A very nature-based use of passive cooling is achieved by breezes driven across different surfaces that naturally create different temperatures in the same way that nature does…

…just like the way that land and sea breezes are generated by different temperatures over cool water and then moving over air heated by the warmth given off by rocks and land, or in this case, by concrete and then wood. Because of their different latent heat retention, all these materials have heat gain or loss, making the air temperature different above them.

In nature, that’s what creates windy areas. The many courtyards also help generate breezes the way that nature does.

Throughout – all of the hardwood louvers  can be adjusted by hand to decrease or increase the breezes and sunlight being filtered through.

To create the maximum of privacy and spaciousness, the architect used the traditional courtyard approach. The house itself skirts the perimeter of the property, with a central wing skirted by a strip of lawn on one side, and a strip of water on the other.

It seems larger than it is because the space in the central wing is see-through, with an uninterrupted 120 foot view across the entire compound.

Images: Wallflower Architecture
Via Cubeme

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Architecture That Mimics Nature to Create a Breezy Micro-Climate

The entire front is open to the sea. Sea breezes forming cross breezes throughout the design mean the need for air conditioning is reduced. The use of wood throughout is more sustainable than carpet.

There is a tiny central Zen garden featuring grasses that soften the harsh lines of the courtyard, elegantly, with understated simplicity.

Huge timbers form stair treads inside. Generous chunks of natural materials give a sense of lavishness, which ensures that the tiny footprint doesn’t feel cramped.

The small deck is designed to maximize the sea breezes.

A very unique “stone” floor reminds us that stone is – just that: stones. Chopped-up rocks. More energy efficient than chopping up rocks to make a stone floor, so why not just use stones? It must feel good to walk on these gently rounded stones in bare feet, making that connection to the beach outside.

Only a small, simple house is needed to indulge in the simple pleasure of the huge and infinite-seeming sea.

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(Relatively) Small is Beautiful

The radiant heating system, using circulating hot water, normally used only in flooring, is also even incorporated into some of these exterior walls.

The builder installed an air system that completely changes the air in the property once every two hours – replacing the stale damp air with fresh, warmed, dry, filtered air. A heat exchange system uses the hot air going out to help pre-warm the fresh air that is brought in.

Heat recovery ventilators change and filter the air every two hours. On some of the the roofs, solar tiles provide the electricity, and a rainwater harvesting system reduces water use.

Twenty solar hot water panels feed hot water into an in-ground heat storage system for year-round energy supply and help the sun warm the pool through these huge South-facing windows.

Water itself behaves like a thermal sink. By putting the indoor pool inside huge windows that soak up the sun, the pool itself becomes a part of the warming system for the entire 21st century eco-castle. Mmmmm… I love it!

Source: Barnsley Hill Farm
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Swimming Pool Acts as Thermal Storage in 17th Century Eco-Retrofit

Method Homes has a down-to-earth, contemporary design sensibility that informs their straightforward prefab homes.

Each uses locally grown and produced building materials such as certified Douglas fir framing material and reclaimed fir trim and cedar siding on the outside. Because the sample home here is built in a flood plain, it is set on an unusually tall foundation, with a through way for flood water between the two sections of the house…

…and abundant solar-friendly space on the generous cantilevered roof area provides the option for solar electricity to power the home’s lighting and electricity needs.

The Glacier home features bamboo and cork floors, energy-efficient lighting and plumbing fixtures, hydronic radiant heating, whole-house ventilation systems, solar options and enhanced insulation applications.

Principal Architect Tom Lenchek says: “We design for sustainability and energy efficiency, balancing the desire for an architecturally sophisticated home.”

And by building indoors, in a factory, in the rain-drenched Pacific Northwest, they not only guarantee regular work weeks for construction crews – because it never rains indoors…

…but they also cut down on trips made to the site by delivery vehicles and subcontractors, thus minimizing the damage to roads from months of heavy vehicles going back and forth.

They hope to prefab their homes starting at $148,000 for about 900 sq ft. This first sample is for sale at just over $500,000 – on this site.

