FOUNDATIONS

Specializing in High Performance, High Energy Efficiency building envelopes. We handle the engineering and installation of these Four Critical Trades needed to get your building off to the right start. Foundation, Structure, Insulation and Air Management Systems.

The icing on this High Performance Building Envelope cake is an Environmental Automation System, controllable by a Smartphone app or PC, with a solar-powered backup module which will keep the building operating efficiently without power, fuel or human intervention for an indefinite period of time.

Starting under the foundation with earth tubes for the passive ERV system…

STRUCTURES

Starting in 1986 as the rough framing contractor Builders Edge Contracting, we developed the Posiframe™ Advanced Framing System to cut framing costs by  20% or more.  Inline Framing is taking the Rough Carpentry Industry by storm now, but it’s nothing new to us…

From the Foundation we move into Rough Carpentry, Steel Erection or even Light Gauge Steel (LGS) Framing, then into advanced Insulation & Air Management Technologies, including Passive Air Handling systems, Passive Solar Energy Systems and finally into Automated Environmental Control Systems.

INSULATION

Who thinks a building can be built too tightly? How about a submarine?

Spray foam technology we include in our packages can add 500 lbs per square foot of compressive strength to the structure’s wall cavities. What that means is  we can now change the framing to accommodate this technology, secure in the knowledge that our buildings will be even stronger as well as more energy efficient.

We now know that buildings should breathe naturally, metabolically – through their respiratory systems – not porous exterior walls. All the filth that would normally accumulate in the walls of a conventionally built structure wafts into your breathing air on tiny currents is blocked by one and a half million cells per square inch of closed cell foam.

Where a degree of additional flexibility is required for new construction to settle (all buildings settle), we use open cell foam in corners and seams. It expands over 100x filling every nook and cranny with highly adhesive yet flexible air-barrier, allowing moisture to escape so wood can dry, preventing such related issues such as dry rot and fungal contamination.

Two and a half decades after building the first “Smart House” in New England, we’re making the buildings “intrinsically” smarter now by using advanced foam and air management technologies to channel fresh and purified air passively, naturally – metabolically.

That’s right – we actually foster natural chemical reactions between vapor (humidity is actually gaseous), CO2 and purified air to clean it, extract the energy for the benefit of the building and it’s inhabitants, to do exactly what you want it to do and go where we want it to go – without having to think about it.

MECHANICALS

Funny, you wouldn’t think twice about not drinking water running down the street gutter – even if it looked perfectly clean.

Why then do you not think twice about breathing air that looks perfectly clear in one room, yet appears to be replete with floating “stuff” when sunlight beams through it in another?

Why?

Because after all, what can you do about air filled with “stuff?” In ages past the air was cleaner (well, except from the mid-1930′s to the early 1990′s)… Before that the “particulates” floating in the air were usually vegetable matter, pollen – and plain old dust.

What’s in that air now? Take a look at it. Do you see fibers and specs of dirty little who knows what? Do you want to know what’s in it? Click here to find out!

Our systems use a proven method of silently circulating more air – more efficiently and less costly than ever before. With the advanced technology of Small Duct High Velocity heating and cooling systems, coupled with our passive air handling, passive energy recovery and solar heating systems, the breathable air in our structures is now healthier and safer than ever before. The fresh air inside our buildings is better for you than breathing outside air.

Buildings “breathing” – and “metabolically” no less?

Rubbish, you say?

First, did you realize that there is no cell in your entire body that is more than 10 or 12 years old? If that’s true, why don’t we all look like pre-pubescent nymphs? Figure that one out and you’ll have discovered the proverbial fountain of youth…

ANYWAY, “metabolism” is the sum total of all chemical reactions involved in maintaining the living state of the cells, and thus the organism.

The second law of thermodynamics – entropy – infers that all organized structures or systems are persistently and continuously breaking down. It takes an influx of energy to “keep the ball spinning.” Once the energy enters the system, metabolism promotes, halts, assists or delays this entropic action. In living organisms, this is through a series of “chemical processes.”

Have you any idea of the number of “chemical processes” taking place in a building at any given time?

Now I don’t fully subscribe to these laws of thermodynamics; they were created under the influence of ignorance. Remember, 500 years ago everyone thought the world was flat. What will they think 500 years from now? An infinite amount of alternate universes and dimensions beyond our current ability to comprehend, I imagine. But I digress…

Ultimately, these processes play a big part in the longevity of the system. According to the book “The Foundations of Human Experience,” in a series of lectures given by the multifaceted Austrian philosopher, social reformer and brilliant architect Rudolf Steiner talking about the OPERATIONAL FUNCTIONS OF SYSTEMS in bodies of human beings he said, ”… the metabolism is intimately connected with breathing, and the breathing process is connected metabolically with the blood.” The year was 1919, nearly a century ago. The corollary is obvious.

In a building, not unlike in a living creature, electricity is the juice of the nervous system/nerve center, the plumbing system deals with liquids – including domestic water, fuel (electricity, gas or oil) and liquid waste. The air handling (respiratory) system is metabolically connected to both of these related systems (M:EP), isn’t it? “Breathing” in fresh air and breathing out (exhausting) the toxic air.

When we say buildings should breathe metabolically, we mean a building should take the air from outside and process it internally, in conjunction with the other systems, to maintain a healthier environment for the betterment of the building itself as well as all the inhabitants. By creating the ability for the building to “breathe” passively, on it’s own, without using “artificial” or man-made energy, it is the single most important way of getting new energy into the building system to prolong it’s lifespan and thus delay it’s demise.

We make that happen. Find out more by clicking on Fresh Air Essentials.