so i went on a little adventure last week to find a bird’s eye view of our site . . .and i found one from the center for maritime systems research office up the hill. check it out!…

I bet by that title you thought this was going to be a blog about all the crazy antics of those crazy kids at the Empowerhouse Collaborative. Nope. Not this time. Following on the ultra cute ending to Kim's blog, I have decided to introduce you to the wildlife I've spotted on the construction site! As I have a pretty crappy phone that takes terrible pictures and the fact that I can never seem to get it out and ready in time to capture ANYTHING worth while, I will preface the following images - I didn't take any of the pictures of the actual animals. I found them all on the intranet. They do however represent the cuteness that is overflowing in the midst of all the circular saw buzzing and drills a-screwing.

So the Empowerhouse team has been very fortunate as we have a generous sponsor who has elected to provide us with breakfast and lunch most of the week.  This is, to put it concisely, awesome.  I have however noticed the …

Another delivery arrived yesterday and the team quickly found space to store an ENTIRE TRUCKFULL of Cel-Pak Cellulose Insulation. This is the stuff we're going to be blowing into our walls until it's densely packed enough to provide R-values that are through the roof!

Lots of screwing today!

After sometime crouched over computers in the office finalizing drawings and materials specs, it feels good to be down in the shop exercising more than our mouse-clicking fingers. At this stage we’re still eager and energized …

No house can begin to be built without the proper foundation and these awesome ziggurat foundations are no exception. The weight of our house will be carried by wood beams that will then transfer the load into the plywood foundations. Our earth team came up with this brilliant design as a way to continue to meet our goal of mitigating the overall cost of our house. Because we chose to move away from the more common and expensive metal foundations we needed a way to spread the loads into the ground with out damaging any of that pristine D.C. sod.

WE GOT HARDHATS!!!!! AND GLOVES!!!! AND EAR PROTECTION THINGYS!!!!! AND SAFETY GLASSES!!!!!!

Welcome to your summer home, please wipe your feet. Wednesday May 25 was the beginning of a new phase for some of us Parsons/Stevens students. Five of us were assigned the task of starting to set up our summer workshop at Stevens and we all felt a huge sense of relief as we were finally set free from the unrelenting clutches of the CPU and given the chance to actually make things with our hands again, or so we thought...

Only the first week of our summer work schedule, and we are anxious to start construction next week.  A few of us already got the chance to practice craning our panels into place for the large basswood model we made …