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

[spystyle]

Hello from Maine,

I am thinking of designing a funky passive solar home but I don't know anything about architecture.

I've got some data here :

http://www.greenbuildingtalk.com/Forums/tabid/53/forumid/14/postid/74546/view/topic/Default.aspx

In 1978 the US department of agriculture released plans for A-Frame cabins, they are really funky-cool. I was thinking of designing a small one with two bedrooms, and making it super insulated like "PassivHaus" and making it "passive solar" with "thermal mass" and "south facing windows".

The challenge is living in icy cold Maine, it gets terribly cold here in winter, with lots of snow, and very got in summer.  

Also architects won't talk to me when they discover I am trying to design this on a shoe-string budget.

So I haven't found a good forum to discuss this stuff...

Do any of you guys live in passive solar homes? Or are architects that have an interest in designing one?

Thanks
Craig

[RayB]

As a cottage, or a home? Cuz people laugh at those houses when they drive by. ;-)

[spystyle]

Well I was thinking of a home that is small but livable, like a two bedroom apartment.

Technically it is a cabin design, but I'm planning it as a small country home.

And who would laugh at an A-Frame? They are funky cool !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Frame_house

http://www.andrewgeller.net/bio.html

http://tinyurl.com/yzkg3lf

It's a smart design in many ways, especially for places that get a lot of snow.

And it's as retro cool as an Atari 2600

You should see the other crazy designs by it's inventor Andrew Geller :

[spystyle]

And check out how funky this 1977 passive solar house is :



It's the "Saskatchewan Conservation House"

http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/energy-efficient_houses.html

That really looks like an Atari 2600 :

[drventure]

That's great! I love that style of architecture.

I've really been interested in Monolithic domes, one big company in the biz is pretty close by

http://www.monolithic.com/

My main problem with them is VERY few people actually finish them out nicely. Seems like they all just leave the airform on and it ends up looking like crap.



I mean, that's a photo of the MODEL homes this company has! Yikes!

There are a +few+ instances floating around where architects have really done them nicely, but they are few and far between.

But after reading about the benefits, they sure sound good.

And what's really weird is from the outside, even the big ones look positively tiny.

But, you go inside, and even the smallest ones seem HUGE. Very odd illusion with those things...

[SavannahLion]

I grew up in an A-frame (I have photos, I'll have to look for them) which was a sister to a matching A-frame which we tore down in the past two years (much to my disappointment). The one I grew up is up on the market now (again to my major disappoinment).

As a cottage, or a home? Cuz people laugh at those houses when they drive by. ;-)

While those of us inside laughed at you guys struggling to get home in a storm and the highway closed. 

Contrary to popular belief, they can be larger than they appear. Some A-frames have multiple stories dug into the Earth creating below ground floors (or even pseudo basements). The A-frame I grew up in sported three stories, a sub basement and three sub-basements. From the front, it appeared as a tiny two story A-frame.

One A-frame design I saw sported two A-frames side by side on top of a house "foundation" and a linking deck. In the summer, the house appeared as it was, a large home with a rooftop deck and two paired A-frames. In the winter, the snow would hide the lower floors giving the appearance of two separate homes in the snow.

There's an A-frame in Tahoe that appears as a small A-frame from the street, but actually extends down the mountain and turns into a sprawling home overlooking the lake. Never been inside so I have no idea how much floor space it sports.

spystyle, if you really want to get an A-frame, I suggest renting one for a month or so and seeing how it's like. The A-frame I lived in had obscenely steep roof so we would never have to shovel snow off the roof. Unfortunately, this made for steeper than usual stairs (some A-frames use a ladder instead of stairs for this reason).

I'd say about 1/2 the A-frames I've examined don't have doors to most of the rooms. Either because of open floor plans or otherwise. This makes heating and cooling a ---smurfette--- since all the heat rises to the top. 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.

On the floors with the roof as walls, you'll find you'll lose a lot of floor space with the furniture. Some people might read that last sentence and say, "yeah, no ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- dumbass." But they're not getting it. In a typical house, you can shove the furniture against the walls. You can't do that in an A-frame because you'll lose additional space between the wall and furniture. Some people arrange their furniture towards the center of the floor plan if the floor plan allowed it. My A-frame did not allow central furniture arrangements. A severe oversight I guess.

The house I lived in has South facing windows. Massive 2.5 story jobs exposing nearly every square inch on the south facing wall. It does the job well enough I guess. In general, it sucked ass since this area was the only place my parents would put the TV so there was a lot of glare during the day time. Curtains/blinds/whatever were a near impossibility due to the roof/wall line and the cheapness of my dad.

