TheBuilder
Don Hurd

When I first heard about MaineHousing’s Green Building Standards I thought it would be exciting and challenging to try something new, especially the blower door test, which we don’t typically do.

The blower door test measures the amount of air that escapes from a building. To perform the test, large fans are set up in the doorway to draw out air. You can feel the air being sucked out of the access panels, the eaves, and the storage rooms. MaineHousing has guidelines for the test, but a lot of us are still unclear about the baseline for different kinds of projects — for example, a regular house versus a 40,000- square-foot building like Creekside Village.

I would say the biggest difference in building with green standards involves the way we seal the building — the caulking and insulating. The new green standards have absolutely led to a tighter, more energy-efficient building. We caulked all of the exterior walls, the base plates, and where the wall panels meet. We caulked the bottoms and tops of the sheetrock and windows. We sprayed insulation along the rim joists between each floor, where there is usually a lot of heat loss. We also used an insulated vapor barrier for the foundation. There is no basement, so the building sits on a slab.

I am always interested in trying new techniques, but doing something different involves a learning curve, which has an impact on time and manpower. This entire building used premade wall frames, which allowed us to put it up quickly. Advanced framing techniques didn’t play a role in this project. We used pretty traditional framing.

Another way to make the building more energy efficient is to use expandable blow-in insulation — a cellulose insulation that makes a building really tight but is very expensive. It also involves a learning curve because you need to cut back the insulation after it expands and make sure you don’t create air pockets or voids.

People are more willing to spend extra money upfront for higher-quality spray insulation because they think it will pay off over the long term. We used spray insulation at the rim joints and for the attic, but most of the insulation for Creekside was fiberglass.

Roof systems, attics, and dead spaces also need to be better insulated to improve the energy efficiency of a building. These areas are always a big source of leakage. One option to reduce roof leakage is to install roof panels with rigid insulation. T