Blower door tests and advanced weed whacking

During this last week, Bryan and I have picked our wood floor, tile floor, bath tiles, mudroom floor and backsplash. We also changed and finalized our light fixture selections and even purchased the can lights so the electrician can start to rough them in within the next few days.

While we were doing that, our awesome crew was installing and sealing our gorgeous new windows. The house looks and feels different yet again with the windows in:

At the same time, a guy named Milton and his crew were cutting and then hand-pulling as much as they could of the scotch broom/blackberry/poison oak mess on the hillside by the wellhead. Hand-pulling was the best option because they were trying to get as many roots as possible out to keep that area clear of these nasty invasive plants, and the hill is too steep for machines.

Here's what it looked like back in October 2011, before it got cleared the first time and then sprayed:

We had quite an adventure trying to find our wellhead in this mess!

And here it is now:

This is the same view as the top photo, taken from the wellhead. 

We have a line of thickets left to clean up, but it's currently housing a large number of birds.

Today was a big day for us because we had our Passive House blower door test this morning. All openings to the house were sealed (the doors and windows are now sealed in place, so they were just closed), and air was blown in to pressurize the house. Once pressure is maintained, the guys could measure our air loss rate. We rated .37 CFM (cubic feet per minute), and since passive house minimum is .6 CFM we're well below the passive house levels. Once the air loss was measured, the guys used a fog machine to see where air was escaping. Even though our house met passive house levels, Hammer & Hand wants our levels below .2 CFM -- so I'm sure the guys spent part of their day sealing whatever leaks they found.

The round black thing in the bottom of the red door is the fan that pressurized the house.
With such a tightly sealed house, it doesn't take much to pressurize it.
(This is the door to the garage.)

Skylar shoots fog at a window while Peter watches for leaks from outside.

Skylar shoots more fog at our deck window, which also has a sliding door; either Peter or Val is on the ladder outside, trying to pinpoint a leak. Tom is the communicator, cell phone in hand: Because our triple-paned windows are so thick, the guys couldn't hear each other between outside and inside, so they used their cell phones as walkie-talkies.
(And earlier, we'd used our phones as flashlights as well. Gotta love technology!)