[SavannahLion]

Also architects won't talk to me when they discover I am trying to design this on a shoe-string budget.

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

[protokatie]

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 tho. For one the whole south of the first floor  and half of each west/east side where glass (with sliding glass doors as the main entrance). That section of the house had earthen tile floors (to trap sunheat). 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 cold after everyone went to bed). The bedrooms where 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.

[Blanka]

I'm an architect, and I'm much into energy saving measures, but I really don't like designing a place like it's a passive house. A house should be designed as a functional house first. With good insulation, enough flat roof to accommodate installations, any house can be made passive. The only thing I do is use the orientation for window positions.

[spystyle]

Well thanks for all the responses fellas I am trying to learn architecture crash-course style and it's tricky. I think in about a year I'll have a sum of bucks to buy some land in the country and build a little country home. I'd like it to be passive solar.

Here in Maine it gets very cold. Homeowners spend like $1000 to $2500 and more every winter just to keep their houses warm, then many spend a lot on air conditioning every summer to keep it cool. All the while we are burning oil and coal and money. With a passive solar house it is much more efficient.

At the time of our last energy crisis a lot of people tried to design smarter houses and smarter cars - yet here we are in the exact same situation, another energy crisis! WTF !!! In Canada in 1977 engineers built a house that used 80% less energy, and Canada is cold too! Check it out :

http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/energy-efficient_houses.html

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/forgotten-pioneers-energy-efficiency

That house was the basis for the German PassivHaus :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house

I was just talking with a mother-of-four last year, living here in Maine, who said she and many of her friends were having trouble paying their oil bills to keep their houses warm. It's a real problem that hits homeowners hard. But if their houses were designed with energy in mind they might not be in such a predicament.

Those people would benefit from a retrofit :
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/green-basics/remodel-project-deep-energy-retrofit

It's unfortunate our government doesn't subsidize that.

We import oil from the unstable middle east. It's a dirty and finite resource. I don't want to build a house that needs 20 barrels of oil per year to stay comfortable. I'd like to build a house that works with nature rather than against it.

So I liked the idea of an EarthShip at first :

http://www.earthship.net/buildings/global-model.html

But many, including David Wright AIA, feel they are toxic on account of tires in the walls.

... I visited the headquarters in New Mexico last
year.  The whole concept sucks as developed by Reynolds.  The idea is ok but
needs to be updated and cleaned up, especially the use of toxic tires.

Cheers,
David Wright, AIA

His homepage :
http://www.davidwrightaia.com/

His book :
http://www.amazon.com/Passive-Solar-Primer-Sustainable-Architecture/dp/0764330705

So I don't anticipate having lots of bucks, I'd like to build a house that is about $25,000 - It doesn't have to be so big, like a 2 bedroom apartment, small but comfortable. But I don't know if that number is realistic. To make up for it's small size I could build a big barn next to it, or some other unheated structure if we wanted room to stretch out and have a workshop and such.

Because I anticipate having low bucks I was Googling for cheap house designs and came upon the A-frame :

An unmodified A-frame is without doubt the most cost-effective structure imaginable. Wood-frame with metal roofing, fiberglass insulation and wallboard inside - it just doesn't get much cheaper for finished space.

Of course, you'll only have windows on the ends unless you use skylights, which aren't cheap - at least for good quality ones that last. Even so, it is the cheapest structure for labor and materials.  

That text is from here :
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/homest/msg0918514831754.html

At first I thought A-frame's were completely wacky, but as I looked them up more they really started to grow on me. My daughter immediately liked them.

Then I asked at "Green Building talk" forum and a smart guy over there found the shape agreeable for passive solar :

http://tinyurl.com/yhjuqje

So it was settled then : a funky A-frame that is passive solar

The A-Frame was designed in the 1957 by Andrew Geller. In 1978 the US department of agriculture released plans for cabins and vacation homes and one was an A-frame cabin :

http://www.amazon.com/Vacation-Homes-Cabins-Dept-Agriculture/dp/0486236315

My fuzzy plan so far is to use that 1978 plan but modify it to be super passive solar

[Blanka]

No matter what you plan to do, invest at least in the latest insulation. 5W/m2K is possible in 8cm today, for example with Kingspan Kooltherm. Ridiculous high isolation, much thinner than old fashioned rockwool or fiber-glass cloth.

[spystyle]

No matter what you plan to do, invest at least in the latest insulation. 5W/m2K is possible in 8cm today, for example with Kingspan Kooltherm. Ridiculous high isolation, much thinner than old fashioned rockwool or fiber-glass cloth.

