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Transcript of Video
Guys i got a really fun episode for you. This is the first of hopefully many a build original series: high performance, canada, that’s right. We’re, going up to british columbia. On this episode and builder nate cashell from pure house developments on today’s episode.
He’s, going to tour you through a high performance building, panelized factory. He’s, going to be joined by architect, david arnott, from stark architecture. We’ve got a fantastic episode and there’s more to come on this stay tuned to the end, and i’ll.
Tell you more today’s, build show high performance, canada, let’s, get going the high performance, canada series is brought to you by 475 high performance building supply. This series is also brought to you by innotech windows and doors today, on the build show we’re in squamish bridge columbia.
Checking out this awesome new company tag panels. They are a high performance and passive house wall panel manufacturer everything’s being done right inside this facility behind me, everything from framing to installation to membrane installs taping window waterproofing.
It’s all being done here. They’re, supplying all kinds of local builders with a high quality prefabricated building panel system. Let’s, go inside and talk to david, hey david. Here we are in your awesome, 10 000 square foot facility.
So why don & # 39? T you walk us through what happens here from from start to finish, yeah absolutely so. This is where the lumber comes into the factory. We bring all the lifts of uh timbers two by sixes two by eights and psl’s and glue limes.
They come in along this wall. Here they’re, brought into one of two cut stations that we have in this facility. Um all of the shop drawings for each panel uh has a exact cut list for each part onto it.
Great um one guy, sits and cuts every piece of timber for per panel. Once those pieces are cut, they’re, then loaded up onto one of the dollies. Those materials are then rolled over to our tables. We have two tables at the moment.
It allows us to run two jobs concurrently or normally do one job twice as fast wow, okay, the idea being that all the timber that is pre-cut loaded over to the tables, the guys never need to reach or lift for another piece of timber.
It’s, all pre-cut, it’s, always just right there and they’re, just loading it off the dolly onto the table, trying to make as efficient as possible great um and then over. Here we have a three ton: uh gantry crane.
This is amazing yeah. So this runs the full 75 feet of the workshop um. They can frame off these corners here. The panels move down the tables they’re, then flipped with the crane. This is our gutex, which we use, which is a wood fiber insulation.
So this is used as a kind of sarking board. It’s, an exterior sheathing it’s, got insulation properties, it’s, also vapor open, which is very important. This goes on one side of the panel. The panels are then moved along to the end over here where we have access for semi-trucks to bring in uh where we load the panels on.
So you bring your 30 35 foot trailers right into the shop right underneath the crane absolutely once the trailer comes in. We load all of the panels onto the trailer and the trailer goes to site. What’s important is that the panels are actually built in reverse order, because the last one to be built is the first one that’s needed on site yeah, so the guy is important.
Guys work everything out. Another big piece of this multi-step process is thinking about material mobility. You always have to think about how that panel needs to be moved next, so at the end of their framing process, they’re lacing in these straps in the top plate out the top plate, so they can always have that panel mobile.
How big is this house? Yes, so this this is a house in burnaby bc, uh, it’s, a 3 000 square foot house. What you’re looking at here is all of the main floor, exterior walls and all of the main floor interior walls on the exterior walls.
We have all the framing the service cavity as well service cavity too, so that’s. The whole main floor yeah ready to go yes framing insulation and all uh air barriers and vapor barriers all installed already absolutely yeah.
So just to take you through the panel, the interior plywood, is our vapor retarder. So this is replaces your poly. This gives you sheer value. Also right gives you shear value as well. It’s, a vapor retarder at this thickness.
Then we have a 2×8. This is then filled with our cellulose or enough jet stream product. So these holes here, where we’ve cored out, we put a lance in we fill the cavity with that insulation and then we seal it with this tescon banner tape.
And then the exterior here has the 22 millimeters of goutex that i was showing you over there. So this is the exterior. So this is vapor open, vapor, open yeah, so any moisture trapped in here can actually diffuse and dry to the exterior.
Then we wrap in a high performance membrane, this one being the proclima uh mento, which also breathes outwards exactly and it’s, airtight yeah, and then on top of that we attach the strapping. Yes, so one layer strap exterior rain screen on the outside yep, so you have two airtight layers, because you guys tape the plywood.
The value of this facility really just comes from the fact that we have a framing site right now that’s in an indoor control environment. None of this wood is getting a lick of moisture on it. It’s completely controlled.
They have cranes for lifting, they have all their insulation here. So we have a framing site, we have an installation site and we have an air tightness site all in this beautiful facility. So we use two types of insulation.
We use a recycled newspaper and a recycled glass product awesome. We’re big into our embodied carbon as well. We don’t want to fill our buildings with plastic. We have a crandall machine here, so this actually takes both types of the insulation.
It then grinds them up, lofts them along 150 foot cable pipe here. This is the lance which we then put into the cavities. It has a clicker on it so once it reaches its required density, which is super important uh it draws out, and then we have the required amount of insulation in.
So this reads the density of the insulation and then oh wow, exactly that’s. Really cool it’s a little bit like the gas pump. When you’re filling up your car, it clicks once it reaches full, so that’s.
Great so does it does it depend on the project which installation you choose or exactly every panel is engineered back from an energy model or from the architect or the client, depending on how much r value they require.
Okay and depending on that and then the thicknesses, we can achieve a higher r value with the glass wool. So we get a thinner wall, but our preference is to use the recycled newspaper because it’s, a full cradle to cradle.
