The Sonoran Desert is home to the unique Saguaro Cactus. A perfect analogy for optimizing a
building enclosure; Saguaro cacti are airtight, vapor variable, high thermal mass, and well
ventilated. High performance building provides the greatest benefit in extreme climate zones
yet we rarely talk about best practices for the hot dry Southwest. Today I share the first
Smart Enclosure System project in Arizona, a shining example of leadership and collaboration.
The builder, Andrew Tuttle of Beckett Construction, provided a lot of these photos along with
the project consultant, Austin Trautman, of Vali Homes. The architect designed a gorgeous
building and the client pushed hard for healthy low carbon high performance. It's important
to love your materials. You can see Austin, a Northwest born true-blooded tree hugger,
giving a pallet of Gutex some love. Austin also captured a photo of me smiling at a pallet
of Gutex. It was cathartic to see the thousands of pounds of carbon that will be stored in
these boards. Beyond using good materials, the key to a truly good project anywhere is
a passionate and well trained crew. It was a lot of fun working with the construction
team, who had never seen these materials before, and helping them move from skeptical to stoked.
They kept calling Gutex the “weird foam board” but eventually settled on the “awesome
wood board”. The first step in any efficient install is to move the materials to the installation
location and then set up a production station. You also want to make sure you try to look
cool while doing it. Part of what won over the crew is that Gutex, being made of wood,
can be cut easily into almost any shape with standard carpentry tools. Once you get set
up, the installation goes really fast. No, this photo is far before coronavirus was a
thing, so the carpenter is wearing a mask to protect himself from dust. While Gutex
is NaturePlus certified and Red List Free, it still isn’t ideal to breathe sawdust,
so it is smart to wear some breathing protection. One quick thing: the install team got a little
over excited about the fastening approach and set way too many staples. I’ll discuss
this later. Once the building is wrapped, you want to cut the Gutex flush with the sheathing.
You also want to make sure the Gutex is properly fastened, especially thinner pieces around
locations like rough openings. This is a great opportunity to show off your dad bod. Once
the Gutex is properly clicked together and fastened to the sheathing, it is time to wrap
with the Pro Clima Solitex Mento 1000 membrane. Placing an airtight WRB over the Gutex provides
an extra degree of drying potential and airtightness while minimizing wetting, especially during
construction. It also allows different ventilated siding approaches to be utilized. Maybe most
importantly, it makes window details a lot easier. I just love this photo. That is the
backside of the Mento 1000 membrane wrapped over the rough opening, around sunset. You
can also see the edges of the Gutex around the rough opening there. And yeah, it’s
ready to take it to the next step. Once you are done wrapping, it is time to start taping
all the seams of the membrane with the blue Tescon Vana tape. It is also time to cut out
the rough openings and begin the first phase of a proper window install. That’s rough
opening preparation: they should be airtight, waterproof, and mostly vapor open. It is important
to look like a German gentlemen polishing their Porsche as you prepare the rough opening.
First you start by wrapping in flaps of Mento 1000 and stapling them in place, like they
showed on the last photo. Then you install Exoseal Encors window sill tape, as you see
me doing, and the 6” wide blue Tescon Vana 150 on the header and legs. Voilà! When you
are done, all of the wood will be covered in waterproof airtightness. The Extoseal Encors
on the sill is self-sealing and vapor closed, but everything else is vapor open. We assume
things will get wet, and while we can minimize wetting, we must also maximize drying potential.
Even in doggy doors like you see in the bottom righthand corner. Don’t forget the details.
The EPDM Roflex and Kaflex gaskets make plumbing and electrical air sealing and waterproofing
simple and reliable. The owner of the construction company did the gaskets himself since he found
it super satisfying to fix a leakage issue he’d hated for years. Nice work there, Andrew.
Speaking of details, how are you going to ventilate between your cladding and WRB? Is
there is a mix of cladding, including some stucco? Well these angled battens are the
perfect approach for a single layer thickness and vertical siding, which was needed to match
some areas of stucco. Plus, honestly, I just think they look really cool. As you can see
on the left, the vertical siding looks great. It also needed to match the thickness of the
stucco finish in other areas, that you can see on the right. The stucco finish was installed
on a ventilated stucco mesh, in this case Rainslicker, which was installed over the
Mento 1000 using these same 2” staples that were used to attach the Gutex. Moving to the
interior details, you can see some of the Rainslicker stucco mesh hanging over the Alpen
window. You can also see puffs of Havelock Wool loose-fill insulation at the top of the
photo. To me this is the killer app of wool insulation since it provides an amazing R-value
along with optimized moisture control. It also helps reduce toxicity in the building.
Actually kind of a lot of fun to do this detail too. Ah, sequencing! The key to making high
performance profitable and cost-effective, which is arguably then the key to saving the
world. What you are seeing here are strips of Intello X that were installed over the
top plates of interior and exterior walls so that Intello Plus in the ceiling would
install much faster later down the line. And this is what you want a successful install
to look like…completely continuous. Yes, the seams have not been taped yet, but that
is the next step for continuity. It was estimated that the Intello X “floppy bits” you saw
in the previous photo, saved about a day of labor and led to a much more complete, continuous,
airtight, and smart vapor control install. The issue I mentioned earlier about too many
2” staples, this is a great way to show it. This is a small staple gun, and a decently
big thermal impact. Not a huge deal, maybe like a 10 or 15 percent decrease in overall
thermal performance. The building’s still going to be super comfortable and high performance,
but it’s something I’d change for the next install. This project was a wonderful
example of leadership, maximizing performance, and minimizing carbon impact. It had it’s
share of challenging aesthetic details, but they were all wrapped in carbon storing Gutex
and they were all part of what keeps this job interesting. Lastly, here is a photo of
my family enjoying the desert. They are the core of why I want to save this planet, and
why I keep going this work. Thank you, everyone. Have a lovely day.