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Is anyone living in a passive solar home? Or is an architect?

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spystyle:

--- Quote from: drventure on January 22, 2010, 11:08:48 pm ---That's great! I love that style of architecture...

I've really been interested in Monolithic domes...

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Monolithic homes? I'll have to check that out :) Now that is funky!


--- Quote from: SavannahLion on January 23, 2010, 02:34:31 am ---I grew up in an A-frame (I have photos, I'll have to look for them) ...
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No kidding, a test subject :) Fantastic! And I'd like to see the photos too :)


--- Quote from: SavannahLion on January 23, 2010, 02:34:31 am ---...Some A-frames have multiple stories dug into the Earth...
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Having had my first workshop in a leaky New England basement, I am actually boycotting basements for the rest of my life :) I'll never have one and I'll never miss subterranean rooms... with the water and the mold and the sub-pumps and the spiders and the smell...


--- Quote from: SavannahLion on January 23, 2010, 02:34:31 am ---...I spent many a sweltering winter sleeping in shorts in my loft room because my dad was too much of a cheap ass to install a fan to push the hot air back down...
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That is very interesting to note!


--- Quote from: SavannahLion on January 23, 2010, 02:34:31 am ---...On the floors with the roof as walls, you'll find you'll lose a lot of floor space with the furniture...
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That is an excellent point, and I've seen it "remedied" by installing half-height straight walls like this :



Pic came from here :
http://www.alwaysonvacation.com/vacation-rentals/341316.html?t=CGL

There would be a lot of space lost if those were truly just walls, but I think what if it was a storage space like big cupboards, also wires and pipes could route behind there but be accessible for maintenance or whatever. I think that problem can become a wonderful storage solution :)


--- Quote from: SavannahLion on January 23, 2010, 02:35:39 am ---
--- Quote from: spystyle on January 22, 2010, 07:39:19 pm ---Also architects won't talk to me when they discover I am trying to design this on a shoe-string budget.

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That's interesting since, if I recall my history, A-frames were specifically designed to be built on a shoe-string budget.

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The architects I first talked to were SUPER nice to me, they thought I was a rich guy who just wanted a cabin built - when they found out I was looking at cabin plans to use as a shoestring budget home they completely lost interest.


--- Quote from: protokatie on January 23, 2010, 02:57:11 am ---I am from Maine, and as a teen I lived in a solar house. it wasn't an A-frame tho. It had a cool design though...
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Hello from Maine :) I see you escaped, I am still stuck here. I'd love to see pics of the passive solar home you grew up in.


--- Quote from: protokatie on January 23, 2010, 02:57:11 am ---...the whole south of the first floor and half of each west/east side were glass (with sliding glass doors as the main entrance). That section of the house had earthen tile floors (to trap sunheat)...
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I think they call that "thermal mass"


--- Quote from: protokatie on January 23, 2010, 02:57:11 am ---...Before sunset the glass walls would be covered in very heavy curtains. The primary winter heat for the place was a central wood stove with the chimney encased in a massive rough granite chimney (so that the rocks would get heated and keep the place warm after everyone went to bed)...
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That's very interesting! A wood stove with thermal mass :)


--- Quote from: protokatie on January 23, 2010, 02:57:11 am ---...The bedrooms were upstairs with only a small grate in each room to let the heat from the 1st floor up. Basically it had three rooms (2 bedrooms upstairs, and one big room that was "divided" by the granite chimney heatsink) and a small bathroom.
Each bedroom had large skylights that could be opened in the summer for cooling.
Nicest and most "spacious" place I have ever lived in. So there are more options than A-frames.

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That's very interesting. I'd like to know all about that place and see the drawings for it :)


--- Quote from: SavannahLion on January 23, 2010, 02:23:46 pm ---The A-frane I grew up in was spec'ed for 8" thick walls. Plenty of space to pack in insulation, especially with modern insulation materials.

Technically a well designed passive solar home should never require any sort of additional heat, but if don't get any sun, you might as well live in an icebox. Plan on installing a supplemental heat source at least.

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In Maine the weather can be deadly. I'd certainly design the house to have at least 3 ways to keep it warm.


--- Quote from: ideft on January 23, 2010, 07:03:27 pm ---The spray foam is a good insulator and is air tight, but is crappy at insulating sound because of the density of it.  Just something to consider if you live by a noisy road and don't want to hear every car drive by.  In one house that I worked on they did the whole house like that and the expanding of the foam kicked the window frames, and therefore twisted alot of the windows out of level.  It even put so much pressure on the windows that some of them cracked.  Also it costs more then regular insulation.  One way I have seen it done around here is to have a higher R value on the inside and then put 2" pink board on the exterior walls to give it some more R value.

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Interesting :)

Thanks all for the replies, this has been very informative :)

Have fun!
Craig

spystyle:
By the power of Google I found a bunch of free plans in PDF :

http://woodworkersworkshop.blogspot.com/2008_06_15_archive.html

I looked at an A-Frame cabin and a dingy boat :)

You guys might like something on that page?

DrumAnBass:
Ever considered using geothermal heating? I don't know much about it, other than that a former coworker of mine designed and built his own house and used it: http://robertsuess.com/index.html

Also check out: http://ourcoolhouse.com/

AtomSmasher:

--- Quote from: spystyle on January 23, 2010, 09:46:55 pm ---By the power of Google I found a bunch of free plans in PDF :

http://woodworkersworkshop.blogspot.com/2008_06_15_archive.html

I looked at an A-Frame cabin and a dingy boat :)

You guys might like something on that page?

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Heh, I like how that site goes immediately from plans to make a birdhouse to plans to build a 3 bedroom home with a garage.

Blanka:

--- Quote from: spystyle on January 23, 2010, 12:44:30 pm ---I hear good things about that spray in cellulose used in the deep energy retro fits :
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Techniques like that have a very bad side effect. Today separation of materials at the end-of-life is a thing that becomes more and more important for achieving environmental goals. Spray-insulation and composite-materials are very bad to separate.
Another problem with these techniques is that humidity problems can occur more easily.

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