Passive Solar Prefab House Kit: Touching on ERV / HRV, Fireplaces And Dessicant Wheels

If you're wondering, we have no intention of having our own passive solar prefab house kit certified. That's not to say we're not mentally aiming for passive house / similarly efficient standards, so a lot of passive house information I link to regarding our off grid house kit systems is because it is designed for highly insulated, tight homes like our own prefab house kits.

You know our house kits are energy efficient, being built with SIPs (structural insulated panels), passive solar, and designed by LEED accredited architects. That is not to dissuade you from certifying your own house kit- there is much value in how far you can take this bare-boned house kit architecture- pushing it as far as you want in energy efficiency and off grid / net zero energy systems, with the help of an accredited certifier.

A tight, energy efficient passive solar house kit built with SIPs also means you are going to need a way to mechanically exchange air, preferably without losing / gaining temperature from the outside, as well as ensuring moisture does not sit within the house kit.

Talk to your contractor about what works for your area and for your own needs, but here are some links I found educational:

• Good overview of a desiccant wheel and how it works / differentiates from an energy recovery unit.
  
  
• Here's a good overview of geographical areas where you determine whether to use an energy recovery unit or heat recovery unit. (We will get into this in more detail in an upcoming systems post...)
  
  
• FYI: At the 2005 solar decathlon, Cornell used a desiccant wheel in their house, which was the only home to meet the required humidity levels during the competition. Here's what Cornell used: Outdoor: Trane XL19i Indoor: Trane 4TEE3F31A Split-system HP w/ RotorSource desiccant wheel 2.5 ton Ducted forced air
  
  
• And finally: Fireplaces in a passive house:
  
  
  
  • http://www.passivehouse.org.nz/?id=newsmanager&s=passive&news=a3838f1ffe&lang=en
    
  • http://www.passivehouse.us/bulletinBoard/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28&p=153
    
  • http://www.leonardo-energy.org/drupal/node/1275
    
  
  

Any-hoo, we are currently trying to figure out if the mid-century fireplace is worth the effort / expense; whether it is worth adversely affecting the house kit tightness to integrate into our prefab house kit when we could spend that money towards systems. 

We originally spec'd the systems plan to not have a fire place- coupled with radiant heat, an efficient stove would easily overheat the net zero energy house kit.  But when it got down to eleven degrees and we were still without our off grid systems installed, I went a little crazy.  Handsome Husband knew the disadvantages the entire time; I did too, intellectually; but try explaining that to the frantic-mom-inside-of-me-trying-to-resolve-warmth-immediately.

Regardless, the coolio modern fire place will be put to use, even if as just an outdoor feature... but that doesn't help us when we haven't installed systems and need heat immediately... it's a shame if we can't incorporate it, now that it's there.

From Handsome Husband:

"We started with our desire to be warm, not yet having purchased and hooked up our systems. Getting the (admittedly cool) fireplace led to the realization that a ERV would need to go hand-in-hand with such an installation (or anything), coupled with the need for a fireplace / stove in such an efficient house to prevent back draft. Many people now realize that burning a fire in a fireplace in a traditional home has the following effect: the flu sucks air out of your home in a big time because, boy, does heat rise and air gets shot out of your flu.

Well, that creates negative pressure in your house - air is sucked out of the house. In a conventional home you get new air sucked in through the cracks in your house to maintain balance of pressure with the outside. In a home built with SIPs the envelope is much more uniform and easy to seal- you do that, of course, and end up with a home that doesn't have cracks to suck in enough air to balance the loss of air through the flue. What happens next apparently is that the negative pressure in the house exceeds the power of the air rushing through the flue. Bad news because now the smoke from your fire no longer wants to go up the flue but instead becomes the means to de-pressurize the house, compensating for the previous loss of pressure.

What to do?

Sounds like one wants to prevent de-pressurization. This occurs when air is sucked out of the house - something we don't want anyway because we just HEATED that air. So you decouple the flue from the house by giving it its own snorkel - sucking air for combustion in from the OUTSIDE through a tube running from an outside wall to the inlet on the fireplace.

This works great for SEALED fireplaces or wood stoves or, of course, pellet stoves. In our case we have the mod version of a chiminea and we have to see whether we can a) attach an external air supply to it and b) seal the fire place by replacing the screen with a sealed cover.

Fall back is to use it seasonally by swapping it with a sealed wood or pellet stove with external air supply."