Thanks for your input Blanka

I am not very concerned about wall thickness - unless you think I should be.

What do you think the least expensive way to reach an R-value of 80 or 100 is?

I wonder how much it would cost in Kingspan Kooltherm to make a small A-frame house super insulated?



I hear good things about that spray in cellulose used in the deep energy retro fits :



Thanks,
Craig

[SavannahLion]

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 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.

[drventure]

That one pic above doesn't look like spray in cellulose. Looks more like expanding polysterene foam, which is good stuff, but god awful messy to install, and it sticks like heck to EVERYTHING!

[ideft]

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.

[spystyle]

That's great! I love that style of architecture...

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

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

I grew up in an A-frame (I have photos, I'll have to look for them) ...

No kidding, a test subject Fantastic! And I'd like to see the photos too

...Some A-frames have multiple stories dug into the Earth...

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...

...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...

That is very interesting to note!

...On the floors with the roof as walls, you'll find you'll lose a lot of floor space with the furniture...

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

Also architects won't talk to me when they discover I am trying to design this on a shoe-string budget.

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

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.

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...

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.

...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)...

I think they call that "thermal mass"

...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)...

That's very interesting! A wood stove with thermal mass

...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.

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

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.

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

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.

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]

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?

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]

I hear good things about that spray in cellulose used in the deep energy retro fits :

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.

[Blanka]

Geothermal heating is not a thing to go for on a 1-house scale. Those instalations are perfect for 10-50 houses, but with 1 house, the expenses on maintenance and the efficiency are much worse than in large scale projects.
What works best to achieve low energy bills and low installation costs here is a combination of this:

-High insulation on both walls and windows (HR++ glass)
-Solar screens outside the windows for summer situations.
-CO2 sensor demand based ventilation or collecting heat from exhaust air and feeding it into the water heating system (not into the intake air for pollution risks).
-Solar heating of water with a storage tank for basic heating.
-A concrete wood-stove that can connect to a central heating system.
-Low temperature water heating (40-50 degrees C) with low capacity radiators (search JAGA Strada radiators) and floor heating (even possible in a concrete layer on a wooden frame for good thermal mass).
-Natural gas combined tap/low temperature heating for peak situations. Netherlands is bad in environmental building, but we make the best natural gas heaters in the world. Have one flew over if you have natural gas in the street! 105% efficiency (even the electricity for the fans is converted to heat). 500m3 gas/year for heating and tap water is enough with the insulation techniques described here, 200m3 if you also use the wood stove and solar panels. They also have a version with a intergated generator that keeps your house going in case of a power outing! Gas supply never fails here!

[spystyle]

Thanks for the write-up Blanka, I'll have a lot of words to Google and check out.

I need a crash-course in architecture, or friends that are bored architects

If you get bored and would like to scribble out a quick sketch of what you think would be a good passive solar A-frame, I'd like to see it

I studied photography for a year and can tell you a great photography crash-course : The book "Understanding exposure" by Brian Peterson coupled with a "Pentax K1000" camera (or similar manual camera*)  and you've got yourself a great crash-course that is very affordable. After that you can add the book "Complete book of Photography" by Kodak and switch to just about any camera or keep using the manual one. All that would cost less than $100 and you'd have a great crash course in photography.

I wonder if there is a similar quick and affordable way to learn architecture?

I must learn architecture But I have no time or money for school   I'll need to know a good book or two.

Have fun!
Craig

*Manual cameras force you to learn quickly because you have to think about shutter speed and aperture from the word go.

[protokatie]

Well you asked for some drawings so here they are, in their crap-tastic MSpaint form!







One extra thing to note that isnt in the drawings is that the house was on the side of a hill with the south side facing the bottom, also there was a huge porch out front (south) to reflect light back at the house.

[spystyle]

Bravo!

MS paint drawings have such character

And it's very informative

[spystyle]

That's great! I love that style of architecture.

I've really been interested in Monolithic domes, one big company in the biz is pretty close by

http://www.monolithic.com/

...

Hey I looked closely at dome homes :



http://www.monolithic.com/stories/free-forever-safe-serene/photos#10

They seem like the ideal housing for America's "tornado belt" and similar. They look like they'd resistant just about anything. It's kind of like a bunker!

I think with the right kind of doors those could be used as above ground fallout shelters

Here in Maine hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes are the stuff of TV shows - we have to deal with freezing cold winters and humid hot summers, but no disasters (yet).

