Hot Weather House Design

[Tio Ed]

Hey all:

The topic of DIY house construction pops up here regularly. Some of y'all may know me as an intrepid DIY designer/builder and author.

One of my monthly audio magazine's regular features is Going To The Country, a 15-20 minute program available as a free Mp3 download (or "podcast" if you are staying abreast of things techie) with tips and info for urban dwellers who want to build a life in the country.

This month's program is all about designing your new house to stay comfortable during the hot weather months. It is basically an overview of what is involved in designing in simple evaporative and convection cooling (also known as "pre-electrical era air conditioning"), geotubes and other low or no-tech ways to keep your house green and liveable.

To keep the spambots from harvesting my website address and inundating me with offers for Viagra and porn I can buy with all my money from Nigerian business transactions, I've broken down the link for the program. Simply copy this URL, paste it in your browser and then and replace any "DOT" with a period to make one continuous URL address.

www DOT texasmusicforge DOT com/stories/GoingToTheCountry_9.mp3

Best regards to all,

Tio Ed
Austin, Texas

[dheat]

Here's some great info on passive cooling: http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/yourhom...nical/fs15.htm

The site is Australian. So keep that in mind with respect to orientation. That is, if you live in the northern hemisphere, read "south" whenever you see "north".

[dheat]

Here's another link about passive cooling: http://www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebo...SolGuide3.html.

[Gary in AL]

Tio, I'll share this with you being from the deep south. One way they used to keep cooler was windows all the way around a house but they were not ordinary windows they went from floor to ceiling and were built in three sections so you could open them all the way to the top and walk thru them like doors.

The other thing I saw one time was a house built in the fork of a large creek. The house had vents in the foundation and a wooden shaft that ran up through it to the top. Air would come in off the creek go through a dirt basement then up through the shaft and there were little doors off the shaft on each floor. So you could open the little door on whatever floor you were on and get cool air.
This was a Greek Revival house that was two stories high. After I saw it some hippie tried camping in it (it was vacant) and started a fire in the middle of the floor and burned it down. It was outside of Florence, AL in northwest Alabama.
Gary

[Tio Ed]

Originally Posted by Gary in AL

The other thing I saw one time was a house built in the fork of a large creek. The house had vents in the foundation and a wooden shaft that ran up through it to the top. Air would come in off the creek go through a dirt basement then up through the shaft and there were little doors off the shaft on each floor. So you could open the little door on whatever floor you were on and get cool air.

THAT is ingenious. I would love to shake the hand of the person who thought that up when they were designing their home. Thanks a lot for sharing that one, Gary.

Best regards,

Tio Ed

[Randy Rooster]

Is the information available on your web site in written form Ed? I have dial up and a slow computer and usually can not download stuff like podcasts and the like.

[Cyngbaeld]

Hey Ed, if you ever want to do a workshop you are welcome to do it on my place! (HINT HINT HINT) LOL

[Thatch]

Originally Posted by Gary in AL

The other thing I saw one time was a house built in the fork of a large creek....

Along those lines is a heat chimney. I've been playing with implamenting this idea for a while. I may even make a small one of the new chicken house I'm building to play with the design a bit. I made a quick illustration to help explain the idea. It was just a quicky so it's not all that clear...



The "chimney" is effectively a greenhouse of sorts on the (preferably) south side of the home. You create a box, glass on the face, painted black on the inside. that is open at the top and a vent from inside the home is opened into this chimney towards the top of the house (where the warm air resides) vents are created at the base of the home either from the crawl space or tubes can be run underground to a nearby creek bed (though you'd want to keep up on any molds forming) Tubes could also be buried bringing geothermal to the system as well... Celing vents to draw from could also be ducted.

Anywho, the sun hits the chimney super heating the air inside the box, this air rises through convection and creates a large draw, the available air will be drawn from the celing area of the home sucking out the warm air and drawing in through the vents/tubes cool air. The idea is basically a more efficient coupala/ passive attic fan concept.

I haven't gotten a chance to listen to the audio yet but I will. Thanks for posting.

J