Future House progress: May 2009

Looking great Brad.  Beautiful estate you're building there!

I never understood what those white plastic-y sheets are on the walls of houses being built??? o_0

Isn't having a kid to share in cool stuff great?  I've found I enjoy good things even more when I have my kids around to share them.  I bet Ashley was really excited.

Wow, your future house looks like a small castle, complete with a little princess growing up in it.. that is really nice! I was reading the other threads about going green energywise being really difficult - and I agree with you. I live in Germany and it is easier to an extent to get green energy because well - Germany is a lot smaller and very densly populated. But even if you buy "green" energy here, mostly it is just nuclear cheap power importet from France - there is alot of cheating going on and using the label "green energy" as a marketing trick.

Many cities do have their own little green powerplants that run off biogas or geothermic energy, and we have a many many windmills all over the countryside. They come with their own environmental problems though, like being very loud and killing many birds. In 2007, a neighboring town  renovated their city hall and had planned that it should be heated with geothermic energy, but the groundsurvey was not thorough enough and they perforated a layer of gypsum while drilling. Groundwater from below began to mix with it, causing it to expand. To this day, the city has risen 12 cm, causing damage to houses.. so I hope you'll be spared anything like that.

I was living in Iowa for a year as an exchange student and traveled around abit, and one thing I did notice was that most houses were built with wood and had very bad insulation. Iowa is really hot in summer and very very cold in winter - and people just nailed plastic sheet infront of the windows in winter to insulate their homes, had no double windows...no wonder the heating bills were so high all the time.  It is possible to conserve alot of energy simply by building with material that has good qualities for that - doubleglass windows etc pp. Since you are doing everything possible in that direction you are doing more than most people, which is very commendable.

Very nice.

It's a plastic weather shield to protect the wood from too much water.