In the meantime, here are some video updates on the modern prefab passive solar green home:

Still sorting VMI floorboards to reuse in the passive solar house kit...

Note to energy enthusiasts: He also discovered there was a pipe that had not been correctly sealed during the energy audit... which certainly contributed to temperature drop / leakage... that is now corrected!

Net Zero Energy Passive Solar House Kit Update

...An unexpected visitor to the net zero energy prefab modern house kit:
(Dude, don't eat mah steps!)

Handsome Husband Encounters His First Hog


Now, now. I know we've been persnickety as of late, but don't think we're soured and nasty over all the recent heating hullabaloo...
Despite the prefab zero energy house kit setbacks, we keep on tha' sunny side! (Right June?)

 

Oprah Disses A Modern Practical Home, I Rant About It, It Ends Up On TreeHugger! Which Brings Us To The Kitchen.

For the record, I do NOT have time to watch television.
*Ahem.* Ok, I do not have time to watch television a lot.

Honeychile, I found this video of Oprah touring a modern home on twitter, bay-bee!

I was so floored and embarrassed by Oprah's reactions to her host's tour I couldn't stop talking about it.  I admire Oprah - how can you not admire someone who overcame so many odds to become one of the most powerful people, ever?  And she really does SO much good. BUT her reactions throughout each frame of this video make me *cringe* - not only was she impolite to her host, it is clear she did not even try to understand the practicality and beautiful design of small footprint living.

Small footprint living extends beyond architecture. And this is where TreeHugger's Lloyd Alter brings us back to the modern, green living kitchen... read it all here!

Ironically the fridge we will have in our own prefab green home is the same size (maybe even smaller) as the European family in this clip. Like them, we embrace small footprint living, and that is reflected in the kitchen: we cook our own food, and cook daily, purchasing much of it from the Amish store or friend's farms or grow it ourselves... so no need for a big fridge. The fridge is for mostly any leftovers of a meal + a few items.

The freezer, however, *WILL* be much larger... why?
Not because I intend to stock up on frozen pizzas and buckets of hors d'œuvre from Costco ; ) (um, yeah- right) but because when I buy lamb, I buy A LAMB. And there will be venison to store.

Mr. Alter also sums up some aspects we embrace in our own line of prefab passive solar house kits:

From the article:

"1. Bedrooms are for sleeping.
This is an extreme example, but there isn't even a master bedroom, the parents make up a sofa bed in the living room. The kids share a very tiny one.
2. There is storage for everything.
If you can't hide it you don't own it.
3. Minimize the use of drywall
It appears that every surface in this apartment is either glass or a built-in with a laminate face; almost kid-proof. Drywall is really a paper faced wall with a hairy surface that collects dust and mould; glass and laminate clean up easily."

I also agree strongly with Mr. Alter's fourth point, that you have much to gain by living in the city.  But we have land in our blood, in our heritage, and focus on preservation though purchase of rural property.

I just can't stop watching this video...

The dining room view, stunning, and the host modestly introduces the view with,
"We like to spend time together as a family here..."  Oprah responds, "Well that's wonderful. That's all that matters..." (as if she were implying, "well, 'least ya got *that*...")...


More:

"But this is their whole bedroom? This is their whole bedroom. You're kidding me."
"That's your whole refrigerator?" ... "But that was your whole refrigerator... right there."
"Is there another floor? Where do you sleep?" ... "I saw the bed? This is the bed! That was just...charming...?"

I could never imagine Oprah walking into a low-income row house and making these same comments.  

Why is it okay to question people so who choose to live efficiently?

 

Prefab Green Home Takes On The Wind Chill. And The Passive Solar Net Zero Prefab Fabulously Triumphs.

Wind chill of 14? Actually, I was corrected: The wind chill was FOUR. 
It's a windy day at the prefab green home.

As long term readers might notice, during extreme weather our favorite game in the net zero modern prefab (still with no heating / power systems installed) is to compare the outdoor temperature with the indoor temperature.

We have no heat. We have no electricity.
But we certainly have fun measuring the effectiveness of the structural insulated panels + passive solar design in the prefab house kit on a dinky (one arrow missing that's supposed to indicate humidity) thermometer.

A Lovely Lady From Leeds : )  asked,

Mel, I don't know. We certainly can (and should) have someone measure it, but because it is our private home despite my being the founder, well, I previously thought, "Eh. It's more fun doing the dial-y thermometer thang."

