http://www.harpoonhouse.net A Simple Efficient Home in Portland Oregon Mon, 30 Aug 2010 02:03:37 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en We've been slow to start getting our park strips in order, but with summer feeling like its turning into fall, its time to start getting plants in the ground. Our yard need a lot of work at the moment, and the park strips seem like the right place to start... ... http://www.harpoonhouse.net/?p=437 This morning, we got our blower door test to find out for real how tight our envelope is. Turns out its pretty good, our infiltration rate is 0.16 air changes per hour. Infiltration is an important factor in controlling heat loss, the number 0.16 air changes means that enough air ... http://www.harpoonhouse.net/?p=434 With the hot weather this last week comes ripening tomatillos, tomatoes and peppers... And also brings thoughts of energy efficiency. Now that we have been in the house for four months, I thought it would be interesting to put weather data from this spring into our energy model and see ... http://www.harpoonhouse.net/?p=431 We're thrilled that Harpoon House is featured in in this month's issue of Portland Monthly, its for sale pretty much everywhere around town and can be read online. Anna Sachse did an incredible job writing the article and Lincoln Barbour took some great photos that really capture the space well. Build ... http://www.harpoonhouse.net/?p=426 The past several weekends have been spent in the garden creating raised herb beds, (at long last) constructing our compost bin and transforming the hard-packed, sod-covered, weed-choked corners of our yard into Harpoon Gardens. While our worm bin has been able to handle some of our kitchen waste, the addition ... http://www.harpoonhouse.net/?p=420 Just a quick update, nodding onions, self heal and yarrow are in full bloom on our entry ecoroof. This ecoroof was a bit of an experiment. Sedums are the standard go-to plant for ecoroofs, hardy drought tolerant succulents that thrive in poor soil. As a result they're pretty much always ... http://www.harpoonhouse.net/?p=415 We were able to take advantage of the great weather this weekend to finally paint our window frames and on Monday our contractor had a couple guys come out to paint the windows that require being up on a tall ladder. We've always intended our window frames to be black ... http://www.harpoonhouse.net/?p=413 We went up to our upper ecoroof for the first time in two months over the weekend. This roof is entirely sedums in an attempt to make it as low maintenance as possible and they were planted by throwing piles of cuttings around and then waiting to let them root. ... http://www.harpoonhouse.net/?p=409 It'll be nice when the city stops breaking things in front of our house. Its all in the name of a modern sewer (no more terracotta pipes from the 1890s) which is a pretty needed infrastructure upgrade, I've just never gotten used to having the house shake every morning starting ... http://www.harpoonhouse.net/?p=406 We're slowly making progress with the various pieces of finish work that need to be completed, and recently we finished off painting our stair risers. Not the cleanest painting job ever... And it took a little while to take care of, but we were able to knock it out by ... http://www.harpoonhouse.net/?p=403