WetEV said:
AndyH said:
As for night time energy usage...let me think about that a minute or two. Since we're talking about electricity here, you must be suggesting that only electric heat is appropriate, right? Converting electricity to heat is about the least efficient way to stay warm on the planet!
There is not enough biomass, and far too many other uses for it... Like food, shelter and raw materials.
There's plenty of biomass - and the stuff just keeps growing. Not enough for what? Raw materials for what? Get one use out of it or three? The question and assumptions matter.
One of the tenents of Permaculture is to get more than one use from everything. Example - one can grow hay, compost it, and use it in a farm field. Or one can grow hay, feed it to cattle, and spread the manure on the farm field. Or we can grow hay, feed it to cattle, process the manure in an anerobic digester, and spread the effluent on the the farm field. Each set of choices gives us a fertile field for the next hay cutting, but some choices give us much more from that hay - including milk, meat, a warm house and hot water.
WetEV said:
Burning fossil fuel long term, as "Reinventing Fire" suggests we do, is a bad choice for climate future, even at the reduced level suggested. Short term, of course, we must.
I agree - yet the move from current practices to the reinventing fire plan where coal, oil, and 75% of natural gas use goes away is a very good start. The Third Industrial Revolution plan is carbon free, as are other option. We CAN do better with no new tech, but we need the will. I can only directly affect my own.
WetEV said:
More insulation and fewer and better windows can reduce the heat needed. But you still need heat, and energy for air exchange.
More insulation and better windows is a start but we can do much, much better than that. The energy for air exchange doesn't need to come from electricity or combustion, though it can. Depends on assumptions as well.
WetEV said:
Suggestions depend on the question, application, location, available local raw materials, etc. I know I use Earthships as a 'far end of the yardstick' example - yet the buildings work all over the world and are made from mostly local and carbon-neutral or carbon negative materials so it's not just a 'net zero' example.
The sun entering an Earthship greenhouse heats that room, heats the main house, provides grow lighting in the greenhouse and full room lighting throughout the house. The angle of the glass allows more light and heat in during the winter and less during the summer. The warmer greenhouse floor heats air which exits through the overhead skylights. That end of the 'thermosiphon' draws fresh air through the intake vents in the north wall of the building - air is cooled as it passes through cooler ground. Fresh air year round with no burning or electricity or fans. This is also used in some passive houses - earth cooling tubes, a heat recovery ventilator, etc.
WetEV said:
AndyH said:
I stayed in an Earthship in Taos in January - minus 15°F overnight and 35 during the day - didn't use a single Watt hour of electricity to warm the house. Not a single electron flowed to heat either the air, the floor, or hot water. 68°F first thing in the morning and 76 by late afternoon.
Good design for Taos. For Sweden, not so good. Or anywhere in Northern Europe.
Good design for Taos. Also for Lasqueti Island, NW of Seattle, east Texas, central Georgia, Vermont, upstate NY, Wyoming. Passive solar design does need some insolation. Thankfully the majority of people on the planet don't live near the Arctic circle.
WetEV said:
http://www.earthshipeurope.org/index.php/earthships/performance?showall=1&limitstart=
I read through this site and agree with some of their findings. Too many of the comments however show they really don't understand the 'back story' for many of these buildings. Most of these were demonstration or public test buildings because local building rules don't allow a building to be off-grid or off sewer or etc. Our political/social systems have evolved to the point that only the status quo is allowed in too many areas. When I see the word 'Earthship' I see a group of overarching goals - the Global is only one model Earthship. The building going up in the Philippians is different from a Global model which is different from the buildings in India or China. One of the biggest takeaways from all of the European demonstration builds is that they were not allowed to build their buildings - they were forced to compromise in order to make the local politicians happy.
Another example is the claim that there's no data collection or study. The building I rented in Taos was full of sensors. The data were used to trigger design adjustments and to confirm building performance in temperate areas of the planet.
http://anzasca.net/2012papers/papers/p62.pdf http://www.ibpsa.org/proceedings/BS2013/p_1137.pdf
http://www.earthshipironbank.com.au/research.html
I'm holding it up as an example that can work well for a majority of the places on the planet, but no, I wouldn't build one in Antarctica either. PassivHaus works beautifully in the exceptionally cold areas and can be adapted to work on the equator as well. There are plenty of options for low or zero energy housing that use 0-15% of the energy of traditional buildings. Applying as many of the known efficiency improvements as possible as quickly as possible make a dramatic difference in our number one GHG emitters - our buildings - and completely changes the problem of phasing out fossil fuels.
