Our House

I’ve been reading stuff passive solar. I have to do something heartening. It’s cold and wet out and we’ve got family members on the way to add to our pet cemetary.  Katie will go to rest next to Koa, Stacy, Max, Kym and Bindy.  Saying goodbye to four legged family is hard but it would be worse if we couldn’t keep them here with us.

I was doing some research on insulating glass and ran into an archived article on passive solar overheating.  The article is about half-way down in the archive, so scroll, scroll, scroll.  The title is “For passive solar, it’s so long slanted glass.”

Let’s be clear, I’m not advocating one way or the other, vertical versus slanted glass.  I’m looking at the home’s original design and I’m saying . . . where’s the thermal mass?  With all that solar gain during the day, the design has to encorporate enough thermal mass to absorb that heat so it’s available when the temps drop at night.  Without it you have Death Valley heat during the day and Siberia cold at night.

If, in the original design, there had been heat collection tubes that collected the heat during the day and directed it in the ground under/around the home, slanted glass had a chance of providing more even heat.  Not ideal heat, but better than the desert/arctic cycle the family experienced.  This is all about overall design, not the advisability of vertical versus slanted glass.  It was bad solar engineering.

Don Stephens of Greener Shelter separates the solar collector from the living space.  With separate solar collector boxes he’s able to direct the heat into the ground beneath the home where it can rise slowly into the home.  If you read back through some earlier posts, you’ll see where I talk about that and how I’ll use his technology/expertise when we build the house on the hill.

I ran into another interesting thing as well.  Some bright mind has come up with a transparent film that could conceivably be used for generating electricity from solar exposure.

Passive solar ala The Natural Home

Every couple of months I research new house plans. One of the site I love cruising through, even though not much changes there, is The Natural Home. I love the feel of those houses, though I can tell from the pictures I would need taller ceilings. I have a problem with claustrophobia and space over my head helps a lot. I am not comfortable with ~8′ ceilings. <shakes head> I feel like the world’s pressing down on me. Terry doesn’t mind small dark spaces and low ceilings. <shiver> For me? No thanks. Our current living room ceiling is 9’6 ” high and that’s pretty close to perfect though another six inches wouldn’t hurt. I know the additional height effects heating but for my comfort, it can’t be helped.

So let’s take the “natural home” style of house and see what I’d do with it. Here at our location our snow load is 64lb/sf. You might wonder why it’s that high when Boulder Colorado is somewhere between 30lb/sf and 60lb/sf depending on where you look.  We can get three foot of snow (seldom but it does happen) followed by inches and inches of rain which is soaked up and held by the snow making the snow VERY heavy.  The roof structure has to be engineered to hold that weight.

As the front part of the roof is fairly flat, I would run 6×8′s or 6×10′s from side to side where the beam marks are located held up by 6×6 posts. Spanning the beams I would use 2×10 rafters on one foot centers with the spaces between filled with papercrete. I’d need to talk to my permit guy at the county to see if that would be adequate.  I’ve got a local guy who can cut me #1 clear lumber in full dimension, I just need to know the sizes.  Rogerson cut full dimension 2×10 joists for the floor of the loft in the shop.

When looking at the inside images from The Natural House there are things I like and things I don’t.  I think the clerestory is a great idea.  For a house buried into the side of a hill, the clerestory brings light and air into the back half of the house.  Sizing the overhang correctly keeps the heat out in the summer and in during the winter.

I don’t much care for the sloped glass in the front, though I understand it’s an essential element of that design but for me it adds a crowded feel to the planter area.  I’d rather put in some form of in-floor heating (PAHS is my first pick) and have the luxury of vertical glass with a glass roof above the planter bed.

Because we have a lot of cool gray days (little solar gain), I’ll need to find a way to moderate the heat loss without covering the windows in quilts.  I saw an episode of This New House on DIY TV on super efficient windows.  The frames were closed cell foam insulated fiberglass and the glass panels had suspended film (up to three layers) inside.  A good example of this is the zero energy house using Southwall’s Heat Mirror technology.  While I’d love to use recycled glass panels, for our home, I don’t think that’s a smart solution.  Recycled panels are a real craps shoot.

Another of the things I don’t care for about the Natural Home is the rectangular bays front to back.  I’m an art deco gal and I like angles and curves.  In playing with the Natural House concept, I’ve fought this for the last couple years . . . loving the concept of the Natural Home but hating . . . despising the rectangular bays so much there was no way I could consider building/living in one.  Last night it finally occurred to me to angle the interior walls.  I can’t do anything about the posts needed to hold up the beams, but I can do something about boxy rectangular rooms.  By angling the wall I can get the closed in feeling where it’s needed (bedrooms and utility) and the open feeling where it’s needed in the kitchen and main living space.

One more change . . . to the planter just inside the front windows.  I have two options.  If it’s raised I can sit on the edge and garden.  It would need to be about 20″ tall which means the windows would need to be set about 24″ from the base/floor level.  If I don’t raise it, I would want it curving into the living space with stones set for walking through it with a strategically placed pond for feeding a grow wall partition in place of the south wall of the bedroom.  I really like the idea of that . . . hmmmm.  I love the idea but that may be a little ambitious.  I can always keep it as a future enhancement.

I think we’re getting closer to spring.  I’ve got daffs up and my elephant garlic is poking through the dirt.  I’ve got quite a bit of pre-spring gardening to get done as weather permits.

Dan (brother) is still working on a foam grinder for me.  He’s not working so it might catch his attention a little more often and I might actually have something to play with by late spring.  As soon as I can grind some foam I’ll get the eps-crete infill installed in the north wall of the sun porch.  Once that’s done I can pour the last bit of footer and get the east wall glass put in.  Once that’s done I can get my fish tank moved in and my aquaponic grow wall (lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, et al grown in hydroton) put in place and start growing for our table.  Right now the fish tank is outside half sunk into the ground.  I can’t grow anything attached to it until the weather warms fairly dramatically unless I install a heater in the tank.  I can’t do that until I get the new electric service in (coming up soon!).  Getting the tank into the enclosed sun porch will greatly lengthen the growing season without increasing the electric bill.

It’s been so warm I haven’t been able to talk Wadly into installing the sawdust stove.  I keep hearing “next winter” when I mention it.  I know better than to push.  He pays the electric bill and collects the sawdust we’ll burn once the burner’s installed, so it’s best for me to just go with the flow.  When he’s ready, we’ll get it installed.  I’ll start pushing him mid to late summer so it’s done when the cold weather hits.