Custom Fossil Stone Countertop
Showing posts with label Small Home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Small Home. Show all posts
White Lilies. Plastic ones la. Wifey likes these. We went Taipei's famed Yang Ming Shan to view these lilies,
labour of life in a modern setting: a 3-feet aquarium
Entrance to kitchen. Once again, it was framed in brown wood, which we promptly removed all traces of
Healting with the Sun
Using the sun to heat your house has got to be the most economical and ecologically benign way to keep comfortable when the temperatures drop. There are a number of common strategies for doing this. My favorite method is passive solar design, where there are no “active” fans or pumps to contend with. Most passive solar designs are basically invisible, because the room itself is the collector. It performs well because the design of the space and the choice of materials to build it cooperate in keeping the space comfortable.
The basic concept is to use south-facing windows to allow the winter sun to enter the room, and then store the heat from that sunlight in some thermal mass material, so that the heat can be given back at night. Enough solar energy should enter the room on a sunny day in December or January to maintain a temperature of about 70 degrees F. for the 24 hour period. If the space overheats, then there is either too much glass, or too little mass. Or if the space isn't warm enough, then there is either not enough glass or there is too much mass. Slightly oversizing the design can compensate for some overcast weather.
Here are some guidelines for good design: at 8,000 ft. in Colorado use about 35% of the square footage of the floor space in any given room in actual window area. At lower elevations or more southern locations, the percentage of glass should be less. These windows can be oriented up to 25 degrees east or west of true south, and still collect over 90% of the solar energy. Interior walls and floors should have at least 4 inches of masonry material lining them. Use dark colors for the floors, and don't cover them with carpeting. Walls can be any color.
The interior thermal mass (brick, adobe, concrete, tile, rock, etc.) needs to be insulated well from the outside environment, or else that stored heat will just leak out. Straw bales, scoria (crushed volcanic rock), and wool are good natural insulating materials. The floor should be insulated, as well as the walls and ceiling. Glass is a poor insulator, so when it gets cold at night, insulating curtains or panels need to be used in the windows to hold in the heat. Windows on the north, east and west should be minimized to help with insulating the house.
How do you keep the rooms from overheating in the summer? Again, good design will take care of this problem. One approach is to have deciduous trees or vines shade the south side. Architecturally, summer shades can be built into the design. By simply having the eaves of the roof extend far enough beyond the sides of the house, most of the summer sun can be eliminated. This works because the sun is much higher in the sky during the summer. Another approach is to have thick walls. A 20” wall will keep out most summer sunlight. Unfortunately, there is often a lag in the heating of the seasons, so that as Fall approaches and the sun begins to lower again, the earth has absorbed much summer radiation, and it can be quite warm. So to avoid too much sunlight in the Fall, it may be necessary to shade some of the windows during the day.
To read the rest of this article go to this page at
www.greenhomebuilding.com.
Small is Beautiful
Why build and live in a small house? First of all, it is more convenient to have what you need nearby. Life proceeds smoothly when the things you need are close at hand. Also, I might point out that limited space forces you to select only those things that you really need to live with, helping to keep clutter out of your life.
Another fairly obvious point is that a smaller house costs less to build and maintain. Housing represents the greatest expense that most of us face in this life. It is common to take on huge debt to pay for a house, which multiplies the cost even further, and places us in a kind of servitude to both the creditors and the house. Rob Roy, in his book “Mortgage Free!,” points out that the word mortgage comes from old French, and means “death pledge.” In it he describes many ways to build without debt. If you are able to own your house free and clear, all those years of your life that would have gone into paying off the debt can be utilized to positively affect your life and the world.
Obviously, the smaller the house, the fewer resources are consumed in creating it. Since the use of many building materials has a negative impact on our environment, keeping it small lessens the impact. Then there is the environmental cost of heating and cooling a house to consider. The smaller the house, the less this cost will be. Burning fossil fuels, either directly (such as propane heating) or indirectly (such as heating or cooling electrically), consumes these finite resources and contributes to carbon dioxide pollution. It is much easier and more effective to design a solar heated house that is small.
Another impact to consider is aesthetic. Does the house fit in with the landscape? A large, imposing edifice may seem out of scale with the surrounding land, whereas a small abode is more likely to fit in nicely.
To illustrate some of these concepts, Suzanne Frazier has graciously allowed me to use her home as a model “small house.” Built in 1994 by “Cut No Slack” construction of Salida, Colorado, Suzanne's house is more or less conventional in materials used (wood framed, etc.). She wanted it to conform to the Uniform Building Code so that she would be sure of its integrity as a house over time.
To read the rest of this article please visit this page at www.greenhomebuilding.com.
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