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Design Dilemma
emmelinewe

How do you heat your home?

Emmeline Westin
9 years ago
It might be getting warmer, but it's not quite time to switch off the boiler yet (or is it?). How do you keep your home toasty? Have you invested in radiators, underfloor heating, space heaters or something else?

Contemporary Dining Room · More Info
Featured Answer
  • windwizard
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago
    As a student at the Architectural Association back in 1972, I designed a passive solar dwelling which did not have a heating system - just heat from internal gains and solar energy. My wife and I then self-built the UK's first off-grid dwelling as a postgraduate research project at Brighton Polytechnic from 1976-78. It took two years because we hand built just about everything, from simple foundations to the timber frame, plus all the systems; windows, doors, water collection, dry toilet, solar water heater and wind turbines ... We also included a fantastic organic garden for our food and storage for our crops. To make efficient use of space I included a simple fold-down bed.

    The design strategy was to keep everything simple, pragmatic and efficient. To the north was an uninsulated buffer zone which housed tools/workshop, bicycles, monitoring equipment and crop storage. To the south of this was the main living area, a 12m box with a sloping ceiling. At one end was the 'cosy area' which included our bedroom. Next to this in the middle was our compact kitchen (with spray nozzles on the taps which could be operated by pressing a floor button).

    Next to this was the bathroom (keeping the lengths of copper pipe really minimal) which included our very special 'aerobic composting toilet'. To work properly, these dry toilets need a 150mm diameter vent pipe and they produce amazing, safe compost for the garden. Such toilets are nothing like the awful anaerobic things that you usually read about or see on TV!

    The final space was our living/office area, which included french doors, opening onto the 12m long 'sunspace' to the south. The sunspace had an area for eating/outdoor living and a growing area (great for tomatoes). Water was collected from all the roof areas, then filtered and stored in a large tank. For much of the year our simple, direct thermosyphon solar water heater could provide boiling water, saving energy for cooking and making hot drinks.

    All the glass used for the double-glazed doors, windows and single-glazed sunspace was low-cost horticultural glass and I constructed insulated window shutters for use on very cold nights. In summer it was easy to remove some of the sunspace glass, helping to prevent over-heating. Apart from one highly insulated door between the main living area and the north buffer zone, all our windows faced south, onto the buffer zone created by the sunspace. Every window included an area below the sight aperture which functioned as a solar collector, to heat air.

    The walls, roof and floor of the main living area were designed to have a U value of 0.2 or better and I also used internal storage on the east and west walls to add insulation. The sunspace acted as a pre-heater for ventilation and also provides thermal capacity. Air in the sunspace averaged 12.1 degC compared to 5.7 for the ambient external air during the cold, dull winter period. The dwelling was designed to be very airtight and as the toilet vent pipe slowly removes air from the dwelling, fresh pre-heated air is pulled in through tiny vents from the sunspace.

    One benefit from using water very efficiently and building your home from insulation is that we never saw any condensation anywhere and the walls always felt warm to the touch. I built a 1 kW wind turbine to power our lights and a special 24Vdc cooker. Excess wind power could be used to heat water in winter. (Modern photovoltaic panels were not available to us in the 1970's).

    The project was not expensive and we lived in the 'Integrated Solar Dwelling' and monitored the performance for 12 months... When our project prematurely ended late in 1979 due to spending cuts it had only cost £12,636 or £121.50/m² including labour (costed 1979, ex VAT, no site costs) including our salaries!

    I hope this gives hope to people who wish to live lightly and sustainably on planet earth. OK, it was a massive amount of hard work - a labour of love, but it was also a great joy and today, we have so much more knowledge and experience than my wife and I had 40 or more years ago. It can be done if you try!
    J W Shore AA Dipl (arch) resourceresearch@talktalk.net

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