Do you live in a "passive house" (not to be confused with a passive-aggressive house)? Each year when we make our winter visit to mom's big, old, drafty house she makes a big deal about turning on the heat just for us (especially now that a young baby is a house guest). What if you didn't worry about the heating bills or the furnace breaking? What if you didn't even have a furnace?
posted originally from: OhDeeDoh
A few weeks ago we read a fascinating article about "passive heat" and "passive houses" being pioneered in Germany. There are now about 15,000 of them mostly in Germany and Scandinavia. The basic idea is to recycle heat through a central ventilation system: "The warm air going out passes side by side with clean, cold air coming in, exchanging heat with 90 percent efficiency."
Where does the heat come from in the first place? The sun, body heat and appliances for starters. One homeowner estimates he uses about 1/20th of the heating energy his parents used in a same-sized house. Surprisingly, passive houses only cost about 6% more to build than a traditionally heated home.
Intrigued? Check out the full article in The New York Times.
(photo by Rolf Oeser for The New York Times)
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
Intrigued indeed, although mostly at the note that the heat exchanger might also be used to keep a space cooler. In my part of the world, passive cooling is the bigger necessity.
Most of the methods are older ones... I lived in a 100-year-old brick-and-concrete house with ten-foot ceilings and ceramic tile floors... it was as cool as a cave. (Bitch to heat during our week or so of winter... maybe some ceiling fans to blow down the heat would have helped!)
Older homes often have openable windows above the doors, or double-hung windows that slide down from the top, to allow warm air to escape.
In the advent of climate control, we've started to cheap out on design, only to pay for it in our heating and AC bills. I hope ideas like these spread.
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We get so little sunlight during the winter, that I swore up and down that solar panels/passive solar heat would only work during the summer.
My bedroom has a pitched ceiling and is difficult to heat during the winter. I didn't want to use a space heater so I tried passive solar heat - I was surprised that it actually worked me! http://condo-blues.blogspot.com/2009/01/using-passive-solar-heat-in-central.html
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Simply put, passive heating comes from the sun. And as far as I know, THE resource remains Ed Mazria's Passive Solar Energy Book. http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/B000VNM20C
Somewhat technical, but there are really just a few key things to consider when designing a passive solar house.
1. Orientation to the sun (southern exposure is key)
2. Insulation
3. Windows to let the light in when you want it (winter) and shade when you don't (summer)
4. Mass inside your house to absorb the light and act as a heat sink (good options are: concrete, tile, stone floors)
Isn't it funny how these old/ancient ideas seem so new and have to be relearned? Some of the first and best examples of passive solar design were in Iran way, way back.
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