Shades of Greyn

PV Panels

2006-09-24T14:22:00.000+02:00

The PV panels are located between the house and tower some ten meters from the tower. They are wired to produce 24VDC at 480W peak. The wires run from the PV panels down into the ground and through safety tubing to the house. The wind generator and PV panel wiring was buried together in the same 70 cm deep ditch. The PV panels are grounded. The PV panels are relatively low to the ground and have a small number of trees behind them both of which help to protect against damage from high winds. The panels are mounted on a passive solar tracker, which means it uses no electricity or electrical components to follow the sun. This tracker uses dual long thin black canisters of pressurized gas that are located at the left and right of the PV panels and are interconnected at their bottoms with a thin metal tube. The differential heating of the panels through solar radiation causes one side canister's gas to get hotter than the other and the gas expands in this one. As it expands some of this gas is pushed into the other canister, causing one to get lighter as gas leaves and the other to get heavier as the gas enters. When the panels face directly into the sun, there is even heating of both canisters and therefore both canisters remain at the same weight and remain in balance. This passive tracker has wind shock absorbers to stabilize the panels under high wind conditions. The concrete foundation was made in the same way as the wind generator foundation.

Wind Generator

2006-09-23T14:14:00.000+02:00

The wind generator is located about 30 meters to the southwest of the house. The tower is a galvanized steel electrical tower with a large, thick two meter long steel tube welded to the top. The wind generator is bolted to the top interior of this tube. Total tower height is about 14 meters. Electrical wiring runs from the wind generator down into the ground and through safety tubing 70 cm underground to the house. A large hole was dug for the foundation of the tower. The hole was dug excessively large by the machine. I filled old biodegradeable shopping bags that I had stored with dirt and lined the sides of the hole with them to steady the dirt walls and reduce the size of the concrete foundation. I collected many large rocks from the surrounding area which I used for the foundation. As I slowly filled the hole with concrete I threw in these large rocks. I also threw in old concrete and brick construction waste pieces left over from the house construction. For the concrete I used old stored glass jars which I broke into small piece. These I used along with gravel as the aggregate for the concrete. The tower is earthed to a copper ground rod. The wind generator produces 24VDC electricity. High wind speed protection is accomplished through the wind generator's unique, reliable and automatic autofurl design.

Renewable Electrical System Overview

2006-09-22T14:07:00.000+02:00

The diagram above is a schematic representation of my renewable energy electrical system. The two main sources of electrical energy production are a wind generator rated at 1000 watts of electrical energy production at a wind speed of 28 mph mounted on a 14 meter freestanding tower and four 120 watt photovoltaic panels mounted on a passive solar tracker. A set of eight large renewable energy lead-acid batteries store excess energy production for use in times of excess consumption. A power center regulates the flow of energy into the batteries and dump load from the wind generator and PV panels. Appropriate safety disconnects are placed between the batteries and the inverter and converter; these are located within a DC source center which is simply a box connecting up the power center, batteries, inverter and converter. A converter transforms the 24VDC electrical energy into 12VDC, and an inverter transforms DC electricity into AC. AC and DC safety distribution panels transfer the electricity to the house wiring. A small gasoline generator provides backup energy in case of extended low wind and solar energy production periods.

Future Sunroom

2006-09-21T23:58:00.000+02:00

I have already posted this article once before. I am reposting it because it will be one of the key house heating systems in future and want this information to also be within the context of my description of the home's complete space heating system.

I plan to build a sunroom that will cover the entire south wall surface of the house. This sunroom will have a number of important functions. The primary ones being solar heat capture and added insulaiton. The sunroom will act as a greenhouse that traps solar radiation thereby heating the interior air of the sunroom during sunny days to relatively high temperatures. On such days the doors and windows can be opened to allow this hot air into the home. The hot air flowing into the room will cause negative pressure in the sunroom that will suck in cooler floor-level air from inside the house. This creates a circular thermosiphon effect where hot air goes into the home through the top half of the open doors and cold air from the house goes into the sunroom through the bottom half. Considering the size of the glass space and the relatively limited enclosed volume of the sunroom (which will only be two meters wide), on a sunny day this sunroom can provide the house with a substantial amount of extra solar heat. To ensure maximum solar radiation penetration, the sunroom will be single-paned and will use normal glass. The wood structure will be as thin as possible to block as little solar radiation as possible. And the inclined glass roof will be as steep as practical to ensure the least radiation reflection in winter. The floors will be made of white concrete; this will help absorb excess air temperatures to ensure against overheating while the white color keeps most of the solar radiation heating the air rather than the concrete. This stored heat will then be released during the night, helping to moderate nighttime sunroom temperatures.

The sunroom will act as insulation in several ways. The relatively dead air space created by the air-tight sunroom's enclosed volume provides increased conductive heat resistance to the south wall and windows of the house. I am considering lining the interior of the sunroom's glass with low-e film to reduce radiative heat losses (any comments as to the practicality and wisdom of doing this would be highly appreciated). The thermal mass within the sunroom helps moderate the sunroom's nighttime temperature, thereby helping further reduce conductive heat losses. And the sunroom will act as air-lock entry for my two entrances. This ensures less heat and cool is lost whenever I enter or exit these entrances.

This sunroom will also help cool the interior of the house. The very top of the sunroom will not be made of glass but rather of wood and PV panels. This will create a 'roof overhang' that will block summer solar radiation from entering through the south house windows. Also I plan to incorporate special exterior roll-down shadecloth curtains to help further block solar radiation heating any of the south wall's surface. I am also planning on adding cool tubes to the house for summer cooling. I plan to combine this with a solar chimney, and the sunroom would act as the solar chimney. Placing vent windows at the very top corners of the sunroom and leaving them open in summer would cause hot air to rise up and out of the sunroom. This air would be replaced by air from within the house through open doors and windows on the south wall. The negative pressure created within the house would help to suck air through the cool tubes into the home, thereby providing cool fresh replacement air during the hottest times of the day. Whether I implement this cool tubes-solar chimney combination will depend on the hottest summer interior temperatures reached once the house is completely finished.

The sunroon will also act as an outdoor living room. It will provide a convenient place for solar cooking. It will be an ideal location for storing a large quantity of split firewood (all the way at the east side). It will also be ideal for our house dog (better he shed fur in the sunroom than in the house). We will also use it for some solar drying activitites and possibly for some small gardening tasks like sprouting seeds and growing some herbs. And no doubt as time passes I will find many more uses for it and think of possible modifications to help reduce resource use of one form or other.

The structure of the sunroom will be made of wood and glass with concrete tile and brick floors. As mentioned the concrete tiles and bricks will be white for the reasons already mentioned but also to reflect more radiation onto the south walls (which in future will have mounted solar thermal water heating panels for an active solar space heating system) and into the south wall windows for extra solar radiation and daylighting. The glass will be single-paned with possibly a low-e film. The supporting structure will be made of wood treated with white protective paint. I do not like the use of wood for reasons mentioned in previous posts. It requires a lot of maintenance to last a reasonable amount of time. But I feel it is the only practical choice I have. Since I plan to build the sunroom myself, and I know how to work and design with wood, it is what I am left with. I don't want to make a massive masonry structure that would block a lot of light and have unnecessarily high embodied energy. And I don't want to use metal since it is such a powerful heat conductor; plus the fact that I do not know how to weld at this scale and would require a lot of energy to do so. As for PVC, it would be ideal, but, as mentioned earlier, I am trying to now avoid this product where possible on the recommendations of Greenpeace - not to mention that I would need to learn how to build with it (but this is a minor consideration). So for now I plan to use wood unless some better alternative suggests itself before its construction.

Future Active Solar Space Heating System

2006-09-21T23:57:00.000+02:00

In future, sometime after having finished the sunroom, I intend to install an active solar thermal space heating system. This system will be composed of solar thermal water heating panels, specially designed and made radiant baseboard heaters filled with PCM thermal mass, distribution piping, and a direct PV/DC pump setup. This system will be installed to enable me to eliminate my current use during a number of weeks of the winter of my paraffin heaters and its petroleum-distilled paraffin liquid fuel.

I will make special solar thermal water heating panels to cover much of the south wall exterior surface. These panels will basically be coils of copper (or aluminum) piping with aluminum fins, both painted black, which will better absorb and conduct this heat to the antifreeze liquid in the piping. This piping with attached fins will be enclosed in thin insulated box panels. These box panels will probably be made of wood for its exterior with special interior rigid foam board insulation with interior-facing surface radiant foils. The top of the panel will be glass to allow solar radiation to penetrate and strike the piping. The box will be properly sealed to make it fairly air-tight.

The solar thermal panels will transfer their heat to a water-propylene glycol mixture that acts as the heat transfer medium. The propylene glycol is added to the water to drop the water's freezing point and thereby making it very difficult for it to freeze. This heated water is pumped to the heaters in the bedrooms and bathrooms through insulated copper piping. The water will be pumped using a small hot-water DC pump that will be powered directly from a small PV panel. There will be no thermal differencial on-off switch and sensors. When there is enough sun to power the slow-pumping DC pump with the small PV panel, there will be enough sun to heat the solar thermal panels to add energy to the PCM contained within the baseboard heaters. The piping system will have a one-way valve to stop any unwanted reverse flow of heat to the outside at night or during cloudy days.

I will design and make special baseboard radiant heaters filled with PCM thermal mass (unless a similar, affordable product is commercialized before then). These baseboard heaters will just off the floor attached to the walls. They will run the lengths of the walls and be from 10 to 20 cm wide and a few centimeters thick. These baseboard heaters will be metal enclosures filled with special PCM thermal mass in the center of which will run the copper piping with special heat-radiating fins. These fins will transfer the heat of the water in the copper piping to the PCM for storage. The PCM will absorb as much heat as given by the solar panels and then release this heat through conduction to the metal enclosure, which in turn radiates the heat to the room, when room air temperatures begin dropping. In summer, these PCM thermal mass baseboards can work in reverse to absorb heat from the hot interior air during the day and then have the heat pumped to the exterior during the cold night for night-time flushing - to make this work more efficiently, the water should not run to the solar thermal panels but rather be diverted to another set of panels or tubes specially designed for quickly releasing heat to the exterior air or ground or cold body of water.

Backup Paraffin Heaters

2006-09-21T23:54:00.000+02:00

The second backup heating system for the bedrooms is small portable paraffin heaters. These heaters use paraffin liquid fuel, also commonly known as kerosene, which is distilled from petroleum. I do not like using these and try to keep my use of them to a minimum. Besides the fact that they use a highly finite, unsustainable, non-local resource, their combustion, while relatively clean due to the paraffin heaters' burning technology, still ends up worsening interior air quality. My hope is that future house improvements, such as the addition of a sunroom, increased insulation levels, the incorporation of an active solar space heating sytem, and other smaller odds and ends, will reduce my need for these paraffin heaters to the point that they become nonessential. If these improvements fail to achieve this, then I will modify the active solar heating system and make it into a hybrid solar-biomass heating system.

For the time being, since I have to use these heaters for five to six weeks throughout the winter, I try to use them as responsibly as I can think of. This means using them efficiently and seldom. In practice this means several things. First, I have two types of paraffin heaters. One is manual and must be turned on by hand when one gets cold. The other is electric and turns itself on based on programmed parameters. The electric one is more efficient since it turns itself on and off at preset temperatures and times. This automatically ensures a certain temperature within a room without someone needing to constantly check the temperatures which would lead to inefficiencies since the heater would not be turned off as often as it should be; furthermore, it's time feature allows the heater to turn itself off after one has fallen asleep in a warm bed, allowing the temperature to drop, and then turn itself back on just before one wakes, to bring the room temperature back up. I use this electrical heater in the master bedroom-bathroom since this room is used every day and therefore leads to greater convenience and energy savings. The manual one is used in the far guest bedroom and is turned on only when in use. Another thing I do to keep paraffin consumption down is to keep the room temperatures at around 18 degrees Celcius when the rooms are occupied. And I turn the master bedroom-bathroom heater off when I am out of the house or asleep.

