Home Sweet Home!

We moved into the house on Saturday, November 8th with the help of our supportive family and friends.  We would have loved to move things little by little, but with the first major snowfall due on Monday, we moved it all that weekend.  Talk about good timing to move into a ultra-energy efficient, super-insulated and airtight home.  The temperature outside quickly plummeted to single digits this past weekend, but we were cozy as could be in our home.  In fact, with all the sunshine, we had sufficient solar heat gain to turn off the heat pump system yesterday morning (Nov. 16) around 10 am, when we noticed the 70 degree room temperature, which was 2 degrees above the set point.  The glazing on the Optiwin windows was doing its job, and bringing the solar heat into the house.  The house stayed warm all day without active heating and the temperature outside was only 12 F.  In the evening we had our family over for Sunday dinner, and turned the gas fireplace on for ambiance.  That was the only active heating for the day.  When we went to bed, the temperature in the house was 72 F.   As an experiment, we left the heat pump system off through the night, during which the outside high temperature was only 7 F.  When we woke, the house temperature was 63 F.  Impressive!  Tim Eian did a great job designing the high performance home and Ryan Stegora did a fantastic job building it!

On a personal note, we feel so fortunate to be able to raise our family in this home.  The design is everything we wanted and we are in the neighborhood we love.  Yesterday, I watched the boys have a snowball fight with 5 other neighbor kids, ranging in age from 4 to 14.  They had a blast with their friends.  Our dear back-alley neighbor, Silke, surprised us with a beautiful evergreen arrangement for our front porch, which she made herself with gold/yellow accents to perfectly match our front door.    After all our searching for the perfect place to build, the spot was right next door the whole time.  Coincidentally, our address changed from 2331 to 2335, and 2335 is the address of my parents' home, where I grew up and have countless great memories.  My parents are no longer with us, but they always helped steer us in the right direction.