Your interest has prompted me to take it more seriously and add it to the "to do's."

[I have a similar attitude towards LEED accreditation. Don't kill me! (The firms are all LEED accredited; I just don't see the benefit for the consumer to certify a house they don't intend to sell, and am approaching this house as an "average" consumer of my own house kit. ]


This is all stuff we as professionals know, documented by passive haus, passive houses, SIPs manufacturers, etc., but when I (even though we intelligently know it) put it into practice by turning a thermometer into a family game... oh, it's so much more fun. : )

In summer, we marveled at 100° harsh heat in the fields, yet inside the off grid prefab green home, it was a comfortable 85°, and the cross breezes from the open windows made it even more pleasant.  Now we test the prefab house kit in icy, bitter temps with a few intermittent days of overcast skies.


Handsome Husband reports: "Windchill is 4°.  Last night it went down to 18°, today's highs will be 27°.  Yet the prefab green house kit is 45° on arrival."

Yes, that's cold.
But it has been overcast for days in temperatures in the teens and twenties. This proves that despite daily temperatures being such, the interior of the prefab green home will not freeze.  This is great news.


After spending a day researching modern supercoolio wood stoves after discovering the promised family wood stove was mine no longer, I admit defeat: Why would I spend $1,500-$3,500 on a modern, cool  wood stove we will use so little in the energy efficient, passive solar SIPs house?

Yet the wood stove is comforting as back up once our solar systems are installed, there to dry wet mittens and sopping snow clothes and to cook on if need be.

It's 11:00. Handsome Husband calls to say the prefab house is already 49-50° from him just moving around. Imagine how fast a big wood stove would heat that efficient, insulated space...and then overheat. If it's easily 50s inside when the temperature outside will not rise above freezing today, our original concern is correct - we would easily overheat the house with a big stove.

I researched battery-powered heaters, but they were either too small or not exactly safe for indoor use. [Understaaaaaatement!]


So... we bought a wood stove.
It's ugly. It's not a nostalgic family hand-me-down.

It's definitely not modern. 
Handsome Husband is consoling me with, "Well, you could kinda cook on it..."
*sob*

After spending the past 24 hours frantically researching what new products have come on the market since I last looked (a lot of nice modern wood stoves now), in the end I said, "Fine, solve the issue NOW, let's pay someone to install this NOW, so we can freaking enjoy our prefab modern house kit NOW."

Each dollar we spend on something unexpected (like the unexpected cost of a $1,000+ wood stove) is a dollar that should be going to off grid solar systems and hiring local labor to install them.

We will now bemusedly note how many years the original, "free" wood stove given to me will sit in my parent's basement until Mr. Wil "I Will Sue You For Everything You Own" Sakowski claims it... IF he ever does.


[Readers: Please bear with me in these last two posts as bitterness tinged these references... My life, and my dear, lifelong friends are an entirely happy different story. It's all good. : ) Besides, being a bandit is much more rewarding and adventurous. ]

Handsome Husband calls:
"I'm leaving! And in the prefab house kit it's 54 degrees." (3:40 p.m.)
Me: "What'd you do?"
[Understaaaaatement!]

He...

• Met with the roofers
  
• Unloaded the modern bed and put it together
• Installed the Danish mid-century daybed
  
• Drove to Appomattox and bought a wood stove
• Examined the scouting camera (Awwww, Bambi!)
• Sorted some of the VMI basketball wood
  

Y'know. That's all... ; )
Stay tuned...
The next post is where I rearrange all the furniture.

 

The Wife Interjects: Heat. Addendum To Hi-Falutin' Handsome Husband's Systems Posts.

Honeychile, let's talk about heat. I'm frickin' freezing and I want to go enjoy my prefab net zero modern green home NOW regardless of being without systems in this frigid, gorgeous, wintry weather.


Originally, despite my *completely* falling in love with the Amish Baker's Choice cook stove, (old practicality and function yet with simple, even modernist edges) we decided to eschew a wood stove because

1. it would overheat the energy efficient, passive solar prefab green home
2. we would need it *so* little, if ever, a year, because our modern SIPs home is so air tight and insulated that we need less systems, and we already would have radiant heat so it just didn't seem worth it
3. and relying purely on solar energy / radiant heat is more environmentally friendly, even if we might be a bit cold a few days a year when it was direly bitter.

