Progress on the Blackhawk BIM Cottage…
The BIM Cottage pages (a ton of them) that used to be listed under this section are now gone. I am actually building the house (work in progress), and have created a separate website for it which I will link to when it is built up enough. There is a bit of updating below…
The image below is an actual picture of the BIM Cottage taken during a brief little November (2012) snowstorm here in Wisconsin. In the image, the seamless steel siding and PVC window/door trim was just completed the day before, and smoke from the wood-burning stove can be seen coming out of the chimney. The bead board under the eaves, the exposed rafter tails, the blocking for utilities, and other trim are yet to be painted in this image –much of it will need to wait until spring.
The design has 2″ of rigid EPS foam glued and cleated to the entire exterior. Each foam panel is foam glued (Great Stuff Pro) to each-other. The home is incredibly tight. The walls are 2 x 6 24″ on center and are filled with high density fiberglass batts @ R21 fo a total wall insulation of R31. The steeper angled part of the roof is R41, and the ceiling in the upstairs is R51 Min (we added all of our cut-offs from the walls on top –must be 20″ thick or more in most areas).
The BIM Cottage sits on a FPSF (Frost Protected Shallow Foundation), and the framing was fully skinned with OSB that was glued and screwed in place. The trusses are hurricane strapped, and there are more foundation bolts than code requires, and they bear on large square plates. The cottage is located on a ridge, and by code requires extra wind bracing, but we went as far as we could. 30 mph winds are common, and the cottage has already survived an 80+ mph wind that took down the barn across the hollow and many hundreds of trees in the area (50 or more on our property likely). Tough little sucker 
I’ll try to post more about the Blackhawk BIM Cottage here shortly, but the ADI page takes precedence.
Please use the comments below for any questions, and have a great day!
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Hello Mark,
I've been a bit curious about the eco house, and also the barn. I regret not paying enough attention to the stuff you had here before you reorganized the site. Do you have any pictures of your building progress you might share?
Thanks,
Jerry
Hi Jerry,
Good to hear from you! I am writing this reply from the Eco House. We lived in it since last winter, and it is quite amazing to not have huge heating bills (Wisconsin). The cottage is a work-in-progress though –it is far from complete.
The construction is quite interesting in that an older home could be modified to use the method. It is 2 x 6 framing utilizing advanced framing techniques (single stud corners, 24” spacing, trusses fall directly over studs, heavy use of glue and screws, etc.). The framing is skinned with 7/16” OSB that is glued, screwed, and ring-shank nailed into place. The glue not only adds tremendous strength (we are in a very high wind area on a ridge), but it allows almost no air infiltration. Outside of that there is a layer of 2” EPS that is glued to the OSB and mechanically held in place with furring strips held in place with galvanized pole barn spikes directly into the studs. The furring strips will support the HardiBoard type siding.
The system uses no vapor barrier on vertical surfaces –which sounds scary to building inspectors, but it works very well. The system is a slight adaptation of one of the systems outlined at:
http://www.buildingscience.com/
I’ve been very busy lately, but will be posting a long series on the cottage ASAP. Thanks for the interest, and keep an eye out for it. It shouldn’t be too gosh awful long.
Mark