So I don't think a concrete dome is the solution for Maine. But they are well insulated (R-60 equivalent) and fire-proof. That's nice.

I'm still thinking of the best shape for a passive solar home, I'm thinking of something like a "half-bean" - the north side aerodynamic to deflect wind and the south side flat and glazed to collect heat from the sun. 

I still need a crash-course in architecture, or to make friends with bored architects

Cheers,
Craig

[spystyle]

Joking for sure, that dome is Tonka tuff

On the topic of me needing to learn green architecture : I sent out a few e-mails asking for advice on where to start, and here is one reply I got that looks good:

There is a lot of information at greenbuildingadvisor.com that is free. There’s also some that is paid.

For articles on building green, begin in the Green primer (http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/primer)

Go a little deeper in the encyclopedia section: http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/green-basics#green-basics-encyclo

And move down to articles like Building Lot Overview: http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/green-basics/building-lot-overview  and Sun: Passive Solar and Daylighting: http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/green-basics/sun-passive-heating-and-daylighting-0

If you still have questions, jump in to the Q&A forum, the people there are pretty friendly and inclusive.

The worst reply I got so far was :

Your best bet is to be working with an architect that designs to that standard

Really ? I have architecture questions and I should speak to an architect? Such good advice! I was planning on talking to a dentist about it but now that I am armed with your wisdom I will surely prevail!

(that was sarcasm)

Anyway, I just thought I'd share those links for anyone interested in reading about that stuff. I also have the following books and I like them a lot :

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Limited-Planet-Norma-Skurka/dp/0345252411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264610666&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Beach-Houses-Andrew-Alastair-Gordon/dp/1568983212/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264610544&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Passive-Solar-Primer-Sustainable-Architecture/dp/0764330705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264610793&sr=1-1-spell

The first one, "Design for a limited planet", is really amazing - it's like a tour of a bunch of cool retro passive solar homes from 1977, it's is packed with photos and the words are really compelling. I recommend it.

[SNAAKE]

interesting thread

[danny_galaga]

Shame they didn't use stainless steel rebar in that thing.  As soon as those bars start rusting, that entire thing will start crumbling.

Pretty much any concrete structure uses plain steel reo  Stainless is a very expensive building material.

Even the Hoover dam. The alkaline nature of the concrete actualy inhibits rust for a very long time. Eventually of course, rust wins out. The rust expands, the concrete cracks, the Hoover Dam bursts...

[protokatie]

Shame they didn't use stainless steel rebar in that thing.  As soon as those bars start rusting, that entire thing will start crumbling.

Pretty much any concrete structure uses plain steel reo  Stainless is a very expensive building material.

Even the Hoover dam. The alkaline nature of the concrete actualy inhibits rust for a very long time. Eventually of course, rust wins out. The rust expands, the concrete cracks, the Hoover Dam bursts...

I see I am not the only one who watched "Life After People", you could have atleast tried to hide it and pick some other random large re-enforced concrete structure. 

[danny_galaga]

Shame they didn't use stainless steel rebar in that thing.  As soon as those bars start rusting, that entire thing will start crumbling.

Pretty much any concrete structure uses plain steel reo  Stainless is a very expensive building material.

Even the Hoover dam. The alkaline nature of the concrete actualy inhibits rust for a very long time. Eventually of course, rust wins out. The rust expands, the concrete cracks, the Hoover Dam bursts...

I see I am not the only one who watched "Life After People", you could have atleast tried to hide it and pick some other random large re-enforced concrete structure. 

HA! True dat. Good doco, wasn't it? I don't remember if they talked about the dam bursting or not. The bit about using plain steel is common knowledge. Anytime you see concreters working on a building site, you see mild steel reo being used. Normally already rusty too...

[Blanka]

Eventually of course, rust wins out. The rust expands, the concrete cracks, the Hoover Dam bursts...

That's why we design concrete shapes with a minimum of concrete coverage. With good cement and good coverage, the steel stays nice for hundreds of years.
Fun experiment: take a bar of reenforcement steel that is rusted, and dip it in fresh cement for a while. Then rinse of the concrete. Nice blank steel again!

[danny_galaga]

Well, I've seen 300 year old cement buildings that are still in use today, and 30 year old cement buildings exploding.  The only difference is the rebar inside the cement.

A good earthquake will sort those pre- reinforced concrete buildings right out 

[spystyle]

Hey I just found a free book online about passive solar homes, it looks pretty cool

Pics :

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SolarHomes/PasSolEnergyBk/PhotoSection.htm

Book :

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SolarHomes/PasSolEnergyBk/PSEbook.htm

I really dig this one :