The Oil Drum

15 comments on Solar House competition

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GreyZone on October 13, 2005 - 11:13am

Oddly enough, solar powered homes don't have to be "cramped" at all really. Too many people fail to study the efficiencies and gains made in earth sheltered housing built with concrete and steel instead of wood framing. Such homes can even be made completely passive for heating and cooling, taking advantage of the underground mass. And therein lies an interesting observation - well designed passively heated/cooled solar powered homes can actually be more efficient by being somewhat larger than smaller by exploiting more underground surface area to use for storing and extracting heat. When you couple earth sheltered or earth bermed housing with solar electrical production, you can have a very comfortable home. And properly designed, you even get plenty of sunlight along the south face.

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DuncanK on October 13, 2005 - 3:55pm

In fact the walls of my favourite type of house - Straw bale - have an insulation 'R' value of up to 20, compared to an 'R' value of about 2 for conventional timber-framed houses.

Straw-balw houses also have a very aesthetic look about them.

And they are not just for hot climes, either. At the very bottom of the South Island here in NZ, a company has done very well building some beautiful straw-bale homes that withstand several feet of snow each year.

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markincalgary on October 13, 2005 - 4:15pm

One doesn't necessarily have to go to a earth-sheltered home to get those benefits. A good example is 'The Passive Solar House', by James Kachadorian. (A good book, that desperately needs to be updated.)

Also, typical strawbale construction also includes a fairly massive heat-sink, partly in the plaster on the interior of the walls but mostly in the foundation and perhaps the ground below and around the foundation.

Most of the green building crowd is pretty down on concrete and steel because of the high embodied energies of these materials, never mind their abyssmal insulative qualities.

The jury is still out on which building method is the greenest. There are very opinionated camps in support of almost every method.