thanks to Johnny, we now have working lights and outlets and are one step closer to having running water and flush-able toilets in the house.

We’d also like to thank Mason Hinton for helping us connect the wiring in our electrical panel to power! 

Congrats Team Faunsdale!

While avoiding intermittent rain showers, we spent the past week fastening our metal siding to our ZIP-covered walls. To install the burgundy panels, we placed drip edges and j-channels around the edge of each wall and opening. Then, we screwed each wall panel into their j-channel frame, making sure to precisely cover our intra-wall sensors.

We also installed the final two roof panels, so our exterior metal--apart from a little touch up paint--is complete!

During the rain, we worked back in Red Barn, reliving our long days in the computer lab. We’ve been designing our porch entry sequence and organizing our final days on site. We have just a few short weeks left in our schedule until move-in day!

Jammin’ out to light-metal tunes,

With the home’s interior almost completely finished, we have been able to switch back to exterior work! This week, along with a bit of electrical work in the baseline home, we fastened drip edges to the roof and fascia boards, using globs of sticky roof cement and a couple hundred 2” roofing nails.

We’d like to thank Andrew Freear and Steve Long for helping us install our corrugated roof metal. Within a few hours, we placed all but two steel panels on our roof! The revised home is now a beacon of shimmering light and hope for all those who journey through the town of Newbern.

What’s up next, you ask? We plan to install our beautifully-burgundy metal siding in the next couple of days! Keep your fingers crossed that next week’s forecast of nonstop rain is actually a not-so-funny joke.

Your funny valentines,

For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been hard at work finishing up the interior of the Revised Home. We assembled our bathroom and kitchen cabinets and countertop, placed and painted all of our trim, painted our interior doors and secured them to their frames, and installed our plumbing fixtures and our electrical outlets and switches.

We hope to finish up the interior this week, so we can finally put up our roof metal and begin fastening our steel siding next week!

Earlier this week, we were gifted by a visit from the incredible Michael Gibson, a professor at Kansas State and an expert on all things building-research-related. Thanks to Michael, we have a better understanding of how we will graphically represent the data we find in our year-long experiment, and we are more confident in our sensor selection. We’re excited to move into the homes and get started on data collection!

Cluttered and yours,

This semester’s neckdown week was one of the most productive we’ve had so far… no, really, it’s true!

The team split up to work on both the Baseline Home and the Revised Home. With the help of some wonderful third- and fifth-years, Sarah and Michael worked with Andrew and Steve at the Model Homes, and Chelsea and Kenny cleaned and painted the Revised Home.

At the Model Home site, we completed plumbing and septic hookups, placed and painted trim, installed cabinets, put up metal siding, put the finishing touches on electrical plates and fixtures, and gave the floors another coat of paint. With Johnny and Mason’s expertise, we were able to declare Mac and Joanne’s homes as “99.99% done” - according to Dr. Professor Steve Long. A quick plumbing test with running water was “successful,” depending on your definition of success. Nevertheless, all are excited for ‘Les Chauteaus des Modelles’ to officially open up for guests and visitors.

Thanks to Zach and Riley, we managed to clean all drywall debris off the Revised Home’s walls and floors, get a coat and a half of paint on all of the untreated wood outside of the house (i.e. porch columns and beams, exposed trusses, fascia boards, etc.), and paint two full coats on the interior walls and ceiling. Now that we and the house are covered in white paint, we can begin cladding the exterior walls and the roof!

Gratefully yours,

Before heading out of town, we began constructing the frame for our porch deck. After drilling a hole in our footing for drainage, we put together a deck frame made of 2x4s that are connected with 2x6 girders. Then, we lifted the frame into the porch cavity and leveled the structure by placing wooden shims underneath.

Yesterday, we completed the porch by screwing deck boards on top of the frame and making sure to space the boards evenly. We now have a sturdy deck on top of which we intend to spend countless hours in rocking chairs.

All decked out (again),

The 20kv22 team is happy to be back in Hale County after a couple of weeks at home with our families. We’re refreshed and ready to finish construction this semester! Before we left for Winter Break, a couple very important things happened in Newbern: drywall and Soup Roast.

Shane Price, more commonly known as “Sheetrock Shane,” gave the Revised Home a visit, during which he swiftly nailed gypsum to the stud walls, taped up the seams, and mudded any dents or holes. This week, he will stop by one last time to sand down the walls until they’re smooth and ready for a coat of paint. The next step for the interior will be to paint the walls and place trim.

We also spent the last couple of days in our fall semester enjoying Soup Roast. Rural Studio celebrated a semester of progress with alumni lectures, meals with friends and family, and tours of the 5th- and 3rd-year projects. Although the days were a bit rainy, this year’s Soup Roast was free of both snow and stress (for us)!

Dusty and Yours,

One of the most exciting revisions we made to Dave’s Home’s original construction details has been the decision to veto the Devil’s Cotton Candy (aka fiberglass batt insulation). Instead of donning head-to-toe protective clothing to save ourselves from itchy glass fibers, we were able to watch as skilled contractors from Central Alabama Insulation quickly sprayed in cellulose insulation.

Cellulose insulation, made from about 80% recycled paper, was blown into the cavities of our stick-framed wall with a long hose and a nozzle with water added as a bonding agent. We decided to use cellulose instead of fiberglass or foam, because the combined cost and R-value were more efficient than other insulation options.

After putting up some mesh over each cellulose-filled bay, we were able to prevent any cellulose from falling out as well as create a smooth layer for drywall to lay on top of. Later this week, Shane Price will come in and nail, tape, mud, and sand our drywall into place.

Please enjoy this photo of our site at sunrise!

Sentimental and Yours,

It snowed in Newbern again this year! On Friday, insulation experts brought snowy spray foam all the way from the frost-capped mountains of Selma, Alabama. Within a short few hours, two men and their trusty foam-blower sprayed our roof with 6” of closed-cell foam. Later this week, our friends from Central Alabama Insulation will be back to install our blown-in cellulose insulation.

Earlier last week, we also worked on the exterior face of our roof, and we placed sticky underlayment on the OSB roof deck in preparation for our roof metal. After a few conversations with Andrew and Steve about flashing details, we’re currently in the process of mocking up our fascia and drip edge system. Once we nail down those details, we will install our metal roof panels.

Jack Frost, we’re yours,

The four of us have had to wear a lot of hats throughout this process of building a house. By far, our favorite things to be are electricians and plumbers. Sarah and Chelsea wired (and labeled) the whole house in record time, only pausing for snacks and to hang out with Melvin, the cat. Michael and Kenny have been plumbing away, running pex, setting up the supply, and gluing pvc together. They’ve also had to coordinate the rain water reuse paths.

Our fifth and favorite team member, Mason, has also been an MVP this week with his knowledge of all things related to wire, and his positive attitude.

We help each other out, of course, drilling holes, pulling wire, bending conduit, and running out to the co-op. There are countless tiny tasks that we get to work on in between the electrical and the plumbing, but it’s all apart of the fun. As much as we love hooking up the power and the water, we mostly just love that we’re building a house.

In addition to the utilities, we’ve also been installing the cords for the intra-wall sensors. These will record the humidity, temperature, and dew point of the air beneath the cladding, between the sheathing and the cavity insulation, and also beneath the drywall.

Yours,