So this is recycled newspaper from curbside collection uh. This is what we put into our panels. You can actually see the different colors of ink in there. You can see the letters on it as well: oh cool, so it’s a great product cradle to cradle.
It’s recycled and it’s, also recyclable. After the life span of the building it’s. A great product, so this when it’s, hard, packed and dense in the wall. What is this r value per inch on this one? This is our 3.
7 per inch, not bad. It’s, great yeah, very breathable, healthy for your home vapor diffusion. It’s, great yeah. It smells like newspaper still yeah, and so you’re, able to align with bc step code quite easily by just upsizing insulation.
You keep your same simple system of the air, tightness layers and um, and then you’re able to achieve certain numbers yep. The other key benefit with the prefabrication is the air tightness. Yeah air tightness is huge in the step good, as you know, so, when we’re getting up to passive house where it’s, just 0.
6 air changes and step 5, which is one air change, requires the contract to do a lot Of additional work yep, if you’re, trying to tape poly uh, to create that airtight air tightness it’s very tricky. Our primary airtight layer is our plywood, so you’re taping sheets of plywood to tape sheets of plywood yeah.
It’s, the seal. It’s, just so much tighter. So you’re, seeing walls here, but we do all of the floors and the roofs. So these are floor panels. So this is your typical tgi floor that your everyone in bc and canada is familiar with there’s, your top layer.
So this is a um rim board yeah psl rim board here and then you’re right. What we’re doing is we’re pre-hanging, all of the joists, so this thing gets loaded onto the lvl. That’s on site. So if you have an icf foundation, you’ve installed your ledger, these floor panels just get dropped in and they get nailed off as you go okay, so you know as well as i do that when you’re, a general contractor, If you’re sight, framing the amount of trouble and hassle to try and hang these in the rain and the inclement weather and to get everything plumb it’s.
Typically, it’s. It’s, one guy working all day on hangers, exactly right, yeah, whereas these panels will go in in 20. Minutes dropped all this done on a computer modeling software beforehand, which is amazing, exactly um, and we’re gonna go check that out next right, yep so david.
If you could just walk me through the process of uh drawings, coming from architecture, architectural drawings through energy, modeling – maybe engineering into your office here, where you guys are designing panels.
The first step is just to get a set of plans from the architect, usually with some structural information. From a structural engineer, we get down to designing and building out every stud beam, psl everything that goes into that model.
Uh, the the software then spits out pricing lists gives us linear foot of all the timbers, all the joists, so that our pricing can be very accurate. You get very detailed just for pricing too, absolutely yeah, and then these guys start modeling up the rest of those elements, adding the insulation adding all the hangers and it’s at that stage, that we notice that we find most of the conflicts that Exist between the architecture and the structural models? Okay, so it’s, these guys job to kind of work as a project manager to to raise all those conflicts within this model, which is essentially the built house within the model, yes, and where we find that as a benefit to the contractor.
Is this is the stuff that they’re, usually doing on site yeah? They’re cutting down beams because they’re, the wrong size or there’s an you know, a conflict between a window and a pocket, or something like that.
Yeah. These guys figure all that out before it goes down to production. All that brain work is happening right here. So here’s, the shop, drawing shop, drawing books that come down from the office and right onto the floor, absolutely yeah.
So the 3d model is created for every house and then it’s broken up into the panels. So what you’re, seeing here is a quick layout showing all the panel connections of a floor, and then this is the uh floor.
Layout as well yeah, so the 3d model spits out every single panel and we have unique information for each panel. This is the cutlass that i was referring to. So every panel has exactly the amount of beams studs sills required their exact quantity, the widths lengths.
This is what they work of they complete this one, and then we move on to the next one, and i imagine this all this data being spit out by the modeling software is really great for for pricing too, for when you’re pricing, these These jobs for your general contractors right, you’re totally right and then the other benefit for us is that we can be very lean with our ordering.
We can actually define that we’re, ordering certain lengths, rather than just going out and ordering one like 14 footers. We get eight foots if we need eight foots, we get ten foots if we need temperatures and what that then causes is our waste bin becomes really marginal and we’ve got you know, an entire house usually fits into.
You know a couple of garbage cans of offer, really yeah wow, that’s, that’s, incredible yeah. What a fantastic new company tag panels really is innovating the local construction market. I’m, so happy to have them on my team, and i really can’t, wait to see more from these guys in the future.
Thanks so much for tuning in see you guys on the next one, wasn’t that fun guys a build original series, high performance, canada, i thought nate and david did an amazing job and guess what nate has four more episodes for you to watch? High performance, canada is going to be released tuesday through friday on my website.
Buildshownetwork.Com here’s, how you can sign up to win a t-shirt and get notified. Click on that link below tuesday through friday. This week, brand new episodes four more to go. Guys this is really fun.
We got some amazing job sites to show you and by the way, i want to say a big thanks to our sponsors on this series. 475 high performance building supply they’re, the ones who brought me my sand in co2 heat pump, water heater at this house and my lamlux skylights they’ve, got all kinds of cool stuff in their catalog and innotech windows.
This happens to be my wife’s study, and this is an innotech. They make some great products so big thanks to those guys for sponsoring this series for more info. Go to that link in the description. Otherwise, we’ll, see you next time on the build, show [ Music ].