I went into more here, about how and why we changed the prefab architect's floor plan by moving the kitchen, and spoke in more detail about why we had decided not to use a wood cook stove.

Before we came to that conclusion, I asked my parents if we could have the working-perfectly-in-great-condition wood stove we used growing up that has now been sitting in their basement about twenty years. 
And they gave it to us! Oh the nostalgia! Oh the frugal-ness and reuse!

Then we hit upon our more cutting edge, solar / radiant off grid systems plan and Handsome Husband decreed the wood stove was overkill in such an efficient, prefab house kit.

Well, that was before we decided to be even more pay-as-you-go in building the net zero off-grid house this year.  Despite our great credit, we're trying to not acquire a loan to finish it because now is a great time to put our (literally) money where our mouth is and see how adverse-to-accruing-debt and frugal we can go.



Another winter is passing, another turn of the seasons where, despite the prefab SIPs house's ability to maintain steady temperatures due to the high insulation and passive solar design, I realize that after a few weeks of frosty, consistent cold without any systems / heat at all... it will be chilly in the house kit.

I don't want to be cold, I want to be cozy.

The reality is that it makes good economic sense to add the wood stove. It's free, and we can affordably add it and enjoy winters *immediately* even without solar heat. Let's face it: we are clearing fallen trees regularly, stacking them in piles for wildlife habitat. We certainly might as well use some of it to keep our family warm, for free!
Vive la practical, re-usable, *always* in style frugality! : ) 

...

Well.
I just got off the phone with my parents.
Unfortunately, I just discovered that since we settled on Better Technology Plan B, my brother asked for the stove. They gave it to him.
He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina and certainly desperately needs it for that frigid environment!
: )
[ I discovered this now because I am staying back with sick children while Handsome Husband goes to the land, having more room in the car than usual, therefore a perfect opportunity to pick up the stove from my parents, cart it out to the prefab, and enable us to enjoy the prefab house kit in these icy conditions. ]

So, NO nostalgic, this-was-passed-on-in-our-family-happy-memories-of-childhood 1980s wood stove to heat us now in the winter cold.

Square One... Again!

[It's ok. I'm used to it. After they gave away the family farm, what's a wood stove?]

So, I'm now doing research.
There's something about the whole concept of pellet stoves that doesn't sit right with me.  I get it, but... burning corn? And even when wood... it's like rabbit food when you could feed yer pets the garden vegetables about you. Pellet stoves are also expensive, the pellets, inconvenient.

I know you're thinking, "Well what about the federal tax credits?"
To qualify for tax credits, it must be 1. an existing home and 2. your principal residence. We need to  live here until our children finish 5th grade. AND regardless, new construction and rentals do not qualify.

Honeychiles, we'z gotz no handouts. None from mah fambly, none from tha' guvament heah. ; ) Good thang we're into self-sufficiency!


I found an old cook stove on Craigslist and my heart fluttered.
Me: "Oh please oh please oh please?"
Handsome Husband: "No."

Then, I found a new, barely used (ok, that's what I usually mean by "new" when I call something "new"... ) wood stove in a nearby town. It's the right price, right functionality... but... well, if we're not nostalgically getting the wood stove from my family then do we need to stay with the traditional wood stove?  However, on the inquiry, fate intervened- by the time I was able to speak with the owner, it had been promised to another.

Let's face it: from a design perspective, these stoves are not exactly sleek and coolio kickin' modern design. Technology has improved since then.

And this is our "forever" sustainable, off grid house we're (slowly) building. 
Design matters.

I briefly reviewed the old information I researched years ago: modern masonry heaters, Malm stoves, etc. as well as newer offerings and they were either puzzlingly inefficient or would literally heat-us-out-of-house-and-home, much less cost-an-arm-and-a-leg!  They're still super-cool though... *sigh*

And then... I discovered... via mocoloco / stylepark...
Turn.

Simple, sleek, effective, efficient, modern, whimsy-less, practical, edgy, warm, happy, cozy, sophisticated, stylish... perfect for a net zero prefab home.

Oh, thaz right, Turn.

I've fallen in love before. We shall see, we shall see.
But believe me, I'm used to marching on.

