It is hard for me to look a the weekend newspaper editions that devote half a dozen pages to the issue of environmentally conscious homes.
The articles are
always breathless and the information they convey invariably claim to
be the newest or latest understanding of architectural science.
This
from an earlier blog: “Back in the late
1970s I worked on and wrote about the first envelop house that was
built by Tom Smith at Lake Tahoe. The house had an envelope of air
that circulated around inside it from the basement through the roof
rafters. It was entirely self-sufficient in heating and cooling.
Tom
went on to build nearly a hundred similar houses in Westchester
County New York”.
A totally
self-sufficient house in terms of heating and cooling is a simple
matter nearly anywhere in the U.S. We just don't learn.
One of the most surprising things I learned in Tom's houses was that the comfortable rooms in the winter were comfortable for one reason: no drafts. What a simple lesson. Tom had learned it early on. A room that was comfortable at 70 degrees with ordinary air movement was comfortable at 65 degrees with no drafts.
Really simple, like everything else in eco-architecture, but too hard to pass on.