The paraffin liquid itself comes in 20 liter plastic bottles. Luckily, since petroleum prices have been increasing so have prices of these bottles. While this makes it more expensive for me to purchase them, it also gives me an incentive to use less and to make the improvements to my house sooner. However, since I use only five or six bottles a winter, the recent price increases of a few euros per bottle mean a total price increase of less than 25 euros, which is not a very powerful incentive. I suspect that EU governments have taken measures to ensure that fossil-fuel price increases are not fully reflected in heating fuel prices, either by putting price limits or by decreasing fuel taxes. I disagree with both of these. While I understand the need for everyone to have affordable heating, distorting prices in such a way simply encourages individuals to do the wrong thing - to continue blindly using fossil-fuels without trying to break this detrimental addiction.

Masonry Stove

2006-09-21T23:53:00.000+02:00

The wood-burning masonry stove is the main source of backup heating. It is a small 700 kg high-efficiency, ultra-clean Finnish-soapstone masonry stove designed for heating approximately 50 m2 (in my central Spain climate and for a high level of insulation). It is used to heat the main living room-kitchen-dining room area; however, when the sun is able to provide most of the necessary heating needs for all of the home, the masonry stove's additional heat is able to bring up the air temperature throughout the house the necessary degrees. Nevertheless, there are five to six weeks in the winter when my small masonry stove is not enough to cover the heating gap between the energy provided by the sun (which in cloudly periods is next to nil), dump load and waste heat, and that needed to heat the whole house.

These Finnish masonry stoves burn extremely efficiently and cleanly. A very small percentage of the wood's energy is lost up the chimney, and the gases that exit out the top of the chimney are very clean. Both of these factors are due to the design of the masonry stove. The masonry stove is designed to burn the wood at extremely hot temperatures. Ultra high burning temperatures enable the wood to be burned completely and for the gases released during burning to also be burned; these ultra-high temperatures, therefore, manage to thoroughly extract the energy stored in the wood and burn the dirty gases away - efficient, clean burning. In order to achieve these ultra-high temperatures, the wood needs to be burned quickly - the faster the wood's energy is released, the hotter the fire gets. Fires in these type of masonry stoves usually last less than an hour. The trick to getting the wood to burn fast is to feed the fire lots of oxygen because fire is a chemical reaction between carbon and oxygen, a reaction that results in heat energy being released. The more oxygen, the faster the reaction can occur and the faster the wood burns away. Furthermore, it is best to spread these large quantities of oxygen over the entire exposed surfaces of the wood - the more carbon-to-oxygen surface contact, the faster the wood burns. The masonry stove has a small door that opens to extract the ashes from the bottom of the masonry stove; on this door is a small vent slide that allows for control of oxygen levels into the burning fire. Fully opened this vent allows large quantities of air into the stove. As the air enters from below the wood (which sits on a thick steel grate through which ashes fall into a metal box below) and travels up through it, the oxygen is forced to spread uniformly throughout all the surface areas of the wood. By splitting the wood into relatively thin slices, this creates more surface area for carbon-to-oxygen reaction to take place and allows for faster, hotter burns. Moreover, hot air moving over the wood helps it to burn even faster. Since the air travels a little within the interior of the hot masonry stove before reaching up into the wood, it gets heated and therefore facilitates fast burns. The fires in these stoves are very powerful, not like the slow, tame fires in old-fashioned chimneys - they are extremely hot, large, fast-moving flames. For this reason one has to be careful when opening the steel-and-glass door and adding extra wood to the fire.

The problem with extremely hot fast burns is that the huge amounts of heat released in a short period of time would make a room get extremely hot for an hour and then be cold for the rest of the day. This is where the soapstone thermal mass comes in. Soapstone is a unique kind of stone with exceptional heat absorption and retention qualities. Soapstone is able to absorb very large quantities of heat in a very short period of time and then release that heat slowly over many hours. The soapstone therefore absorbs the vast majority of the heat put out by the fire. This heat is released over many hours (in my model it is over 12 hours, other bigger models allow for heat to be released over a 24 hour period so that only one burning a day is necessary) predominantly in the form of radiant heat but also through direct conduction to air in contact with the surface of the soapstone. In a traditional chimney, the fire is made directly under the chimney exhaust and the hot air rises straight up and out, heating very little of anything except for the air over the roof of the house. These Finnish masonry stoves avoid wasting heat like this and ensure that heat gets absorbed by the soapstone by creating up-down air channels within the mass of the soapstone. As hot air rises, and refuses to fall, the hot air gets 'trapped' and 'concentrated' in these up-down exhaust air passageways; the heat of this superhot air gets absorbed by the soapstone, raising the temperatures of the stones to very hot levels. Because these stones get so hot, the thermal mass of the soapstone is divided into two parts with a thin layer dividing them; in essence, two structures are built one within the other separated by a layer of fireproof insulation. This ensures that the exterior soapstone does not get so hot as to burn at the touch. Furthermore, the insulation helps in releasing the stored heat into the room slowly over the day. The soapstone, unfortunately, is not capable of absorbing unlimited quantities of heat energy; at some point, the increasingly hot temperatures will cause the atoms of the stones to move fast enough to create expansion, at which point the stone block cracks. This is not good for the masonry stove and needs to be avoided. For this reason there is a maximum amount of wood (based on weight) that can be burned over a 24 hour period; for my masonry stove, I am limited to about 9 kg per day - I burn six in the morning and three in the evening. If I were to burn this maximum amount every day of the heating season (which I don't), I would end up burning about 1000kg of wood.

There are a number of advantages of using masonry stoves for heating. In comparison to most other types of biomass-burning (and fossil-fuel burning) space heating devices, the wood (other types of biomass could be burned as well) is burned extremely efficiently thereby thoroughly releasing all of the wood's stored energy. This results in less wood needed. Since the released gases are also thoroughly burned, and their stored energy also released, the exhaust emissions are extremely clean and almost completely limited to CO2 - with biomass-generated CO2 not being a net contributor to global-warming IF the biomass is sustainably harvested. Because the fire lasts such a short time (from 20 minutes to 1 hour in mine, depending on quantity of wood burned - from 3 to 7kg), the amount of cold exterior air coming into the house throughout the day to replace the air consumed by the fire and up the chimney exhaust is relatively small in comparison with most other continuously burning space heaters; this results in energy-savings (less wood needed) by reducing these large infiltrations of cold air. And, as mentioned above, most traditional biomass-burning devices simply exhaust most of the heat generated straight up and out of the house in the form of hot air; most masonry stoves greately limit this loss of heat up the chimney exhaust, thereby saving more wood. Another benefit is that the complete burning of the wood generates much less ashes than most other biomass-burning devices, reducing cleanup work; I only have to empty my ash box about once a week. And the thorough burning of the gases virtually eliminates creosote buildup, which practically eliminates this cleanup maintenance task common in most other biomass-buring devices. Another benefit in relation to forced-air and air heating systems is that the heat from the soapstone is released into the room primarily in the form of radiant heat, just like that of the sun, heating objects directly as opposed to first heating the air through conduction and then the air heating the objects in the room, including humans, through further conduction. This results in greater energy-efficiency as the masonry stove can keep a person warm without needing to maintain high indoor air temperatures. Radiant heating is also said to be more comfortable than forced-air heating.

I cut my own wood. Most of my three hectares of land is forested. The land all around mine is forested. Much of the land to the north half of my property is public and unwisely unkempt and uncared-for, and the lands to the south half are abandoned private lots even more unkempt and uncared for. There are numerous dead or diseased trees on and around my property - due to fires, drought, disease, and infestations (particularly processionary moth infestations) - that need to be taken away. Many other trees need to be pruned - to cut away dead branches, to make them more capable of withstanding wild brushfires, to better withstand infestations, to grow healthier and taller, etc. There is no shortage of either dead wood or live wood that should be cut away. Actually, there is way too much. There is simply too much for me to clean up. Even though by law private land owners have a legal (and moral) responsibility to keep their properties clean of dead material, this obligation goes ignored, unfulfilled and unenforced. Public authorities also have an obligation to keep public lands clean, but they too quit this responsibility. I asked the local forest rangers last year when they planned to take away the dead trees on public land that had been burned by the forest fire of three years ago, and their response was that they would never do it because the local municipality was broke and didn't have any money for such a low priority. They told me that if I was worried about this dead, burnt wood making another fire more likely and more dangerous, then I was free to cut it away. Easier said than done. Whenever a dead pine tree falls, I try to cut most of it away, but this requires time, sweat, and patience - and I have to work with a small electric chainsaw. Anyway, I have firewood piling up all around my house. Why do I go to the trouble to mention all this? For two reasons. One, to highlight that there is a difference between responsible, sustainable harvesting of biomass that helps the environment and irresponsible, unsustainable harvesting of renewable biomass like wood. Cutting away dead and diseased trees to help the remaining trees to grow stronger and healthier and to lessen the impacts of the frequent forest fires is responsible and sustainable; cutting away perfectly good trees without this having a net positive impact on the health of the surrounding trees and forest for reasons such as illegal housing developments or golf courses - or for inappropriate firewood use - is irresponsible and unsustainable. And second, to highlight that there is an abundance of biomass out there that can be harvested in a responsible and sustainable way.

Dump Load and Waste Heat

2006-09-21T23:52:00.000+02:00

Another primary source of heating for the home is the renewable electrical system's air resistance dump load. This is not a very significant source of heating, and it is intermittent and unpredictable. The wind generator-PV panel hybrid system produces variable quantities of electrical energy throughout the day and year. I sized each - the wind generator and PV panels - so that each could provide individually on an average day practically all of the home's electrical energy needs on a low energy usage day. Because the majority of days are 'average' days for both the wind generator and PV panels, my electrical system is almost always producing significantly more electrical energy than I consume. The power center, the electrical control box that monitors the electrical energy coming from the wind generator and PVs and the battery state of charge and turns the wind generator and PVs on and off as required to prevent battery overcharging, has the option of connecting a dump load where excess energy can be diverted to and used. If this option is not used, the power center simply turns off the PVs and/or the wind generator, and that excess electricity goes completely unused. The dump load not only helps regulate excess electrical nergy flows, but it also allows that energy to be put to good use. My 24VDC 1000W resistance air heater dump load is not yet connected. I will do this soon. It will be located in the central bedroom next to its entrance door. Unfortunately, I will only be able to use this dump load for about five months out of the year; using it from mid-spring to mid-fall would cause chronic daily overheating of the interior and simply be an annoying, uncomfortable waste of electrical and heat energy.

Another small primary source of heating is waste heat. A number of things within the house produce waste heat that gets transferred to the home's interior air. There are electrical sources. These sources include the refridgerator, which pumps heat from its interior and expels it into the kitchen air. The small electrical grill oven, which leaks some heat into the kitchen during cooking. The same holds true for electric toasters, water kettles, etc. Home entertainment equipment also give off some waste heat when on. This includes televisions, DVD players, laptops, stereos, etc. The small transformer cubes that usually come with electronics are usually quite inefficient and the electrical energy losses are converted into waste heat. The electrical wiring and electrical socket connections also produce some amount of waste heat. Light bulbs do as well, including CFLs (but much less than incandescents). Another source of waste heat is from the butane gas system. Whenever the gas stove burners are lit and cooking, some of that heat goes to heating the air. The same happens when the gas demand water heater is lit. Another source is from hot water. Whenever hot water is used, for dishwashing, showers, baths, shaving, etc., part of the heat of the hot water flows to the colder surrounding room air. Another source of waste heat is living being. My wife and I put off waste heat constantly, as does my house dog. Furthermore, my wife and I frequently like to have some candles on at night, and virtually all of the energy consumed is converted directly into heat.

