Confluence turns 20!

April 1st 2020, Happy birthday Confluence Architecture and Sustainability.

Solar-powered inspections…

And Mark became a certified International Code Council certified Residential Energy Inspector/plans examiner and a IECC/HERS Compliance Specialist.

Prince Creek Home – Progress Update

With the beginning of fall and the impeccable Colorado weather, the construction crew has been busy making progress on the Prince Creek home and ADU. The porch timber framing has begun, the buildings are dried-in, and the finishes have begun to appear!

Please let us know how we can help with your deep-green architecture project in Pitkin County, Colorado.

Confluence Architecture wins Houzz Award

Houzzbadge_22_8Confluence Architecture of Carbondale Colorado awarded Best of Houzz 2016 for customer service. The Best Of Houzz is awarded annually in three categories: Design, Customer Service and Photography. Design award winners’ work was the most popular among the more than 35 million monthly users on Houzz. Customer Service honors are based on several factors, including the number and quality of client reviews a professional received in 2015. A “Best Of Houzz 2016” badge will appear on winners’ profiles, as a sign of  their commitment to excellence. These badges help homeowners identify popular and top-rated home professionals in every metro area on Houzz.

 

 

Solar powered attic vent fan

In the remodel of KDNK Carbondale Community Access Radio’s building we converted the sealed attic into a ventilated attic. This allows us to raise the insulation level to R49. Typically, adding ventilation to an attic that originally had none includes either; cutting in gable vents, cutting in several thru-roofing vents or cutting in ridge and soffit vents. Thru-roofing vents,  ridge and soffit vents are expensive and they required cutting through perfectly good roofing to install. The building did have a window in the gable that could be converted into a louvered vent, but cross-ventilation was still a problem. The solution came from a fortuitous coincidence. The building was once occupied by the international solar technology educators; Solar Energy International. SEI had left a couple of old solar panels in the attic that just happened to be exactly half the height of the gable window. I realized that two solar panels and two 24×24 louvered vents would fill the space left by the window’s removal. Two solar panels would provide more than enough power to run a DC fan large enough to vent the attic for moisture reasons- plus the fan could lower the temperature of the attic in the summer! This is what it turned out like (paint to come in the spring). The controls are 120 AC single-pole cooling thermostat and dehumidistat wired in parallel; so the fan comes on if it gets too humid or too hot.

KDNK attic vent outsideKDNK solar ventsolar vent controler

 solar powered attic vent fan