Construction Quality
Quiet Summit House is a custom designed Lindal Cedar Home. Lindal homes are renowed for their top quality building materials and superior engineering. All the structural lumber and exterior siding supplied by Lindal is kiln-dried, reducing the chance for twisting and warping that often occurs with green or air-dried lumber used in most new construction. The extensive cedar trim throughout the house was harvested from a cedar forest in British Columbia which is carefully managed for sustainability. The cedar provides a fragrance and luster throughout the house that makes for an exceptionally pleasing interior environment.
Quiet Summit House has a number of features which add to its high-end feel and outstanding comfort. These include "polar" walls and roof, which are far thicker and better insulated than those found in a typical home. The roof is 16" thick, and insulated to a R-51 value. The walls are 10" thick, which is highly unusual in today's new construction. Beyond the energy efficiency, these polar walls help to block out wind noise from outside and provide spacious 7" window sills throughout the house -- all in cedar, of course. The use of 5/8" drywall -- as opposed to the more typical 3/8" -- adds further solidity to the walls and ceilings.
The many large windows in Quiet Summit House are all made with state-of-the-art Low E Argon glass -- which has two panes of glass with Argon gas n between. These windows not only increase energy efficiency but block damaging ultra-violet rays and wind noise.
All the doors throughout Quiet Summit are solid wood, as opposed to the hollow or composite doors so often found in new construction. The doors also feature heavy brass hardware -- knobs and hinges --adding to their substantial feel.
Quiet Summit House is heated by in-floor radiant heat, which provides extraordinary comfort in cold weather. While far more expensive to install, radiant heat provides a consistent warmth throughout the house, eliminating the drafts and pockets of cold air common with forced air or floorboard heating. The combination of Quiet Summit House's polar walls, radiant heat, and Low E Argon glass windows creates a sense of total remove from the fierce winds and winter elements sometimes experienced at Quiet Summit House's mountain-top location. The powerful Jotul woodstove in the great room helps to greatly reduce heating costs and can be screened to view the flames.
Another notable feature of Quiet Summit House is its ideal siting to maximize the warmth of the sun in winter and minimize it in the summer. The glass prow of the house faces northwest and only gets direct sunlight in the early morning hours, ensuring that the great room in warmed up for breakfast time. The other set of large windows in the great room, above the kitchen, face south but get sustained direct sunlight only when the sun is low in the sky from late fall to early spring. As a result, the great room gets hours of sunlight during the cold months that help to defray heatings costs and provide the feeling of being in solarium even on the coldest days. The master bedroom of Quiet Summit House faces southeast, so that it gets ample morning sun during all seasons. The downstairs bedrooms all get ample morning sun. The house is well positioned for a solar heating system.