Direct Passive Solar Space Heating

2006-09-21T23:51:00.000+02:00

The house is designed according to passive solar design principles in order to maximize the contribution of solar radiation in meeting the home's heating energy needs. Some of the main passive solar space heating design principles (for my property's specific site variables) are establishing an air-tight, high-insulation house envelope, incorporating adequate quantities of thermal mass, elongating the house on an east-west axis and facing the long south wall directly south and then incorporating adequate glass surface area in this wall, minimizing glass area on the remaining three walls, using appropriate colors schemes, and designing a small and open house.

The first, and most important, priority (and this applies to any house that requires significant heating and/or cooling at any time of the year) is to establish an air-tight, high insulation envelope to minimize losses of heating and cooling energy. It is pointless to attempt to heat a home that is not fairly air-tight as the home's hot air simply escapes through all the cracks and crevices in the home's envelope. And it is equally pointless to try to heat a home that has no insulation, as the hot air will simply transfer its heat to the uninsulated walls and those walls will immediately transfer that gain heat energy to the outside air. The more insulation, the better. The entire envelope needs to be well-insulated - walls, floors, ceinlings, doors, windows, utility entrances, etc. As I mentioned before, my house envelope is made completely of AAC, thereby establishing a relatively high insulation level throughout. The homogenous nature of the envelope construction helps eliminate thermal bridges where heat energy could 'leak'. The windows are double-paned low-e windows with good levels of insulation. The bedroom windows have built-in roll-down insulated exterior curtains that provide increased insulation when closed. The bathroom windows are kept extra small to reduce heat losses. I specially designed and built my own insulation curtains to cover the south wall windows at night and thereby markedly increase their insulation levels. The doors are also relatively high insulation. The doors and windows were joined to the walls by means of polyurethane foam in order to insure that the joints are air-tight, well-insulated and water-proof. Holes made to the envelope for wiring, plumbing and vents are also filled with expanding polyurethane foam. The floor of the house is further insulated by the relatively dead air spaces formed by the under-house crawl spaces. And the ceiling is further insulated by use of 'Arlita' for the roof incline formation. The sunroom that I will build to the south wall will further insulate the wall, windows and doors, as well as provide an air-lock for the entrances. And I plan to eventually apply a layer of thermal radiant insulation paint to all of the house envelope's interior surfaces, except for the tiled floors. This paint should significantly improve the envelopes insulation levels.

Practically the entire envelope and interior structure of the house is some form of masonry thermal mass. The AAC envelope provides moderate levels of heat absorption and release. The concrete slab-ceramic tile floors provide the greatest store of thermal mass. Also important are the interior brick partition walls. Most of the surfaces of the interior walls are either covered with a one centimeter layer of cement stucco or covered with ceramic or marble tiles. The masonry stove's soapstone themal mass is also very significant. Some other minor thermal mass components are the marble countertops of the bathrooms, the ceramic toilets and shower plate, the ceramic sinks in the bathrooms and kitchen and all of the kitchenware made of ceramics and glass. I plan to eventually substitute the fake marble countertops in my kitchen will real marble. And I am considering designing and building special sofa end tables made of wood or metal and glass filled with special PCM thermal mass.

The house is elongated from east to west with the south wall facing true solar south. This resulted in a long 17 by 7 meter rectangular house. The house was located in a spot within the property where the sun's winter sun would not be blocked from entering into the home's south, west and east windows by trees and bushes. The south wall incorporates most of the home's windows and allows for large (but not excessive, which could result in frequent overheating) amounts of solar radiation to enter the envelope. The east and west walls are limited to a single window; these windows are neither too small to be useless for solar radiation harnessing nor too large to threaten chronic summer overheating and unnecessary heat losses during cold winter nights. North wall windows are kept at a minimum - just enough to provide for adequate daylighting, ventilation and views.

Keeping the house small makes it easier to keep warm as there is less to heat. My interior open floor space is slightly more than 100m2; it is also important to attempt to keep the ceiling relatively low. My floor to ceiling height is 2.4 meters. More than this is unnecessary and wasteful of energy, less would be better. Of these 100m2, I try to keep the south half of the house, the master bedroom and bathroom, and the guest bathroom warm. I allow the master bedroom and bathroom temperatures to fluctuate more and be slightly lower than the south half of the house because this is a sleeping area that is basically only used at night when my wife and I are snuggly under a thick layer of blankets. The guest bedrooms only really need to be heated when they are in use, so they are often left somewhat colder than the rest of the house. An open floor plan also enables the heated air - heated by the sun, masonry stove, dump load, waste heat, etc. - to move freely to other colder areas; this way the solar heated air from the south half of the house can spread evenly throughout the south half open area and then flow into the bedrooms and bathrooms.

The future sunroom will provide an extra means of solar radiation harnessing, albeit an indirect passive solar means. The sunroom's large glass surfaces and relatively small enclosed volume will permit large quantities of solar radiation capture and relatively high air heating. This relatively hot air will flow into the house through the south wall's open doors and windows through their top half, causing a negative pressure in the sunroom that will result in colder floor-level house air to be sucked into the sunroom to replace the hot air that has moved to the house. The establishment of this thermosiphon cycle will make the sunroom a large solar thermal air heater that continuously heats the home's air throughout a cold but sunny winter day. I am also considering building special 'storm' doors that will go in front of the main entrance doors; these doors will be specially designed to meet several functions. The doors will be made of a wooden frame that permits two glass panels to be attached and detached from the door frame. When the door has the glass panels attached (in winter), the main doors can be left open to allow more sunlight straight into the home's interior to heat its thermal mass directly. At night, when the main doors are closed, the dead air spaces created by the 'storm' doors improve the insulation levels of the entrance doors. Furthermore, the main wooden frames of these storm doors will have special vent openings incorporated at their top and bottom edges to allow increased control of the air flows created by the sunroom's thermosiphon effect. Lastly, in summer the glass panels will be replaced by mosquito net panels that allow the main entrance doors to remain open during the night to allow increased night flushing of the thermal masses' accumulated daily solar heat energy and to allow the doors to remain open to better channel cooling air breezes in the evenings.

General Space Heating Systems Description

2006-09-21T23:50:00.000+02:00

In this post I will give a general description of my space heating system. In the following posts I will discuss in more detail the individual system components. The primary source of heating for my house, which provides the vast majority of my yearly heating energy requirements, is the sun. The passive solar design of the house allows the house to be heated directly by the sun. Plenty of south-facing windows allow solar radiation to enter the house and heat up the interior. A large amount of thermal mass absorbs most of this solar radiation so that the internal temperatures do not quickly rise too high. The excess energy absorbed by the thermal mass is released during the cold night, thereby keeping the interior temperature warmer than the outside. An air-tight and well-insulated house envelope ensures that any heat energy leaches to the exterior very slowly.

Another primary, but very small, source of heat for the house is my renewable energy system's resistance air heater dump load. A dump load is an electrical load that uses up any excess energy produced by the wind-PV electrical system during the course of the day; the amount of heat energy produced is highly variable and depends on the combination of sun, wind, and energy consumption at any moment in time. This dump load is located in the central bedroom of the house. Another source of primary heat, but an even smaller one than the dump load, is waste heat from a number of sources. Electrical appliances but off waste heat for a variety of reasons. The refridgerator expels heat from within the fridge into the kitchen. The gas stove burners put off waste heat during cooking, as does the grill oven and other food cooking devices. Lights, televisions, laptops, radios, and other smaller electrical devices also put off waste heat. My wife and I put off waste heat, as does our house dog. Whenever I wash the dishes with warm water, take a warm shower or bath, or fill the bathroom sink with warm water to shave, waste heat is emitted into the rooms.

For periods of either extremely cold and/or cloudy weather, when the sun's radiant energy, combined with the smaller sources of waste heat and dump load heat, is not enough, a wood-burning masonry stove situated in the center of the south half of the house provides backup heating to supplement the sun's radiant energy. This soapstone masonry stove is only sized to provide heating for a more-or-less 50 m2 area (in this type of climate and with a high insulation envelope), so it is not capable of providing backup heat for the whole house. This wood-burner can be fired twice a day with a maximum total of 9 kg of wood burned daily.

Since the masonry stove is incapable of providing backup heating for the entire house, I sometimes have to resort to using a paraffin heater to keep the corner end bedrooms warm. The master bedroom gets heated more often than the guest bedroom because we use the bedroom on a daily basis whereas the guest bedroom is used only occasionally during winter and can therefore be left colder. We have two heaters, one manual and the other electric. The electric model turns the heater on and off automatically; it has built-in electronics that monitor the temperature, time and consumption and can be programmed to turn on at a set degree and off at a different set degree, to turn on at a certain hour and off at another, and to turn off when the paraffin level is low. These automatic features significantly help reduce paraffin consumption in comparison to a manual one.

I plan to build a sunroom to further exploit the sun for providing the home's heating energy requirements. The sunroom is an integral part of the original house design but is a feature that can be added on whenever. When I have the time and resources to build it, I will. This sunroom is an indirect passive solar heating system. The sun will heat the air within the sunroom to relatively high temperatures. This heated air will flow into the house, creating a negative pressure in the sunroom and a positive pressure in the house, both of which cause cold air at floor level within the house to flow into the sunroom, thereby creating a circular thermosiphon effect.

I also plan to build an active solar heating system for the house. This system will be composed of solar thermal water heating panels attached to the bottom half of the south wall within the sunroom. These panels will be attached by plumbing to special PCM-filled baseboard radiant heaters within the bedrooms and bathrooms. The PCM thermal mass will store excess solar energy for night time heating. The hot water will be pumped to the radiant heaters using a small pump connected directly to a small PV panel - when the sun shines enough it heats the water and runs the pump at the same time. No sun, no pumping of cold water.

Reuse and Recycling of Wastes

2006-09-21T14:00:00.000+02:00

The construction of the house has generated some left over construction material and some construction wastes. The amount of construction wastes are not excessive, so I should be able to put them to use on my property in one way or another some time in future. And if over time I see that some of that waste will not end up getting used, I will try to find an appropriate recycling center.

There were left over construction materials ( AAC blocks, bricks, gravel, sand, lots of wood palets, etc.) which I can use in future projects. In particular, I still need to build a sunroom to my house, and I plan to build a large greenhouse for food production. These two projects will probably absorb most or all of this excess construction material. I also plan to build several dog houses with these left over materials. As for the wood, I also plan to build numerous bat and bird houses, a moveable chicken coop, as well as some house furniture, and other odds and ends. Some of the construction material waste, which is primarily chunks of broken AAC, brick and concrete, have already been used in the foundations of the wind generator, PV solar tracker mount, and one dog house. l plan to use the rest for the foundations of the sunroom and greenhouse, as well as for the other dog houses that will be built. There were also several garbage bag fulls of polyurethane foam cuttings of waste. I plan to use these cuttings by triturating them into fluff and using this fluff as insulation, either to make insulated cement blocks or by filling wall cavities with.

Whatever other construction waste I can not find a use for, I will take to an appropriate recycling center. However, I do not expect that I will have to do this as I am confident of finding uses for all construction waste. Luckily, if I do not, whatever is to be recycled will be so little that I can put that small quantity into the trunk of my Yaris and drive where needed.

