John: Today we're working on a brick garage
and we're retrofitting it into a
functioning office. Working from home can be a viable option for some
John: So the roof of this garage is metal deck
and it had a sarking underneath the
metal deck held back by a wire. It's
ended up getting quite mouldy underneath
on the top side, which is facing the
actual metal deck so there must be water
getting under there, or the temperature
differentials under there might assist
and create some condensation. The walls
are just a brick veneer construction.
Sitting on top of these these brick
pillars we've got these metal beams
going across, which the middle deck roof
is sitting on top. So we're going to be
spray foaming the underside of the metal
deck roofing and make a good connection
to the brick facade around the whole
perimeter of this garage. So that should
improve the air tightness of the garage
as well as the overall insulation
consistency of the garage as well. So
we've just pulled off the majority of
the sarking from the underside of the
metal deck roof. The idea there is that
when we spray foam this roof detail that
it's going to be connecting and bonding
directly to the metal deck roof. These
windows, they're aluminium windows that
are going to be replaced with double
glazing units.
John: So once the spray foam is in place, we're
going to be running all of our battens
in, as well as all of our electrical and
water services that may be required in
here, and then we'll be finishing off the
garage internally with a plaster finish. So
for the last few years this garage has
been used for storage. There's also quite
a few issues that are wrong with the
roof that we've had to get sealed up and
we've given the roof a nice paint
coating to ensure that it's going to
have a decent life after this has been
fitted out. So the flashing on the side
of this garage had to be replaced. There
were a few holes
going through the roof here, which
we've had to remediate and resolve. Also
the back gutter was in really bad
condition. That's been replaced as well.
We've put in a gutter guard there to
stop leaves sitting in there and
assisting the the gutter from rusting
out from the inside out. So the plan is
is that this roof is going to get around
about five kilowatt of solar panels
after we've retrofitted the inside of the garage.
John: So we've just offloaded all
of this stuff out of the garage, under
the carport
so that Nash can start spray foaming.
John: So we're now midway through this garage
retrofitting it for a more comfortable
environment or comfortable living space.
We've now spray foamed the ceiling and
also the far wall which is not going to
have any services on it. And we're now
moving forward with battening out a wall,
getting ready for the new windows
to come through. We're gonna get
rid of these aluminium framed,
single glazed windows and move forward
with replacing those with the double
glazed unit, insulate the walls - which
we've now half completed - then start
moving forward with a new ventilation
system because this is going to be a
pretty airtight room. So in this
situation, to create an air barrier and
moisture barrier for the insulation
we've actually put a bitumen membrane on
the brick wall. We've battened out this
wall and we've got it we've got at least
a 14 centimeter cavity behind this wall
just to take out and make up and make
this into a straight wall because of the
pillars that are in place for the beams.
John: So for the lighting in this room, we're
just going to be using a cable tray
which is going to be powder-coated white.
So this ceiling as it is is actually
going to be exposed, but it will be
painted white. That's going to save a
quite a bit of cost as well as ceiling
height. We're a fair way through the
project now and we've just installed
this new facade which doesn't have its
glazing in yet. It's gonna get double
glazing with a low E coating. So the
whole reason that we want to put this
facade on was because garage doors are
very leaky. We get some
extra security with a glazing and the
garage door in together, it doesn't get
in the way. We can leave the garage door
open and we can still get a really good
building envelope with this facade in
place. So let's go inside and have a look
at some of the other things that have
been finished up. So we've put in just
some foam board in the the little nooks
and crannies. All of the framing is now
completely finished and the electrical
and data has been installed. We've put in
a little bit of extra electrical and
data to make sure that we're covered
don't have to upgrade anything going
down the track and destroy my perfect
insulation installation. The
hole for the ventilation system has been
put in place but we still need to make
that air tight. So the ventilation system
in this room is going to be a standalone
system and it's it's centralized. But
what it actually does that moves around
about 70 litres a second and it
runs 24 by 7. It does filtration, energy
recovery, provides you a much better
level of CO2 [Carbon Dioxide] inside this envelope. We're
going to be actually exhausting air from
one side of the garage which is going to
be just just over here in this corner,
and then and then we're going to be
supplying fresh air on this side. So it's
really important that for this to
actually run as efficiently as it can, we
need a tight building envelope. So
that's the other reason why it was
really important to make sure that we
put this extra facade in this room
instead of relying on the air tightness
of a garage door which is very difficult
to attain. There aren't really any garage
door systems out that give you a decent
level of air tightness. If you were going
for a garage or a high-performing garage
without putting some sort of facade
system in place, it can work as well. It
can work quite well from from trying to
get this environment as comfortable as
possible but there wouldn't be any need
to put a ventilation system in place. So
as you can see there's quite a bit of
daylight that you can see, even though
the facade is in place. These
roller doors they leak a lot of air. It's
just a massive gap. Now with the ceiling,
we're at a stage where it's pretty much
finished now. So we've painted the spray
foam and we've put in place some powder
coated cable trays which is going to be
taking on all of our lighting. So
originally we were thinking about
putting recessed lighting but instead
we've ended up putting in some lighting
that just shines light upwards and the
effect has actually come up really
really good so I'm really happy with
that.