 

Prefab Green Home Net Zero Off Grid Systems Post #3

An astute reader took me to task yesterday regarding our prefab net zero green home, the casa ti. : )

Correctly, they observed,

“Just read the #2 on systems. It brings up what I was saying - where the heck are you going to put two 80 gallon water tanks? The plans shown on-line do not have space for 1 much less 2 water tanks. Are you putting them outside? Where are the PEX tubes for the floor terminated (meaning where do they come out of the concrete? In a closet somewhere or outside the house)? You'll need a pump for each loop and they take up a fair amount of space also (about the size of a coffee machine mounted on the wall).

Thanks,
B”

Handsome Husband (who is responsible for our prefab’s off grid / net zero systems) responds:

“The green building architect David Day's prefab floor plan shows what I am using as a system cabinet as kitchen storage.

Here is a detailed view of the cabinet that houses our net zero, off grid systems.

We are keeping the footprint the same but are converting storage to system space to accommodate the prefab house’s added solar tanks and radiant heat needs.

Space needs vary between different heating and DHW solutions and in our case where we are off grid we are dedicating more space to the system needs than others might. 

But then again, we are going off grid all the way and are willing to create that lost storage in furniture instead.

I will post the corresponding system specs over the next few days once I have transferred them to digital media.”

So, like many other consumers, we took the prefab architect’s suggested floor plan for the prefab house kit and modified it for our own needs with our contractor.

Not only did we move the kitchen from the west to the center of the south room, but we also adjusted the green building architect’s suggested dimensions for closet space to accommodate our net zero off grid needs.

Here are some pictures so you can see how easy this is to do with your contractor as the bedroom dimensions are currently just laid out / framed:

 

Here is a link to the green building architect’s suggested floor plan of the prefab so you can see what the architect envisions, which you can compare with what we’ve done as our own prefab house kit consumers…
Enjoy!

 

Prefab Green Home Systems Post #2: The Heat For Our Net Zero Energy SIPs House Kit

Well.
We have certainly been thinking about heat for our prefab net zero off grid house this week.
We had one of the biggest snowstorms in recent memory begin Friday, and on Sunday we drove slowly, carefully to vacation in West Virginia.

We love history, old architecture, eclectic design, and natural, local beauty.*
So where to vacation? The Greenbrier.
Experiencing what still works in a resort founded in 1778 allowed us to observe and apply timeless elements to our own modern prefab net zero house, today. We have the prefab advantage of highly energy efficient structural insulated panels, passive solar design, radiant heat in the polished concrete floors.  What resonated with me was the importance of cozy cottage comfort after a brisk hike in the crystalline air; wet freezing children shedding thick layers of soppy, stiff, half-frozen crunchy clothes...

As you drive through the mountains today, you are aware of how dangerous weather can be - and imagine the perilous journeys over centuries, even just decades ago with no shelter, no dry welcoming  warmth, no means of communicating for help.

Still in this day and age, the roads can be treacherous.

We took our time.
My northern German husband who went to graduate school an hour away from the Alps was surprised and intimidated by the road conditions we encountered. 


Finally, we arrived...
We knew we had a cottage... but didn't expect... THE Cottage.


What we took back with us, after a glorious few days sledding and hiking in the elements yet always within reach of immediate creature comforts was... the admittance that in rural areas, despite the coolio latest technology that allows passive solar, net zero comfort... you need to also always think about the dire situations...
Y'know, Dire Straits...

So... this is about survival.
Not in a fear-mongering way. In a practical, affordable, positive way, as a boost to our otherwise comfortable solar systems, our prefab's passive solar design and energy efficient, tight insulation; to ensure that we're also really ready for rugged, rural, sometimes desolate and emergency conditions.

On cue, as I continued my ongoing reading journey of The Moomins with my children tonight, Snufkin ran up into a similar scenario with no less than twenty four little woodies he had somehow acquired after his revenge on The Park Keeper. Tired, cold, wet, hungry, they arrived at a cottage. Inside: a wood stove, and a pot of beans. Soon their wet cold clothes were hung, empty bellies filled, and...
Hurrah, they were saved.
And this is what I think:

Honeychile, there's never harm in good back up. In fact, you rely upon it. 

* Fer you astute history and enviro business buffs, the whole Coal Country experience is something to be addressed in a separate post, in itself a whole different experience... wow. More soon, in a whole different post focusing on economy and scale of local industry... industries.