Small Open House

2006-09-20T13:21:00.000+02:00

Small size is a key aspect of a 'green' home. Building a small home is crucial for minimizing resource use. A small house minimizes use of energy resources and construction materials in its making, and it uses less energy and materials in maintenance and renovation works compared to a large house. A small house also minimizes resources needed for furniture since there is less to furnish. It minimizes use of energy resources since there is less space to heat and cool, to keep lighted and electrified. Also, other resources are minimized, such as water and detergents, since less cleaning is necessary. Furthermore, an open floor plan house reduces material resources even more by eliminating extra walls, doors and system components. Instead of needing three radiators for three rooms, you can get by with one or two bigger ones.

The trick is to make a small house that meets one's needs and is comfortable. Good house design is required to accomplish this. I applied a large number of 'small house' design principles. One of the most important principles is to create multifunctional rooms, rooms capable of satisfying several needs. I did this in my house in a number of ways. First, hallways tend to be an inefficient use of space since their only function is to provide a passage way from one room to another. Good design can situate rooms such that hallways are either eliminated or greatly reduced; furthermore, the passage way function can be fulfilled by other rooms. In my house, hallway space is next to nil. The rooms have been located so as to minimize passage way needs. And the main kitchen-dining-living room open area fulfills most of the passage way needs. The living room also acts as a place for reading, study, conversation, watching movies and listening to music; it's north wall has a large built-in library; it houses the electrical cabinet that contains all of the home's safety switches, system meters, power center, inverter, etc.; and it contains the masonry stove, the main backup heating system. The kitchen is for food and kitchen appliance storage, cooking, cleaning, and clothes washing; it contains the recycling center; and the kitchen island acts as a handy place to eat a quick snack. The dining room has a large table for eating, but it is also used for studying/research, for sewing work, for fixing small objects, and for other handcrafts; it contains an old Singer wood and steel foot-powered sewing machine and will also in future have a corner china cabinet. The bathrooms, besides acting simply as such, act as storage rooms for all type of bathroom supplies and other odds and ends. The master bedroom has a small library in one corner of the room and a built-in closet. And the other bedrooms also have multiple functions. The roof acts as a terrace with several important functions, and the crawl spaces act as waste storage and house important system components. The sunroom will act as an outdoor living space, will be for solar cooking, will house some plants and one of my dogs, and will store some firewood, as well as performing its primary functions of harnessing solar heat and acting as an air-lock for the house entrances.

One has to use furniture that makes best use of the limited space. Corners of rooms are usually inadequately used because of inappropriate furniture, so this room space goes underutilized. Corner furniture is very appropriate. In my home I have special corner shelves next to both house entrances. In my bedroom I have wooden corner shelving that acts as a library. I plan to build a special corner china cabinet for the dining room and other wooden corner furniture. Beds also need to use space efficiently. Either a normal bed with special sliding boxes underneath (which I currently use) or a special bed with built-in drawers/cabinets (which I plan to build) can be used to take advantage of the ususally wasted space underneath. In guest bedrooms and the living room, sofa-beds allow the room to be primarily used for a specific purpose, such as a movie room, and then quickly made into a bedroom - both of my guest bedrooms have sofa-beds. Raised beds that have a table underneath also make very good use of space. Built-in cabinets/shelves/closets usually make better use of space because they are specifically built to fit that unique space, take advantage of existing structural elements, and usually reach from the floor all the way to the ceiling. I use floor-to-ceiling built-in shelves and closets in the entrance, living room, bedroom, and bathroom. There are a wide variety of furniture designs that make efficient, multifunctional use of space.

A number of things can help a small house appear much larger than it actually is, making it more pleasant to live in. Coloring schemes are important. Light-colored rooms, especially white, visually appear larger than darker colored rooms. A white ceiling appears much higher than a dark colored ceiling. Most of the walls, ceilings and floors in my house are some tone of white. Light-colored furniture helps to make the room appear uncluttered, and therefore larger. All of my bathroom and kitchen furniture is white with light grey countertops. My living room sofa pieces are a light blue and white. And the guest bedroom sofa-beds are light-colored. Living room curtains are also very light in color. Mirrors are especially good at making a room appear visually larger than it is, and I exploit this fact by using extra large mirrors in my bathrooms. I also plan to put large mirrors next to the two entrances, one on the west and the other on the east wall directly facing each other, which will create the unique visual effect of a long never-ending room. Shiny light-colored glazed ceramic tiling mixes the effects of light colors and mirrors. My bathrooms use a lot of shiny glazed white wall tiles and floor tiles. Very thin furniture and furniture with glass also help to make furniture pieces look small and thereby make the room look larger. The corner shelves next to the entrance doors are made of thin black metal legs and glass shelves, which makes them both stand out and yet be inconspicuous. The living room coffee table is also made of thin black steel and glass, making the center of the room seem much larger. I currently have a medium-sized dining room table with a varnished pine wood top and white-painted wooden legs; the relative thinness of the top and legs and their light color make the room seem quite large. However, I plan to build a much bigger dining room table out of pine wood which I will paint a darker color, but I will make the top and legs relatively thin and most of the top surface will be glass. This should give the same effect as the black steel and glass corner shelves - to stand out without looking massive. I also plan to build a corner china cabinet for the dining room made of wood and glass.

An open floor plan makes the interior seem larger than it is. A large open space that incorporates a number of 'rooms', just as my entrance-living room-kitchen-dining room-hallways space does, makes each individual 'room' seem much larger than it is because the boundaries of each room are nebulous. The more and the farther the eye can see, the bigger the space one is in feels. From where I am writing this, on my living room sofa, I can see all of the entrance, the two tiny hallways, most of the dining room, much of the kitchen, and, with the doors open, a little of one bedroom and much of the guest bathroom. My eye can take in over half of the house, and I feel like my living room is huge. Another thing that enables the eye to see more and farther is lots of big windows. Big windows that allow one to look out and see the landscape give one the impression that the room they are in and the landscape they are looking at are connected. This makes the room feel larger than it is. The south half of my house, with the main living areas, has seven large windows that create a clear impression that this living space is an interface between the outside and the inside.

Lastly, a small house should take advantage of the exterior. Exterior spaces can be conditioned in one way or another to be usable in appropriate weather. This increases the number of 'rooms' of the house, making it bigger without making it bigger. In my house, the roof terrace will be a large living space for reading, napping, studying, listening to music or watching movies, playing games, etc. And this living space is the size of the house! The future sunroom, while not exactly being the exterior will not quite be the interior either, will act as another small living room and kitchen. Some fifteen meters from the house in the center of a clump of trees I have an arrangement of wood and steel garden furniture, a small coffee table with two small chairs and one small bench, next to a hammock and a outdoor garden recliner; this set up acts as a pleasant outdoor living room that my wife and I take advantage of frequently, especially when we have guests and the weather is nice (which is most of the year here in central Spain). There are many ways to use the outside just like the inside.

Future Sunroom

2006-09-19T12:48:00.000+02:00

Crawl Spaces

2006-09-18T01:00:00.000+02:00

Under the AAC house envelope there is a low crawl space. This crawl space was necessary in order to put several important system components. It also provides an extra measure of insulation by establishing a relatively dead airspace under the house. The house envelope rests upon thick brick walls which provide it a level surface to sit on. These brick walls divide the crawl space into two completely separate long, low and narrow areas. The ground surfaces were left bare. The walls were painted white - in order to make visibility easier with limited light. Each crawl space has a small 80 cm square metal door entrance at the east wall. The interior ground to ceiling height at these entrance doors is about 1.40 meters and gradually decreases moving toward the west wall, where the height is about 30 cm.

The south half shelters the renewable energy system's house batteries. It also has an 80 cm by 60 cm brick pillar that sits directly under the 700 kg masonry stove location in the house and provides the AAC floor panels with the necessary extra load-bearing support. The batteries were placed directly under the location of the power center, inverter and converter within the house - they need to remain close to minimize electrical resistance within the connecting wiring. Due to the low 90 cm height of the ceiling at this point, a 60 cm deep hole was dug into the ground in which to build the concrete and AAC battery box. This box was built between the central brick wall of the crawl spaces and the masonry stove support pillar. Within this box are eight high capacity house batteries wired at 24 V DC. A ventilation tube runs from this box to the exterior and has a vent fan incorporated within it near the box. In order to ensure adequate replacement air for this ventilation fan, a number of holes were drilled into the metal entrance door.

The north half shelters the composting toilet's batch composter unit. This rotating four-chamber batch composter is situated directly below the two toilets of the bathrooms; each toilet dumps straight down into a separate chamber. This composter decomposes the wastes over several months into a highly beneficial, fertilizing humus. When the chamber under the master bathroom toilet becomes full, the chamber with the oldest humus is emptied and then the unit is rotated clockwise to place this empty chamber under the guest bathroom toilet. The humus is then used to fertilze my fruit trees. I had also originally planned to place several other system components within this crawl space but at the time of construction decided against it because of the inconvenience of regularly going in and out of these crawl spaces. While the composter only needs to be emptied several times a year and the batteries only need to be maintained several times a year, these other system components require tasks that need to be done much more regularly.

I made a small AAC closet addition to the exterior side of the crawl space brick wall so that the necessary, regular tasks would be easier and more convenient to accomplish. In this back wall enclosure is the urine bucket; my ceramic toilets are specially designed to separate the urine and the feces with the feces dropping into the composter and the urine flowing into a collection bucket. This collection bucket needs to be emptied about every ten days; I use this urea to fertilize the trees on my property. The back wall enclosure also has a wastewater overflow chamber to handle situations where excessively large quantities of water are drained through the waste plumbing at once. Within this chamber I will put screen nets to filter out large substances from the wastewater, filters which will require emptying several times a month; these substances will then be put into my garden compost bins. Within this insulated enclosure I will also have a pressure pump and pressure tank to pressurize the house water. I have located them here because I have placed the home plumbing's main shut-off valve in this enclosure, and it was more practical to locate the pressure pump and tank in the same place.

Since there is a lot of space left within these crawl spaces, I try to take advantage of it. I use this extra space to store wastes, such as paper, glass and metal jars, construction foam cuttings, etc., to either be reused or recycled later on. I always keep an eye out for opportunities to put these wastes to good use. I also store excess firewood in these crawl spaces to keep it out of the weather. And I also store other odds and ends that do not require frequent trips.

Roof Terrace

2006-09-17T00:50:00.000+02:00

The entire top outer surface of my house is a roof terrace. I have yet to finish it. This terrace has several functions. Besides the obvious function of acting as an outdoor living area where there are frequent pleasant breezes, it has several other more vital charges.

The terrace floor is at a 2.5% incline; this incline was formed using 'Arlita', which is a construction material made of finely porous clay (similar to the AAC) in the shape of small gravel-sized beads. Arlita is a material that can be used to substitute gravel aggregate in concrete mixtures and is done so for a number of applications because the Arlita greatly reduces the weight of the resulting 'concrete' and also insulates it. The Arlita ensured that the 'concrete' weight of my roof terrace incline was minimal, and it provides an extra layer of insulation for my roof, especially over the south half of the house where the inclination thickness is greater. Furthermore, since it is made of clay, and is thereby a decent thermal mass material, it provides extra thermal lag for my roof which further helps in maintaining comfortable interior temperatures. The surface of the roof terrace acts as a cool roof because it is painted a shiny white; this color enables the terrace surface to reflective away most of the sun's intense summer solar radiation, thereby helping keep the interior cool. I plan in future to repaint this surface with a ceramic-based radiant insulation paint which has the ability to reflect away close to 100% of the sun's radiant heat; this will have a significant impact in keeping interior temperatures low in summer.

The roof terrace accommodates the solar water heating system (which is not yet finished). In a small well-insulated 1.25 m long by .9 m wide by 1.5 m tall shed made of AAC, that sits directly above the bathroom-kitchen partition wall, is sheltered a special 300 liter hot water storage tank along with all of its corresponding plumbing and safety devices. This small rectangular structure is oriented so that its long sides face north and south. The north wall contains the double doors while the south wall supports on its exterior surface the evacuated solar thermal water heating tubes that maintain the water within the storage tank hot. The southwest corner of this little structure contains the exhaust channel from the backup gas demand water heater, which is located directly below this channel. The roof terrace also accommodates a two meter tall chimney exhaust column that lies directly above the masonry stove's exhaust piping, and there is another two meter tall exhaust column with a ventilation windball attached at its top that belongs to the compost toilet vent system.

Last, but by no means least, is the rainwater collection function of this terrace. The entire surface of the terrace floor slopes downward toward the back of the house where there is a raingutter that runs the entire length of the north wall. This gutter collects this falling rain water and channels it to two downspouts located at each extreme. These downspouts flow down into two large rainwater collection storage deposits. I have yet to purchase and connect these two rainwater deposits but intend to do so relatively soon.

Thermal Mass

2006-09-16T00:34:00.000+02:00

I have incorporated large amounts of thermal mass within the AAC envelope to establish an effective thermal flywheel. Thermal mass is material that has the ability to absorb large amounts of heat energy without getting excessively hot and then to begin slowly releasing that heat energy back into the surrounding air as the air temperature drops. The sand of a beach displays thermal mass characteristics by absorbing the heat of the hot summer sun (that is why it gets a little uncomfortable to walk on) without reaching extremely high temperatures; at night the sand releases this stored heat to the cooler night air and in the morning it begins the process again discharged of the previous day's heat. Large amounts of thermal mass within a highly insulated, air-tight envelope will release its stored energy very slowly since the air within the envelope loses this heat very slowly to the outside. The heat from the thermal mass is mostly given off in the form of radiant heat, like that coming from the sun, and to a lesser degree through conduction straight to the air in contact with the thermal mass. The very best types of thermal mass, the ones that can absorb the highest amounts of heat and still remain relatively 'cool' to the touch due to low conductance, are phase change materials that change from solid to liquid and back at comfortable room temperatures (around 20 Celcius). Phase changes from solid to liquid and liquid to gas require a large heat energy input; this heat is stored in the changed state of the material and is released into the air when the material changes back to solid from liquid or liquid from gas. However, practical PCM construction technologies are not yet widespread. I have seen a few available on the market, such as tiny PCM-filled packets that are put into concrete slab floors as they are poured or special stuccos that incorporate microscopic PCM-filled capsules, but there seem to be only a few such products, which are not readily accessible and still costly. Another good thermal mass material is water, which can absorb a lot of heat but not as much as PCM; it has the advantage of being very cheap and very accessible. However, incorporating water into the mass of a building can be tricky. Special large plastic water containers are available on the market for this purpose; they are designed to be aesthetically-pleasing or invisible yet can be difficult to incorporate into pre-existing homes. Water walls and containers make more sense in new homes that are specifically-designed to integrate them. One simple way to incorporate some water as thermal mass is a large aquarium. Other good thermal mass materials (but considerably inferior to water), and the ones commonly used for this purpose in construction, are all of the various masonry construction materials. In my house, the thermal mass incorporated includes, besides the AAC, concrete, mortar, cement, cement stucco, ceramics, brick, marble and soapstone.

The interior surfaces of the AAC envelope have a moderate ability to act as thermal mass. Considering that the entire envelope and the main central load-bearing wall are all made of thick AAC blocks and panels, this is a not inconsiderable amount of thermal mass. The most important thermal mass of my house are the floors. On top of the AAC floor panels was poured a four centimeter thick reinforced concrete slab, with a one centimeter thick ceramic floor tile finish placed on top of the slab. All of the interior partition walls are made of brick (except for the main central load-bearing AAC wall). The partition walls of the south half of the house are made of solid brick while the partition walls of the north half are made of hollow double chamber brick (these bricks allow for some acoustic insulation between the different bedrooms and bathrooms - no guest wants to hear me snore or sing in the shower). Obviously, the solid bricks provide much more thermal mass than the hollow ones. The mortar used to join the bricks into walls also provide good thermal mass. Another important thermal mass feature of the interior is the one centimeter thick cement stucco applied to almost all of the interior wall and ceiling surfaces. The wall surfaces that are not finished with cement stucco are either finished with ceramic or marble tiles, which are even better than the stucco as thermal mass. One more important thermal mass structure is the 700 kg soapstone masonry stove. While the masonry stove's soapstone does not occupy much space, the soapstone is the most effective thermal mass masonry material within my home due to its high density. A few other less significant thermal mass structures are the marble bathroom countertops (which also have high density), the ceramic shower plate, and the ceramics enclosed bathtub. I also plan to replace the fake marble kitchen countertops with real marble in future, and I am considering the possibility of making sometime in the future special PCM-filled glass and metal (or wood) sofa end tables. Furthermore, I plan to incorporate in future an active solar system to channel extra solar heat into my bedroom and bathrooms via hot water tubes and baseboard radiant heaters, yet I plan to either make or modify the baseboard heaters to hold a sizeable amount of PCM thermal mass.

Windows and Doors

2006-09-15T00:21:00.000+02:00

I have two main entrance doors to the house and twelve windows of varying sizes. The south wall has seven windows. Six of these windows are 1.75 meter in height by 1.15 m in width and are fixed - non-operable. The last central window is also 1.75 by 1.15 but is an operable two-paneled casement window. Each of the three bedrooms has a 1.20 by 1.20 m operable two-paneled casement window with built-in manually-operated roll-down insulated exterior curtains. One of these is on the west wall, another on the east wall and another on the north wall. The two bathrooms have small 50 by 50 cm one-paneled operable casement windows; both of these windows are located on the north wall. All windows are made of double-paned, low-e glass with moisture-absorbing aluminum spacers and insulating, high-quality white PVC frames. The two entrance doors are 2.25 m in height by 90 cm in width and located at opposite ends of the 17 long south wall. They are made of aluminum-reinforced, insulated PVC 'sandwich' panels - central metal core with a layer of insulation on each side and enclosed with PVC surfaces. The windows and doors have very good thermal and acoustic insulation properties in relation to the Spanish average. They were joined to the walls by using expanding polyurethane foam in order to provide a strong, waterproof, well-insulated and air-tight connection.

These windows have been designed, sized and placed in accordance to ventilation, daylighting and passive solar (cooling) design principles in order to exploit the energy of the sun and wind to regulate the internal house climate, light levels, and air quality. In accordance with passive solar principles, numerous and large windows are placed on the south-facing wall in order to exploit the winter sun for interior space heating. Few and smaller windows are placed on the east and west walls in order to avoid summer overheating, and these windows have built-in roll-down insulated curtains that further help block early morning and late evening summer sun that can cause overheating. Few windows are placed on the north wall as these can not take advantage of the sun to heat the interior and simply act as net losers of heat energy in winter; they are also impacted by cold winter northerly winds, which further cause them to lose heat. For these reasons the north bedroom window has a built-in roll-down insulated curtain and the bathroom windows are extra small. Enough glass surface area is established to maximize solar radiation capture but not so much glass as to cause winter daytime overheating and excessive night-time heat losses. Glass surface area was balanced in relation to thermal mass - the more thermal mass available, the more glass surface that can be allowed and vice-versa. All of the windows are either fixed or casement in order to achieve greater insulation. Fixed windows are better than operable windows in insulation terms because they have less framing, which is often less insulating than the central insulating glass, and because they air air-tight. Casement windows (the ones that open and close like normal doors), meanwhile, can provide better air seals, and therefore be more air-tight, than sliding windows. Using windows and doors with good thermal insulation helps minimize heat and cool losses in winter and summer, helping to minimize needed energy resources. Triple-paned windows are even more insulating but significantly reduce solar radiation capture and are therefore more appropriate in climates where greater energy-efficiency benefits are achieved by maximizing insulation levels rather than by maximizing solar energy capture, such as regions closer to the poles.

In accordance with passive cooling principles, there are a number of operable windows strategically placed throughout the house. There is one large operable window in each of the walls. These south and north wall windows are centrally placed. The placement and size of these operable windows permits me to channel wind breezes in a multitude of ways throughout the house. The fact that the windows have two panels allows me to increase or decrease the flow of these breezes within the interior by opening just one or both; furthermore, the operable curtains allow me even greater control of the flow of these breezes. Roll-down mosquito netting frames were placed on these windows so that they can be freely opened without worry of insect and bird invasions. The mosquito netting on the east and west wall windows helps prevent summer overheating of these bedrooms by acting as shade cloth. Use of these operable windows to establish cooling wind breezes within the home are only appropriate when the exterior air temperatures are only slightly higher than the interior; otherwise, the hot breezes simply bring in hot air, maxing out the thermal mass and equalizing the cooler interior temperatures with those of the hot exterior. When there are large differences between hot outside air and cooler interior air, keeping well-insulated and shaded windows closed rather than open provide greater cooling benefits. The doors and windows are a shiny white to help reflect away excess solar heat.

In accordance with daylighting principles, each room has an adequately sized window. The large open kitchen-living-dining room area has much glass space, whereas the small six meter square bathroooms, rooms used infrequently, have small windows. The size and placement of the windows, coupled with the home's relatively open floor plan, enable light to penetrate from all walls and spread fairly uniformly throughout the house, from early in the morning to late in the evening.

In accordance with ventilation principles, each room has an operable window. This enables each and every room to be quickly and easily aired out to replace interior air that has become bad for whatever reason with fresh outdoor air. The large south wall operable window is situated in front of the masonry stove and kitchen cooking area in order to be able to quickly exhaust any smoke, carbon monoxide, excess humidity or other noxious gases that may accidentally occur. The small bathroom windows are located near the top of the wall to facilitate water vapor release when excessive humidity is produced due to hot showers and baths.

Both house entrance doors are located at opposite ends of the south wall. This is for two reasons. These doors provide direct access to the main living areas of the house, the combined entrance-living room-kitchen-dining room open area. And, secondly, I plan to build a sun room that covers the entire south wall which will act not only to provide extra solar heating for the house but also as a large airlock entry for these two entrances. Furthermore, I am considering incorporating a specially designed and built second door at each entrance so that it is necessary to open two doors to enter/exit - these second doors will provide greater insulation and will be designed so that they also help provide extra solar radiation into the house and increased ventilation and air breeze manipulation.

When designing my home, I originally leaned toward wooden window frame construction because it is renewable and safe (and sometimes sustainable and local) but ended up deciding against it and for PVC instead for several reasons. While both provide good thermal and acoustic insulation characteristics, wood is not a reliable construction material if exposed to the elements. It can burn - being located in a forested area in a country afflicted with increasingly frequent and large forest fires, wood seemed a risky choice. At the very beginning of house construction a large local forest fire burnt a fourth of my property, including the areas directly around my storage structure, well tower and house; the brick structures and AAC building material were unaffected, but the wooden palets on which sat the AAC blocks burnt away as did a number of outdoor wooden furniture pieces. Whereas the PVC chairs that were relatively close to the wooden ones did not burn. Wood also does not hold up well to Spain's intense sun. The sun's radiation has a strong negative impact on wood. Some of my closest neighbors are (were) a group of Buddhists owning a four hectare property with a number of wooden cabins. The cabins (that remain - one structure burned down from a cooking gas explosion, one from the forest fire that burned part of my property and their wooden temple from a lightning strike) have been there less than ten years; I have witnessed the steady deterioration of these wooden structures and that of their window frames due, primarily but not exclusively, to the sun's radiation. The window frames and doors now have numerous cracks and imbalances that have created numerous points of difficult-to-remedy air leakage. Needless to say, this Buddhist center is now basically abandoned except for one individual who lives is a puny all metal structure and one other who bought his own chunk of nearby land and built a tiny cabin out of AAC and PVC windows (admittedly I helped design and build this Buddhist monk's cabin). Furthemore, wood is negatively affected by rain and humidity. Here in Spain a window is exposed to both in winter; the rains wet the exterior and the winter cold causes moisture condensation on interior window glass surfaces that drips onto the frame. Frequent, excessive moisture leads to wood frame deterioration through repeated expansion and drying and through rot. Insects can also be a serious wood problem in many areas. In my area there are no termite problems (that I have been made aware of), but there are several other types of insects, in particular several types of caterpillar/worms, that can eat tunnels through wood structures. Of course, all of these problems can be eliminated through judicious maintenance of the wood structures with appropriate surface treatment paints. The problem with this is that a maintenance schedule must be maintained by people who may or may not have the time, money, patience or desire to do this regular maintenance. And how much maintenance is required depends greatly on the location; here in central Spain maintenance requirements are exorbitant. Much more northerly locations that have less intense sun, less moisture problems (due to more snow and less rain and a reduced number of much-better insulated windows), and fewer possible perjudicial insect infestations are more appropriate for wooden window frames due to less daunting maintenance requirements.

Well-made PVC frames, on the other hand, require no maintenance, other than occasional cleaning with some water and soap, since they are not affected by the sun, moisture or insects/microbes. They, therefore, have a very long lifespan. They also are basically inflammable since extremely high temperatures are required to alter them, making them more acceptable in risky forest fire areas. Some other environmental benefits are that these frames produce little to no waste in production and any waste is completely recyclable. Energy requirements for production are relative low. The two primary material resources of PVC window frames are salt at around 57%, with salt being a widely abundant resource, and petroleum at 43%. Unfortunately, petroleum use is highly questionable as it is definitely a problem resource - nonrenewable, nonsustainable, nonlocal. Also, PVC is claimed to release toxic gases into the air during production and under certain circumstances such as burning; I do not know the specifics of such claims since I have not looked into them, but I trust Greenpeace (I am paying member). If they say this stuff is bad and needs to be reduced or phased out, then I will take steps to reduce my use of the stuff. If I had to choose new windows today, I might instead go with the new fiberglass frames that are starting to be marketed. Of course, costs have to be kept in consideration since fiberglass is fairly expensive compared to PVC, so I would need to balance the loss of finances for fiberglass windows with what I that extra money could have otherwise enabled me to do, such as buy extra PV panels for example. Figuring out the right green thing to do is rarely simple.

Autoclaved Aerated Concrete Envelope

2006-09-14T00:08:00.000+02:00

I built the envelope of the house from autoclaved aerated concrete. After being blocked from building with strawbales, I had to find something that fit my priorities and conditions. And the best fit was AAC. It readily meets all construction codes throughout Europe. The material itself was slightly more expensive than the local, traditional combination of brick, mortar and reinforced concrete. But when the AAC system as a whole is compared to that of the local, traditional construction methods as a whole, then the total material costs are fairly close. Significantly, the AAC house systems and the material are easy to work with - requiring little extra expertise than those of a typical masonry worker, are flexible, and are quick to build, making it possible for me to build the house myself with some help from my wife and brothers. This enabled me to fulfill a dream of building my own house with my own hands. Furthermore, it allowed me to save a great deal of money since the norm is that well over 50% of the construction costs of a typical house are labor costs.

It is easy to build with because the AAC material is simple to work (it is easier than wood to cut, sand, chisel, drill, shape, etc.); the blocks are large but lightweight and easy to lift and handle; the blocks are a breeze to build into walls (because they are built to precise dimensions, have adjoining crevices and ridges on the vertical surfaces, and are joined together horizontally in ultrathin 1mm joints using special 'cement glue' that is applied with specific and easy to use tools); and the floor and ceiling/roof panels are easy to put in place (a small construction materials transport truck uses its mechanical arm to lift - with a special attachment - and place these long, thick, narrow steel-rebar-reinforced AAC panels onto the supporting walls, which is very fast and requires little effort). Furthermore, all these things make it fast to build. It is also quick to build because it is an all in one material - it is a durable, high load-bearing material (because it is a 'solid' material made of 'concrete'); it provides high thermal and acoustic insulation (because the material encloses innumerable air 'bubbles'); and it is completely inflammable and fireproof (because it is composed of the inert, non-organic materials of sand, lime and cement). The AAC walls, ceilings and floors also make secondary work relatively fast and easy because of the ease of working the AAC and because the surfaces of the walls, floors and ceilings are so flat and smooth.

An AAC house is safe and healthy to live in for a number of reasons. It is safe because the material is strong, durable and dependable. The house is completely fireproof - it is inflammable and does not offgas due to extreme, prolonged heat. The effects of freeze/thaw cycles on AAC walls is negligible since abundant rains can not get a sufficient proportion of moisture deep into the wall when the walls are left bare (walls are almost always finished off with a decorative, protectice layer such as stucco so this makes freeze/thaw cycles even more inconsequential). The sun has no impact on AAC. It can survive extreme weather and environmental phenomena. Forest fires, as mentioned, do nothing to the AAC. Flooding will not have a serious impact on the AAC structure. It can withstand high winds due to its relatively high weight. And AAC homes can be built with special corner and window/door blocks that are filled with reinforced concrete for earthquake prone areas. Since AAC is a tough inert, non-organic material, pests can neither eat the material nor make nests in it nor will microorganisms lead it to rot, ensuring the material's structural integrity and its durability; this also keeps the interior healthy by eliminating prejudicial animals, insects and microorganisms. The AAC helps maintain indoor air quality by regulating moisture; the AAC acts as 'thermal mass' for humidity, absorbing some from indoor air when there is excess and releasing some when it is deficient. Moreover, since the AAC is a 'breatheable' material, any water vapor that manages to penetrate its interior can find its way to the exterior, futher helping maintain adequate interior humidity levels. And because the AAC walls do not display capillary action upon the wet ground, the interior of the walls are further aided in remaining dry. The AAC is also non-toxic and non-gassing so that physical human contact is completely benign and the air does not get contaminated. And the good sound insulation helps keep out stressful exterior noise.

Finally, AAC has a large number of qualities that make it 'green'. An AAC house envelope establishes good thermal insulation because the material itself has good thermal resistance, the homogenous nature of the construction helps eliminate themal bridges, and the thermal lag characteristics help attenuate outdoor temperature changes. Good insulation levels are necessary to help keep the house warm in winter and cool in summer by eliminating losses of heat or cool; this energy efficiency leads to considerably lower yearly energy usage since home heating and cooling are usually the two biggest energy requirements of a house . AAC also has moderate thermal mass characteristics that help to palliate internal temperature changes, which is highly advantageous in a passive solar house. An AAC house will last many, many generations without need for significant maintenance or renovations. By using a long-life CFL bulb one displaces use of a large number of less energy-efficient incandescents over the same time period; the same applies to AAC homes with their very long lifespans and high energy-efficiency. Both material and energy resources are saved over the lifespan of an AAC house in comparison with other more conventional and less energy-efficient housing alternatives. AAC housing systems can result in very little construction waste and this waste can be used, for example, on site for foundation perimeter drainage trench filling since the material is completely inert and neither damages the soil nor groundwater. Furthermore, the material is recyclable. In comparison with traditional concrete, the embodied energy per unit of volume of AAC is only about a third; even in relation to wood housing, a material generally regarded as having low-embodied energy, the AAC compares favorably depending on what type of wood is used and the processes and treatments performed on the wood. While AAC is not made from a renewable resource, like wood, it uses materials (sand, lime, cement) which are in extreme abundance throughout the planet. Ideally, in this regard, one should use a construction material that is both renewable and extremely abundant. Strawbales fit this qualification nicely. Unfortunately, wood in most cases does not - it is renewable but demand for wood preposterously outstrips sustainable harvesting, contributing to continued global deforestation. In relation to the local, traditional construction systems, AAC's all-in-one nature and its light weight make for more energy-efficient transport. Unfortunately, one environmental drawback I had was needing to ship the material from central France to central Spain. Ideally, the closer the construction material is produced to its point of final use, the better as less fossil-fuel will be consumed for transport.

Preliminary Work

2006-09-13T03:22:00.000+02:00

Before beginning construction, I had to do a number of things. Originally I had planned to build on a plot of land in north central Spain that my mom had given to me. This land was one of several adjoining plots belonging to my mother's extended family and being farmed by my mother's uncle. The land was used for growing wheat, and strawbales were made on the land every year - enough bales to build a small strawbale house. When my wife and I had saved enough money to begin our plans, I began to look into what legal procedures I would have to go through to get the necessary permits. To my surprise and disappointment, the property was within a zone that had been put off-limits to construction in order to preserve agricultural production. So began a search for a new land property on which to build a self-sufficient, self-sustaining eco-house.

I began searching for land in the thinly populated fringes of Madrid province. Madrid is my birth city and the one I most know and cherish, as well as being the location of most of my family and many friends, so I naturally want to remain near it. During my search I looked into the construction law and was highly saddened to find out that I could not legally build a strawbale house as no code existed for it, so I had to decide upon a new construction material that would meet code, be affordible and accessible, be environmental, and, crucially, be easy enough to work with that I could build the house myself. I settled with AAC, which I'll talk about in the next post.

After looking at many properties my wife and I finally found a piece of land that both of us were comfortable with. A splendind, abandoned three hectare vineyard overgrown with trees and thick vegetation located to the southwest of Madrid city. Most of the vines had gone wild. It is in a rugged, rocky area at the fringes of a forest and at the foothills of a mountain range. The property is about equidistant from the three nearest towns, 7 kms away. It is completely off-grid, with the only connecting infrastructure being a rough, jagged and gutted, narrow dirt road - the nearest paved road (also rough and narrow) being one kilometer away. I had to spend a good chunk of money solidifying one stretch of this dirt road which became a hybrid mud-quicksand vehicle trap during the rainy seasons. I did this by putting down a sufficient layer of 'zaorra' - a mixture of granite rocks of different sizes and of granite dust - from the local granite quarry three kilometers away. Zaorra is their main production waste byproduct.

On the land, I had to locate the best spot for the house, one with good solar access to the south, plenty of windbreak trees to the north, with a slight slope for wastewater to flow out by gravity but not so steep as to require ground leveling, without any trees that would need to be cut, not too close and not too far from the finca entrance, etc. Luckily, a spot more or less in the center of my land was ideal. Then I quickly had a small borehole well drilled to the rear of where the house would go and not too close. Water was an immediate necessity not just for drinking and cleaning but for necessary construction work.

When my wife and I arrived at that property in early June of 2000, the very first thing we did was set up two tents. One for sleeping in and the other for storage. I had planned on living in the tent until construction of the house was complete. I had foolishly expected the process for obtaining the necessary permits would be relatively quick and trouble-free; it was anything but. There was a seemingly never-ending stream of paperwork, bureaucrats and incompetence to be dealt with. In short, the process took over one and a half years and drove me to the brink of insanity. And at the time I felt like a fool because over 90% of buildings in the surrounding area are illegal; every local I met asked me why I was going through the hassle of getting a license - even the Guardia Civil! In any case, after living in the tent for three months and realizing the start of construction was some ways off, I decided to build a simple storage structure divided into two sections. This would serve to store construction materials, tools, systems components, etc. that needed to stay dry and secure (much of which would arrive way before construction would begin); it would serve as a 'dog house' for my three dogs; it would be a temporary garage for my small car; and it would give me a sheltered place - out of the wind, rain and sun - to put my sleeping tent. As fate would have it, the day after finishing the roof of this structure in mid-September, a ferocious wind-sand storm ripped through my land. By this time, my camp had grown to five tents; at the end of the wind, one and a half remained. Luckily, I managed to jump in and save my sleeping tent from major damage and moved it into the storage structure.

At the same time that I built the storage structure, I built a tower for an elevated water storage deposit. I had wanted to place a six meter high steel tower, directly over the well, for this water deposit but gave up on this idea after failing to find a local welder willing to guarantee that they could build one capable of supporting over 1000 kg of weight and withstanding very strong winds. I decided to build one out of simple local brick, like the storage structure. I made an enclosed tower to safely enclose the well, plumbing and LCB wiring setup and to give me extra storage space. I made it three by three meters to allow for adequate space to walk around the almost 1.5 meter diameter water deposit during maintenance work.

With those two structures finished enough to be useful and with time on my hands, I began cleaning up the property. I took away dead vegetation and trees, pruned vines, bushes and tress, planted fruit trees, cleared the land of surface rocks, cut away weeds, built up the collapsed and ruined stone wall that runs along my northern border, dug a pond reservoir, put up a good fence around a 7 by 10 meter area in front of the storage structure as a dog kennel, put posts and two strands of barb wire at the borders of my property, etc. Even so I still had time to kill and, therefore, started teaching business English in Madrid to executives on a part-time basis. I eventually got the building license after what seemed an eternity and began a new phase - house construction.

General House Description - II

2006-09-12T13:57:00.000+02:00

Above is a quick basic floorplan sketch of my house. I think it will help visualize a number of the passive solar design concepts that I incorporated into my house design and that I have described in the last post and will describe in this one. I will add some pictures of the house in proceeding posts to further help in this visualization and understanding. I also plan to post more detailed floorplan sketches of the house, its systems, future planned additions, possible modifications, and anything else that I might want to get feedback about from interested readers. Now I will describe some of the other passive solar design principles I incorporated into my house design which I did not mention in my previous post.

· The south wall of the house faces within a 10% deviation of true south to obtain close to 100% solar benefit. With the large number of big windows on the south wall, the sun’s low winter arc over the sky enables the house to meet most of its winter heating needs through solar radiation. No trees or other obstacles in front of the south wall block this winter sun.

· Behind the north-facing wall are a number of mature pre-existing trees and a number of younger trees that were planted, as well as a rock wall and numerous large bushes and vines, which all help to block and weaken cold, harsh winter winds coming from the north. I also plan to build a greenhouse behind the house which will have an even greater impact on attenuating these cold winds.

· In the summer the virtually overhead position of the sun allows for very limited amounts of solar radiation to pass through the windows, due both to increased solar radiation reflection and decreased solar radiation due to the sun’s angle relative to the vertical glass. To completely block this summer solar radiation from entering my south windows, I plan to build a two meter wide solar room all along the face of my south wall. This solar room will incorporate ‘roof overhangs’ in the form of PV panels. I will also attach onto this solar room exterior rollable solar shade cloth to block unwanted summer solar radiation not only into the home’s windows but also into the solar room.

· The solar room will act as a solar air heater in the winter to provide extra solar heat for the house. By simply opening the doors or windows during sunny days, a convective air flow will be put in motion whereby hot solar room air will flow into the home and cooler floor level air will be sucked into the solar room. This solar room will also act as an extra insulation layer for my south wall and its windows. Futhermore, it will act as an air-lock entry to both of my home’s entrance doors - a rather large air-lock. And this same solar room can be used at certain appropriate times of the year as a solar chimney to create a structured flow of air in the house where hot air in the solar room rises up and out of top ventilation openings in the solar room thereby creating negative pressure in the house through the open doors and windows. This negative pressure in the house then sucks in cooler air through vents and windows from the sun-protected back of the house.

· Operable windows and their strategic placement allow for the channeling and control of cooling breezes throughout the house. These windows are opened and used for this purpose during appropriate times of the day and year.

· An adequate balance between glazing area and thermal mass volume was established. Over-glazing and under-massing can result in the interior overheating due to excessive solar radiation while under-glazing and over-massing can result in the opposite. Moreover, excessive glazing of wall space can lead to excessive heat loss at night.

· The exterior of the house is a traditionally south-European white. This is to reflect away much of the sun’s unneeded summer radiation, thereby helping to prevent the exterior walls becoming hot and transferring that heat into the home at night through thermal lag conduction. The terrace floor is also painted white. I plan to add a layer of ceramic-based radiant insulation paint to the exterior surfaces in order to reflect away close to 100% of this summer radiation. Much of the interior walls’ surfaces are also white to help distribute daylight throughout the home. However, the south half of the home’s floors are a dark color, as are a number of its interior partition walls, to better absorb winter solar radiation.

· I made sure not to oversize the back up heating system for the house, a small wood-fired Finnish soapstone high-efficiency masonry stove, which is designed to heat only the south half of my home. By undersizing it, I avoid unnecessary and frequent interior overheating and, thereby, wasted fuel. This is important because besides the solar room that I will add for extra winter solar heat, I will also eventually add an active solar system to collect solar heat and transfer that heat to the north half bedrooms and bathrooms where they will flow through baseboard fin heaters specially equipped with appropriate phase change thermal mass.

· To help block summer solar radiation on my east and west walls, I will use vegetation. Next to my east wall I am growing a decidous low canopy almond tree that will block much of the summer’s solar radiation. On my west wall, I plan to install vertical trellising to grow thick tall vines which will block almost all solar radiation. I may also put some vines on the east wall. These plants not only block the sun but also help keep the wall surface cooler through the effects of evapotranspiration and help maintain the walls’ natural air insulation barrier.

I see that once again my typing has gone uncontrolled. This post is quite long. I will leave it as is. I have tried to be brief so the descriptions are not what they could be, and I may have left out a number of passive solar design principles that are or will be incorporated in my house. Once again, I entreat whomsoever has a comment they may wish to make to please do so for I will be greatly grateful.

General House Description - I

2006-09-10T17:16:00.000+02:00

The 'green' house I designed is relatively simple. Simple enough that I was able to build it with my own hands and with the help of my wife and brothers. It is relatively small, with about 100 m2 of interior usable space. It is basically the shape of a shoe-box, as a neighbor once pointed out. Some 17 meters by 7. The entire flat top surface is a terrace. And under the house there is a useful crawl space.

I used passive solar design principles to design a house that would require a minimum of energy to keep warm and cool and that would maximize use of onsite renewable resources to meet those minimized needs.

-The house is small. This not only reduces the need for energy to keep it warm and cool, but it also reduces electricity, construction materials needed, site impact, and resources needed to keep it clean. And it has a number of other 'green' benefits.

-It is highly insulated and air-tight to keep heat in during cold periods and hot air out during hot periods. I had originally planned to use strawbale insulation but was unable to due to inadequate construction codes. I settled on autoclaved aerated concrete as an appropriate solution to my case. It is a high insulation building material that achieves good insulation values in the walls, roof, and floor, while eliminating thermal bridges and enhancing the ability to make the envelope air-tight. I have installed high-efficiency double-paned, low-e coated windows and high-efficiency doors. While the windows and doors are good, their insulation values are low compared to the walls. As such I have also made and installed special insulation curtains. I plan to increase insulation levels by eventually applying a special ceramic based insulation paint both in the interior and exterior.

-The house is elongated on an east-west axis with a considerable number of large windows on the south-facing wall and a few smaller windows on the remaining walls. This helps maximize solar heat capture while minimizing both unneeded heat loss and interior overheating on relatively sunny, warm days. The number and amount of window space and their careful distribution also ensure adequate daylighting throughout the day, eliminating electric use for artificial lighting during the day.

-Inside the house envelope is a large quantity of thermal mass. Thermal mass acts as a heat and cool battery which absorbs excess interior heat during the day and releases it during the night when the interior temperatures drop below a certain level, thereby keeping the interior warmer than the outside during cold periods when exterior temperatures drop. The process works in reverse in summer when windows are left open at night to drain the heat from the thermal mass so that during the day it can keep interior temperatures lower by absorbing large amounts of excess heat. The floor system is comprised of AAC interlocking panels with a slab of reinforced concrete on top and a finishing layer of dark colored ceramic tiles. The concrete and tiles have good heat absorbtion and retention characteristics and function well as thermal mass. The AAC also has small but useful thermal mass characteristics. Interior walls are also masonry with those exposed to solar light having a dark color to facilitate radiation absorption. Walls are stuccoed with a one cm layer of special cement, futher adding thermal mass. The house does not experience significant temperatures swings on a daily basis. Interior temperatures rise and fall very slowly from winter to summer to winter.

-Room layout is designed to keep living areas, such as the living and dining rooms and kitchen, on the south half which is warmer during the day, and bedrooms and bathroom, which are infrequently occupied, in the colder half. The south half is one large long basically open area which is comprised of a combined living, dining and kitchen area. This helps maintain unimpeded air flow to balance out temperature differences in this area. The north half of the house also has good access to the warm air of the south half.

This post is getting a little long. I will continue it shortly. I will try to include a floor plan in my next posting.

I hope anyone who has any comments to make - suggestions, ideas, criticisms or questions, absolutely whatever - will find some time to write them down and pass them on. I will be extremely grateful.

General Table of Contents

2006-09-09T01:13:00.000+02:00

In my previous post I discussed my belief in the need for responsible resource use. I have tried to implement this belief in my life. And I continue looking for ways to implement this belief to ever greater degrees. I want to share knowledge of my attempts and my plans and hopefully get feedback from readers that will help further enlighten my thinking on these issues and that help me to be increasingly responsible in my resource use. As there are so many points that I will try to cover, I have decided to organize the structure and order of my future posts so that they are easier for me to write and for you to read. Below is a general table of contents of these future posts. I will attempt to post several articles a week, sometimes more and sometimes less, depending on my real life schedule and circumstances.

In each section I will first post a general description of my system (e.g. electrical system), followed by more detailed posts of the individual components. I will then discuss my attempts at consumption reduction through appropriate technologies, improved efficiencies, and responsible habits. And I will then finish off with my attempts at reuse and recycling of the resource.

I. HOUSE

A. General House Descriptions 1. Preliminary Work 2. Autoclaved Aeraeted Concrete Envelope 3. Windows and Doors 4. Thermal Mass 5. Terrace Roof 6. Crawl Space 7. Future Sunroom

B. Consumption Reduction 1. Small House 2. Open House 3. Exterior Connections and Use

C. Reuse and Recycle

II. ENERGY

A. Space Heating

1. General Description a. passive solar b. masonry stove c. paraffin heater d. dump and waste heat e. future active solar f. other possibilities

2. Consumption Reduction a. appropriate technologies b. efficiencies c. habits

C. Reuse and Recycle

B. Space Cooling

1. General Description a. passive cooling b. fans c. future cool tubes d. future evaporative cooler

2. Consumption Reduction a. appropriate technologies b. efficiencies c. habits

3. Reuse and Recycle

C. Water Heating

1. General Description a. solar thermal b. hot water storage c. demand water heater

2. Consumption Reduction a. appropriate technologies b. efficiencies c. habits

3. Reuse and Recycle

D. Food Heating

1. General Description a. solar oven b. gas stovetop c. microwave d. other electrical e. future solar-wood oven hybrid

2. Consumption Reduction a. appropriate technologies b. efficiencies c. habits

3. Reuse and Recycle

E. Food Cooling

1. General Description a. refridgerator b. future root cellar c. future terracotta pot d. future freezer

2. Consumption Reduction a. appropriate technology b. efficiencies c. habits

3. Reuse and Recycle

F. Lighting

1. General Description a. daylighting b. flourescent lighting c. outdoor lighting d. future LED lighting

2. Consumption Reduction a. appropriate technologies b. efficiencies c. habits

3. Reuse and Recycle

G. Electricity

1. General Description a. wind generator b. pv c. gasoline generator d. batteries e. power center, dump f. inverter, converter, safety g. future hydrogenerator, pv

2. Consumption Reduction a. appropriate technologies b. efficiencies c. habits

3. Reuse and Recycle

III. WATER

A. General Description 1. well 2. rainwater 3. wastewater 4. creek

B. Consumption Reduction 1. appropriate technologies 2. efficiencies 3. habits

C. Reuse and Recycle

IV. FOOD

V. TRANSPORT

VI. COMMUNICATIONS

VII. SECURITY

VIII. MATERIALS

IX. LIVELIHOOD

Responsible Resource Use

2006-09-08T16:09:00.000+02:00

I believe humanity has grown to unsustainable dimensions, in terms of absolute numbers, modern notions of well-being and expected societal progress. Too many people with too many wants and too many expectations are placing excessive demands on the planet's weakening regenerative capacities, demands which are increasing apace. Man must take action to avoid irreversibly distorting the Earth's environmental balances - balances Man relies on for his continued existence, well-being and progress. In order to sustain the world's enormous population in increasing comfort today, Man is destroying the things needed to sustain the world's enormous population in increasing comfort tomorrow.

The best solution would be to drastically reduce the world's population; however, to attempt to do this in a very short period of time would require abominable, abject measures contrary to current international standards of human rights. In the absence of this possibility, the population must be brought down slowly. As things stand now, the population will peak somewhere at mid-century and then begin to fall. Man must make every conscienceable attempt to reduce these numbers as swiftly and profoundly as possible. Nevertheless, to rely solely on reduced population numbers to adequately ameliorate the stresses on the planet would take exorbitant time - time the planet lacks as solutions are required today.

This means that the demands of the present population must be modified. The resource demands must change in quantity, quality and form, without diminishing the decent standards of living in the developed world and without rising blocking standards in the developing. First Worlders must learn to live with finite wants from finite means. Third Worlders must learn that development does not imply First World profligacy. One example of this necessary change is with construction wood use. Quantity of construction wood can be reduced by building smaller homes and owning only a single residence. Better home designs, building techniques and technologies can further reduce needed wood. Improvements in the quality of the wood can also help reduce quantity by lasting longer and by being more reliable and strong. A change in form would be locally harvested, FSC-certified wood that ensures that it is harvested responsibly and sustainably. Reducing quantity, improving quality and developing appropriate forms of construction wood can have a significant positive impact on the world's forests.

I believe appropriate personal resource use requires one to minimize resources needed and resources wasted; maximize use of local, renewable and sustainable resources and minimize use of non-local, finite and unsustainable resources; and maximize reuse and recycling of resource waste and used resources. This basic approach applies to all resources, from energy for electricity, heating and cooling, to water, food, materials, etc. Taking electricity as an example, things that can be done to minimize electrical consumption are to use mechanical (mechanical kitchen scale vs. electric) and manual devices (hand juicer vs. electric), use energy-efficient appliances (CFLs vs. incandescents), use smaller appliances (a medium sized fridge vs. a monster), use traditional methods (air drying of dishes and clothes vs. electric), etc. Things that can be done to minimize electrical waste are to judiciously turn off lights, TVs, computers, etc., to eliminate phantom loads, to use appropriate wiring materials, sizes and ensure good connections, etc. To maximize use of local, renewable and sustainable resources, PV panels, wind generators and hydrogenerators are a few technologies that can be used to create needed electricity, while minimizing use of non-local, finite and unsustainable resources such as global-warming fossil fuels. Reuse of electrical 'waste' can be to take advantage of lower night time electric rates by charging electric vehicles or other rechargeables or use of a dump load in an off-grid renewable energy system. Recycling used electricity can be taking advantage of waste heat created by numerous appliances, such as refridgerators and freezers, to help warm a room by keeping the room well insulated and airtight. The possibilities in each area for each resource are expansive. And by systematically and progressively exploiting these possibilities, Man can reduce its negative impact on the planet to the point where Man and Earth can symbiotically coexist.

Responsible Life

2006-09-07T17:45:00.000+02:00

Responsibility means different things for different people because everyone is their own shade of grey. Even my own ideas about what is responsible for some particular situation evolve with time as my knowledge expands and as the situation itself changes. And what I may think is the right course of action on some issue is dependent of how I prioritize and address all of the different variables affecting the issue and the probable resultant consequences. What is right is therefore highly relative - in relation to time, to place, to priorities, to fears, to dreams, to whatever. So I am a moral relativist. And yet, nevertheless, I have some general outline understandings of responsibility for a range of lifestyle choices. And it is these general outlines that I want to briefly mention in this post.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I believe all areas of responsibility are interrelated, compatible and mutually beneficial. Being responsible in one does not necessarily preclude being responsible in another; quite the contrary, for I believe that being responsible in any area leads to more responsibility in all others. So much so that I believe it to lead to a virtuous cycle of continuous reinforcement and growth. Take smoking as an example. When one quits smoking, the consequent benefits radiate to all aspects of the individual's life. One's health is better for it, as is one's pocket book as smoking can be an expensive habit. The environment is also better for it as the air gets less polluted and scarce resources are not wasted on such a negative lifestyle habit. Quitting smoking is also good for society as one will probably live a longer healthier life that will not require expensive medical treatment, often paid by financially strapped and overworked state hospitals. As health improves individual relations, with family and friends, can become more physically active and stress free. I say stress free because there will be friends and family who deeply care about the individual and worry about his or her health; quitting smoking and the subsequent health improvements can ameliorate those worries and allow those individuals to interact with the former smoker with greater peace of mind. Improvements in social interaction can lead the individual to spend more free time doing activities, such as taking walks or playing a game of tennis or going camping, that further improve health, social bonding, finances, the environment, etc. And the positive cycle can continue. That was an example of eliminating a negative lifestyle choice. An example of adopting a positive lifestyle choice would be using a bicycle for transportation. It is good for one's health because one gets decent regular exercise. It is good for the environment because one does not spew out toxic gases, CO2 and unwanted noise. It is good for one's finances as one does not spend money on expensive fuel and vehicle maintenance. It is good for society as town and city centers become less congested with traffic, parked cars, intolerable noise, and smog; and the state has to spend less on road infrastructure and repair. It is good for individual relations as couples or families or friends can take leisurely bike rides together. There are numerous other benefits. And these benefits cycle through to create more benefits - when your personal relations improve, you have more peace of mind and the reduced stress brings more health benefits. Improved personal relations also help you focus better at work, which improves finances. And so on.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I believe the right thing to do is to maintain my health in good condition. A healthy body and a healthy mind. I believe you can not have one without the other. Trying to lead a stress free life is important. Finding a job one is comfortable with is important, and not trying to do too much at once at work goes with that. Maintaining good family relations also helps reduce stress. Keeping mentally active, by reading or taking up a hobby for instance, keeps the mind sharp. Eating right and just the right amounts helps maintain body health, as does regular physical activity of one form or another. Avoiding drugs of any form, whether tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, or stronger illicit drugs, is also key. Doing things safely, like putting on a car belt or bike helmet or wearing eye protection when using a chainsaw, keeps you in one piece. And I think it also important to promote these things in your spouse and family members because, in the end, what is worse, lying in a hospital bed wasting away with disease or watching a loved one do so?

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I believe the right thing to do is to maintain my finances in good condition. I believe it is in my best interests to be financially independent and self-sufficient. Becoming a long-term financial burden on anyone, be it family, friends, charities, or the state, neither helps the one receiving aid nor those giving it. It is insidious and leads to habits that are counterproductive. At the other extreme, relying on debt is dangerous. If one's financial situation is in order, debt is not a necessity; if one's financial situation is not in order than debt is another form of gambling. And the pernicious effects of gambling can show up whether playing with dice or playing with credit cards. Keeping one's financial house in order leads to a more comfortable, stress-free life.

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I believe the right thing to do is to ensure relations with family and friends are in good condition. I believe it is mutually beneficial. These are people one cares about and negative relations can lead to stress and conflict. Positive relations on the other hand allow one to rely on family and friends for emotional and practical support. Besides being a helpful crutch in troubled times, they also provide the two most precious and priceless gifts one can be blessed with - love and friendship. So good relations provide for emotional, mental and practical well-being. Of course, one should try to maintain good relations with everyone, including strangers, for much the same reasons, but doing so with family and friends is paramount.

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I believe the right thing to do is to ensure society is in good condition. The modern world we live in is built upon a foundation of structured, intergrated social cohesion and interaction. If these social structures disintegrate, man would fall into lawless chaos, leading to violence, destruction, suffering and death. On the other hand, ever improving social structures, at every level, from local community levels to the international level, allow for continued progress on all fronts - health and education, technology development and exploitation, energy and infrastructure, poverty reduction, and so on. By ensuring society works, we ensure continued improvements all around us. And any improvement anywhere helps one directly or indirectly, in one way or another. Improvements in Thirld World development, for example, help stanch uncontrolled, dangerous and exploitative illegal immigration to one's First World community, helping thereby to lessen possible conflicts. Helping strengthen society, at any level and at any location, benefits everyone.

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I believe the right thing to do is to ensure the environment is in good condition. Man relies on nature for its needs. The air we breathe needs to be clean. We need sufficient clean water. The land needs to be healthy to continue providing us with sufficient clean food. The forests need to be healthy to continue providing us with their benefits, such as wood, storm water control, filtering the air, regulating the microclimate, etc. The oceans need to be health to continue providing us with their benefits, such as fish and climate controls. No one wants the Gulf stream or El Nino to start acting significantly different. The rivers need to be clean to continue providing their benefits. We are part of this planet and live from it and its systems. The more we damage and destroy these systems, the more we sacrifice the benefits that they give us and that we need. The more cumulative damage done, the more likely entire ecosystems collapse, not only taking with them the benefits they once gave, but also possibly affecting other larger regional ecosystems. And the worst danger to the environment is global warming, with its ability to catastrophically impact the Earth's global balances. Balances which affect each and every ecosystem everywhere on the globe. Global warming threatens to put the global society of Man at risk by eliminating many of the things Man currently depends on from nature - benefits that we can not live without. As such, my main worry in life is global warming as it has the potential to damage, even destroy, everything else that I care and worry about. For this reason, most of this blog is dedicated to explaining my attempts to eliminate myself from being part of the global warming problem because global warming is the sum of all of the individual actions of each inhabitant of this planet. I can not solve global warming because that is something that requires a concerted effort from all of us. The solution comes when each of us refuses to be part of the problem. And that is what I am trying to do.

Introduction

2006-09-06T01:05:00.000+02:00

I live in central Spain with my wife and dogs. I spent five years designing a self-sufficient, self-sustaining eco-house and lifestyle and learning and earning what was necessary to implement my designs. Six years ago I bought a three hectare abandoned vineyard overgrown with trees, bushes and weeds in a forested area at the foothills of a mountain range. Since then I have been putting my ideas and designs into practice. I have almost finished the house and its systems and a lot has been done with the land but much remains to do. I expect I will never finish everything since new ideas and new projects keep suggesting themselves.

Setting up and living the responsible life that I wish to live is a slow, never-ending process. A process that has its good days and bad. I want to live responsibly - responsibly toward my family, friends and animals, my health and my finances, the environment and society. I want to do right. But what is right and what is wrong is not as clear as black and white. Rather it is shades of grey. And it is shades of green. I try to distinguish good from bad by learning. But while we are all immersed in the world's wisdom, no one man can absorb it all. And even humanity may not. I try to learn as much as I can anyway. But I know I can improve more if others have the generosity to donate their two cents of knowledge to help me broaden my perspectives and my wisdom. And I hope to be able to repay their kindness in kind.

On a final note, all pictures, text and designs are my own and not copied from any source. I have not copyrighted any of this material, so anyone can use any material posted in this blog as they like. I simply ask that people not try to copyright anything posted here and not try to sell anything they acquire from here. I want to ensure that whatever information I provide here remains free.