Source: Method Blog

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“Glacier” Prefab House by Method Homes

…but these are the first straw bale building blocks I’ve seen. What a simple, but great idea. Straw bale construction is eco friendly. Straw is a waste product on farms. And sourcing your building materials from what would otherwise go to waste makes for very sustainable buildings.

Here’s how it works. Oryzatech has found a way to compress rice straw into interlocking blocks of super fire-resistant straw. The holes act both as stabilizer connectors, just like lego blocks, but also provide the conduit through which threaded rods run to bolt the walls to the foundations, and to allow vertical runs for electrical, plumbing and cable conduits.

Through a scalable, low energy-production process, the company can make and sell an almost unlimited supply of highly insulating, carbon-sequestering construction blocks.

The insulating value of straw is unparalleled. The resulting structure creates (Passive-haus level) R-50 insulating walls, that provide better shear strength than a traditional sheathed 2×4 wall.  Each block weighs about 30 pounds, and is easily clean cut with a saw. California Polytechnic University has tested the blocks and found that they are:

• Highly insulated: More than three times the value of an insulated 2X6 stud wall
• Seismically strong: better than wood framing and less brittle than concrete walls
• Fast to assemble: Block dimensions are 12”x12”x24”, easily dovetailing with other common construction modules. Each block weighs only 30 lbs and interlocks.
• Carbon Offsetting Technology- University testing shows potentially 50 lbs of carbon offsetting

With all these positives, there is just one negative. No horizontal conduit runs are possible so far. The vertical hole is available in every block, so the fact that these are not available with conduit holes that also enable horizontally run conduit matters somewhat less; however, this is one thing the duo are working on finding the resolution for, because obviously it is still an issue. Though you could design around this, with a horizontal wooden beam to contain the horizontal runs at some point up the wall.

This is a sketch of the idea, at this point, there’s no release date announced, and the two are looking for investors…

Images: Ecocustomhomes
Source: Jetson Green

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Straw Building Blocks Make Warm Sustainable Homes

On the foredeck is an inviting plunge pool that is refilled daily with  water from the river. That’s not blue.

‘We tell guests we can make the water blue if they want, but that would involve adding chemicals that would then have to be pumped into the river,’ The owner comments. ‘So far, they’ve always declined.’

On deck -no  nasty smell of diesel – the boat uses jet propulsion instead of conventional propellers for better fuel economy.

The suites have private balconies, modern colonial-style décor and the mosquito netting is at the windows, so the mosquito netting doesn’t bunch up around you as you sleep.

Despite the simplicity of the completely open sides creating the cross ventilation, the appointments are in keeping with the understated luxury that the cruising class demands and expects.

An eco sensibility can be quite delightful, they’ll find. Since the rich are responsible for most of the climate emissions in the world, it is good to see a development like this, as an education. Maybe when they commission their next mansion; they’ll remember those delightful solar showers and cool natural breezes.

Images: Zambesi Queen

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The Rich Learn Sustainable Living on Luxury Cruise

Made by Texas-based AirGenerate, their AirTap device was demonstrated at the Solar Decathlon, and helped the University of Illinois earn their perfect score for hot water energy efficiency.
The company has done something remarkable: turn any conventional gas or electric water heater into an affordable, effective, heat-pump water heater, more than doubling the energy performance compared with a standard electric water heater.

The unit is just 18″ wide by 14″ deep by 14″ high, and weighs only 48 pounds. It saves energy because it draws heat from the surrounding air and transfers the heat into fluid within a sealed copper coil that is inserted into the hot water tank, heating up the water, so the gas does not have to work so hard.

And to make it even better, the $500 can be reduced not just by the 30% tax credit, but in many states there are additional rebates or subsidies or tax credits.

Image: Prime Plumbing
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DIY Hot Water Retrofit Cuts Energy Bill Up to 70%

It certainly looks subversive; growing right up between two more traditional buildings… but what an different layout too. Look at the ground floor. That is the kitchen, right there.

