People, Paint and range hood noise!

The theme of our lives the past few weeks has been family and friends. There are no words to express how thankful I am for the family and friends that we have and how much we enjoy spending time with them so I’ll just leave it at that. We’re also really looking forward to getting this project and its time commitments behind us and being able to enjoy spending time with people again! (We’ve also added a few friends through this project and I’ll miss getting to talk to many of the folks working on this thing.)

Milton and his crew from Cityscape Painting moved in and are quite organized.

Curved trim is made by laminating several strips of wood together. This insures that it maintains its shape.

One of the joys of living in snowy environs. If you don’t remember to knock these off then they can do serious damage to the underside of your car.

The patterns on the ice can be quite interesting. This is looking west.

And looking back east.

We fired up our Range Hood today to check for excess noise & vibration from the hood itself, ducting, silencer and blower. I was quite pleased (bordering on ecstatic) with what we found. Upstairs in the guest bath there is no noticeable or measurable noise from vibration which was my biggest concern. Accurex had assured me that this blower was very well isolated but I’ve had promises dashed more than a few times so I was very glad they were correct. Select Mechanical did a good job installing the blower, duct and silencer.

On full (approx 1250 cfm) the hood noise was 54.2 dB(a) from 5’ in front of the hood in an environment with an ambient of 44.1 dB(a). We don’t yet have the variable speed controller connected to measure noise at lower speeds but it’s a slow start motor that takes about 50 seconds to come up to speed and the noise ramps up similarly. I’d guess that it didn’t rise above ambient until about 80%. For perspective our current Vent-a-hood is 54 dB(a) @ 150 CFM, 62 @ 300 CFM and 67 @ 600 CFM. So this new hood is massively quieter per CFM. Or looked at another way – for the same noise level it delivers over 10 times as much power and odor removal! 

It is also a more pleasant noise than our Vent-a-Hood or other consumer hoods I’ve heard – to the extent that any noise is pleasant. Our Vent-a-Hood is annoying to have running on it’s lowest speed when we’re sitting at our kitchen table 15-20’ away from it. I don’t think this new one will be anywhere near as annoying. You can still hear it. There’s definitely noise. But much less annoying. I’ll try to post the frequency response curves from the Accurex and VAH sometime in the near future for those interested. 

And – it sucks! There are three identical filters in it. Mike and Bob were having fun seeing it hold a manual tight up against one when the other two were still open and pulling air. That’s some odor exhausting power!

And there’s this. Every CFM being exhausted by a hood must be replaced by bringing the same amount of air in from outside. Either with a mechanical make-up-air unit, a passive intake vent or through cracks in walls. That outside air must be conditioned – cooled and dried in the summer, heated in the winter – which requires expensive energy. Because of the large open containment area this hood is more efficient and does a better job of removing effluent than hoods with little or no containment area (eg, almost all consumer hoods). So this hood will provide better effluent removal at 150 CFM than our current hood at 300 or 600 CFM.

Oh, we also got the surround on it so it’s looking a bit better 🙂

Mark installing the finished stairway up to the loft. 

Pedro trimming the front portico.

Our front door arrived and was installed. We’re debating numerous color options with black the current leading option. The shutters on the front of the house will be blue so either the same blue or a different blue could work as well. We’re thinking my studio will be Falun Red so perhaps also for the front door? Also, note the four hinges on the left and three-point locking on the right. The three-point locking is critical to energy efficiency. Doors, no matter how well made, consistently warp on the lock side with the top and bottom corners pulling away from the gasket. Multi-point locking keeps doors straighter and better sealed against the gasket. Multi-point window and door locks have been standard in Europe for decades but only recently began to appear in the U.S. on patio doors and more recently on other doors.

Ryan got frustrated and took it out on changing room cabinets. 🙂

The guys doing the boiler and hydronic heating come well supplied with fittings. These press fittings are much easier to install than traditional copper fittings that required soldering.

One tradition each year is waiting in line at Ingebretsen’s Nordic shop to buy pickled herring for Christmas Eve. You can even get a little round red sticker saying that you waited in line at Ingebretsens!

Mark’s handiwork.

Another Christmas tradition – Homemade Eggnog!  

We are getting a lot of sweating around the interior of the Conservatory. I’m guessing that once we get the heat on it will dry out.

We had a streak of days in the 30’s so had to bury our ice candles under the snow so that they wouldn’t melt. This time I remembered to bury them upside down so that they wouldn’t get filled with snow. 

Six wonderful reasons why our new house is so big. 

And a few more…

And more… 

Leveling out the ceiling.

The bar in the lower level rec room has been stained and clear coated.

Figuring out placement of tools in the shop so that dust collection ducts and electrical can be installed.

Tile wainscot in the master bath.

One of our snowplow drivers cut a couple of feet in to our yard and shaved off the top several inches of sod. I’ve never seen one miss this bad before.