John: The plaster is pretty much ready to
go on now, now with all the services in
place, data and electricity and our
recessed
Switch Board. We can now actually start
sheeting up and finishing off all the
plaster to the windows. So the little
nooks and crannies here we've filled
them up with Fomofill. The idea there
is that we want consistent
insulation throughout the whole wall
system. We ended up installing foam
throughout this whole corner piece as
well, around the window frames, and then
obviously we've got a really good
blanket of spray foam on the ceiling, and
the the back wall, and the side wall. At
the moment we're doing some caulking
around the glazing. Now that the glazing
is actually in, these windows actually
leaked quite a lot. The last air
tightness tests that we did on the
garage, the room came out to around about
10 ACH [Air Changes per Hour] at 50[Pascals]. So after this caulking has
been done, we're gonna do another blower
door test and see how airtight this room
is. Hopefully it'll justified the
ventilation system that we've installed.
John: A lot has changed since the last time we
were here taking footage. So we've put on
some of the final touches. We've put the
above and below skirting boards on this
wall. Finished off all the electrical and
data services. We've put in and finished
off, and it's currently running, our
ventilation system which it gives us
heat recovery and filtration of the air
coming in and out of the building
envelope. So making sure that this
environment is really comfortable and
really healthy to be in and work in.
Moving on through here, the double glazed
windows are now in place. We've also put
in carpet tiles which we've actually got
secondhand. They've come from a
commercial building which actually got
completely refurbed,
after it had actually been fitted out.
Just over here is the finished off
electrical services board for all the
services inside the garage. The lighting
system has been installed and we've
we've got basically a nice looking
powder coated cable tray and the LED
lights are pointing upwards. Each row of
lights are running off a separate
circuit, so we we don't have to run them
all at the same time. And then towards
the back we've got this gorgeous
bamboo benchtop which has got electrical
services sitting on top of it and heaps
of storage that we can use the keep all
of our little bits and pieces away and
keep the area nice and neat. Moving on
from there we've got our our rack that's
got all of our data services coming in
from the the house. This rack also keeps
the booster for mobile phone coverage
which is really important because of how
airtight and well insulated this this
garage is now. We've really paid
attention to the building envelope here
so all we've needed to heat and cool
this space is a 2.6 kilowatt
split system.
John: We're about to pressure test this garage,
after using spray foam and bitumen paint
on the brickwork of this original garage
home made by AJ Jennings back in the
1970s. Okay, so we're just running this
fan in L4 which is a really small
orifice on the fan and we're reducing a
pressure of 50 Pascals. The volume of
these garage is around about 108 meters
cubed, and we're changing the air changes
in here with an induced pressure of 50
Pascals which is equivalent to around
about 32 kilometre winds at 1.3 ACH.
Which is a really tight garage so it
means that when it is hot outside we can
maintain a much cooler environment in
here. We've got the whole enclosure and the
building envelope is insulated. Probably
not insulated as well as what Passive
House standards would require, but the
principles and the consistency of the
insulation on this enclosure with it's
coupled with its air tightness is pretty
good. So it's going to be a pretty
comfortable living space, especially in a
climate like like Melbourne's which is
quite temperate.
With an ACH of 1.35 at 50 Pascals, the
size of the hole that's open in this in
this garage, is about 40 centimeter
square - so that's around about 10
centimetres by 4 centimetres. So you know,
there's a decent sized hole in here. But,
in the scheme of things, and in
comparison to the majority of houses in
Australia, this is a really airtight room.
John: So old 1970s brick garage, really focused
on building physics and retrofitting
this particular building with high
performance for insulation consistency,
air tightness with good ventilation
strategies, and now we've created a
building to complement the house that's
comfortable all year round.