Here is... The Heating Post.
(Schematics later, here begins Handsome Husband's thoughts:)

Space Heating and Domestic Hot Water (DHW) For The off-grid zero energy prefab home:

We have been planning and realizing our prefab off grid net zero SIPs house for 3 years now. The actual construction began a year ago. Although the prefab house kit was erected and sealed in with windows, doors, etc. within a week, one of the factors leading to our own extremely long period of construction once the exterior was weather-tight was the search for a solution to our heating needs that fits our building structure, geography and long-term goals. (House kit consumers could certainly have finished the interior long before we have with our own prefab house kit!)

To better understand the amount of choices let’s compare the issue to off-grid power: You can calculate how much power you need (or want), how many days of power supply you want to be able to store in your battery bank and whether you want back up power. All that is left then is choosing from solar, wind or water as your primary power source – a fairly well understood calculation.

For hot water and space heating the options are far greater:

Heat Collection

We can collect heat from the sun via solar hot water collectors (flat plate or evacuated tube designs) or take advantage of the warmer temperature in the ground below our dwellings (geothermal heat).

Heat Storage

We can store the collected heat in tanks filled with liquids or bunkers filled with sand. Either needs to be insulated to preserve the heat until we need it.

Heat Delivery

We can heat our spaces by transferring the stored heat to warm air or warm liquid.

Backup Options

Backup really refers to the conventional heating system and obviously should be used as little as possible. This presents the biggest challenge as we want to avoid it at all means but still have to account for it.

The solution you select depends on your goals:

Freeze Protection

We need to protect our homes from catastrophic failure.

Comfort

We need to determine what level of comfort we expect if freeze protection is covered. This is a personal choice. One may state “I am fine with not taking hot showers” or “I will put on a sweater or two” if my heat storage is depleted or one may say “I want to have a choice to take a hot shower or maintain a warm temperature”.

In our case we want to be able to make the choice. This allows us to ask of the design to provide us with comfort when the system is depleted.

Our Prefab's Passive Solar Design

During a birthday party for one of our son’s classmates I spoke to the father about the casa ti. He installs heating systems for a living. I shared our observation that the passive solar architecture in conjunction with the highly insulated building envelope due to the Structural insulated Panels (SIP) is not losing a lot of heat at night. On a sunny day leading up to a night around freezing the house looses 4-5 degrees until the next morning. His comment was “your heating system won’t have to work very hard”.

This is critical for our project since a highly efficient and well insulated building simply won’t require much heat. We have proven during our open house in September 2009 at our Prefab Green Open House that you can heat the building solely by inviting 30-40 people (in this case some of you reading this) and the heat radiation from their bodies will heat a space. Arrivals during the open house instinctively took off their coats on what was a rainy, cold day.

So here is how we are going to heat our prefab net zero green home, the casa ti:

Heat Collection For The Prefab Off Grid House

We are starting off with 30 evacuated tube collectors by Apricus.

Heat Storage

We are using 2 80 gallon conventional water heaters from our local building supply that we daisy-chain into a 160 gallon heat store. We will choose tanks/heaters with high insulation and will wrap them in additional insulation. The burners won’t be used at all (see backup below) so we can wrap them as we wish.

Heat Delivery

We are using radiant heat. The foundation of our prefab house kit casa ti has 6 loops of PEX tubing, each less than 250 feet of length which is important to deliver heat evenly. 3 loops each are assigned to zones (North and South). The concrete slab rests on 2” of rigid foam insulation where the slab doesn’t support load bearing walls (perimeter and central East/West wall) and the foundation has 2 feet vertical and 2 feet outward insulation.

Backup

Critical Backup

An on demand water heater powered by LP gas is spliced into the heat supply to the loops.

Backup While We Are At The Prefab House

A recycled wood stove (the stove Copeland's own family used in the 1980s) supplies heat to the dwelling while we are present. The required heat recovery air exchanger will help distributing this isolated heat source to the entire house as it extracts air (and heat with it) from designated areas of the house and delivers fresh air alongside with the heat extracted from the discarded air to the bed rooms.

And that's that, from Handsome Husband.
In the meantime... stay warm...
'Cause baby, it's cold outside...
and honeychiles...
Happy Holidays!



P.s. If you like pictures (you may have noticed I do), here's more pictures of The Greenbrier, the cottages there, and the drive. : )

A hike, and sledding:

More wanderings...

One last morning sledding, then we headed home: