Sunday, November 20, 2005
A Sustainable House
Meaghan Willard describes her visit to a sustainable house designed and built by the owner, who is an architect himself. The house includes clay and straw exterior walls and a passive cooling system. The biggest problem with claw and straw in general is that condensation inside the wall can be a huge problem. It sounds like the designer has taken care of that adequately. The passive cooling system sounds intriguing, and I hope it works. I've seen many how-to's on passive cooling, but never any example where it's been used.... Along the length of the exterior walls meet the soffits, the designer has placed a small vent about 6in tall that allows air to flow into the attic space. Now at the top of the attic, there is a larger vent around 1.5ft by 14ft that projects off the ridge line. The idea is that the vent would allow hot air to escape, thus pulling cooling air into the attic. The supposedly will cool the entire home. ...He wanted to try this to see if it works on his own house before adding it to his clients' designs.
Meaghan also noted that the house didn't smell like a typical new house. Since this smell is because of off-gasing of carpets and sometimes paints, this is a good thing. Incidentally, the "new car smell" is also because of off-gasing of the plastics, the upholstery and the rugs.