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50 comments on This Old Green Building

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wimbi on July 1, 2006 - 6:19pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Wow! That's ten times as much as I use in my 1800 sq. ft house in pretty cold weather.  An old farmhouse that we redid from the inside with moderate amounts of insulation (that was 30 yrs ago) about 6 inches of fiberglass in walls and 18 inches in attic.  Now I wish I had put in that big water wall I was thinking about- but the wife was afraid of a deluge if we should happen to get a near miss from an H bomb or something.  After all, you can't be too cautious when it comes to home security, right?

Thermal storage is great for any time of year, but especially when the wood stove is roaring away and tending to overheat things.

Old buildings can be done over green.  Look at the Friends Committee on National Legislation (fcnl.org). bldg right across the street from the senate office building in DC.  They did a great job, but spent some big gobs of money, some of it mine, to do it.  Now I am hoping those senators will take a look when they are not dodging all those terrorists behind the lamp posts.

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AlanfromBigEasy on July 1, 2006 - 6:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thermal storage is great for any time of year

Situations differ.  Why keep an unoccupied room comfortable ?  Sure, enough to not freeze the pipes, but beyond that ?

I come in, turn on my window a/c (SEER 11 heat pump), strip quickly, perhaps take a quick "unheated" water shower (my NG is off and will stay off till October) and it is acceptable within a few minutes close to the a/c.  I keep the door closed to the front room so as not cool it.

More thermal mass just slows the process and keeps me uncomfortable longer.  And the temperature delta between inside & out shrinks when I am away with low internal thermal mass.

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Engineer-Poet on July 1, 2006 - 10:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"Unheated" water in Austin, TX is blood-warm in July and August.

That's only true of environs so far south (and with very shallow water mains), though.  And if you were cooling by e.g. passively radiating heat to the sky at night, thermal mass would be the only way you could enjoy the benefits during the day.

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wimbi on July 2, 2006 - 10:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Right, that's what I do.  use the fairly cool night to get my house down with an attic fan, then shut everything tight during the day, and use a little personal fan if needed.  Works great, and people think we have AC, which we never did.  But sure Alan.  In NO, that wouldn't work  As I remember, just hot and sticky ALL  the time.  So  I understood my thermo prof when he talked about heat death!  Been there.

But there are places in the US where the daily temp goes up and down like a yo-yo, and thermal mass can be used to great effect if you have the equivalent of a Maxwell demon working the in and out valves.  fortunately, yu can buy maxwell demons at radio shack these days.

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AlanfromBigEasy on July 2, 2006 - 10:18am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The low this morning, just before dawn, was 81 F (27 C) with a dew point of 76 F (24 C).  This is slightly cooler than average for this time of the year.

Not much overnight cooling !

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50 comments on This Old Green Building

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