Shockingly subversive, this home appears to put the kitchen in full view of the street. Perhaps a gate slides across the front. Or could this be facing a back terrace?

Greenery breathes out all its calming oxygen over sitters inside the sitting room behind the kitchen, who would almost feel as if they are within an illicit forest in the city.

There is something subversive feeling about this secret forest staking out and taking back a city street.

By the time the three story high green wall gets up to the third floor, it is on the outside. The entire wall is just outside, behind the bed, through an enormous glass window with just a two foot deep view!

Because it is a smaller room; the bedroom is sited within glass, with the green wall outside. There is a door to the outside at the end of the room, to the pebble garden that collects the rainwater that drenches the indoor forest below.

And on the other side of the green wall where the bedroom is, you are on a terrace – surrounded by the lush greenery that Singapore can grow, if left to itself. A very green house. If every house in every city was as green, that would cool our cities and refresh our planet. And that would not be subversive at all.

Source: Chang Architects
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A Secret Forest Dwelling in the Heart of Singapore

That’s because Wyoming pooh-poohs tough energy efficiency building codes and clean energy legislation that is now helping other states get their fossil energy use way down.

Nevertheless, at least one house in the state has been designed to far exceed the state’s non-existant renewable energy and household energy-efficiency requirements.  And considering the response of Wyoming homeowners to a chance to install clean, safe, reliable, renewable home energy funded by Recovery Act stimulus funds – soon it won’t be the only one!

The glass in these large Solarban 60 energy-efficient glass windows from Pennsylvania reduces solar heat gain by about 90% of the US average.

These 18″ thick rammed earth walls from Oregon-based EarthWall act as a heat gain during the day, soaking up the sun and releasing the heat when the air cools off at night. Earthwall reinforces the earth with steel rods to give the structure support for earthquake protection. And besides which, they look chic and eco-correct, too.

The floors also do their part to reduce Wyoming’s dirty energy waste, by cleaning up the ubiquitous coal industry.

The concrete floors have fly ash waste folded safely into it, so that instead of having to use up valuable resources for building materials – a waste product from the coal industry – fly ash, is used instead. It is safe to use in this way, and very durable, but instead of enduring in landfill where it endangers water supplies for centuries, it is sealed up harmlessly into the flooring.

Installed underneath the floors are radiant heat pipes to warm and cool the water to keep the house moderate all year and eliminate the need for air conditioning.

Renewable energy provides the electricity. A wind power system captures some of the “Saudi Arabia of Wind” in Wyoming to power halogen energy-efficient light bulbs (and the rest of the home’s electrical needs).

As Wyoming’s most famous resident former Vice President Cheney once famously said, while pooh-poohing alternatives to fossil energy: “Energy conservation is (merely) a virtue”.

I’d say, it’s not merely a virtue.  In this instance it has made for one truly gorgeous house!

Image: EarthWall
Source: Examiner
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Hyper-Efficient Wyoming Home Bucks 90% Coal-Powered State Trend

It houses the master bedroom. The whiteness continues to dominate the interior. Calming, but a bit sterile? This looks like a hospital room to me.

Stranger still, the bathing area is right in the middle of the house and wide open on all sides to views.

But there is a good reason for this. The entire house can be seen through in both directions , so you can see the sea, and in the other direction, the hills.

And when you need to be in the bathroom, the view can be shut out with a special glass that can be made to become opaque making the bathroom private when privacy is needed.

The house is sunk partway below grade, to take advantage of the geothermal properties of cooling and heating at five feet or more underground to reduce the home’s energy bill.

The passageways from front to back are on the sides of the house.

Facing out to sea, a smaller window is high enough to leap a tall privacy fence.

…and is yet big enough to view the sea view here.

All in all – an odd house. The relentless whiteness, which makes environmental sense outside: because if every roof in a region experiencing greater temperature increases was white – it would help reduce regional climate change. A white roof also reduces heating and cooling costs by about 20%.

But extending that white on the inside seems just peculiar to me. How about you?

Image: Takio Shiotsuka
Source: Shio
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A Very Energy Efficient White House by the Sea