Heating house with solar panels OR geo therm & radiant heat.... anyone successful? Low temp radiant

[snowleopard]

The Alaskan Passivehouse articles were another example of dubious affordability. $100,000 in equipment and still burning wood, propane and diesel??? and they call that affordable??? The first article mentioned bringing the costs down for future homes, the problem is that as long as energy is expensive then copper will be too, when energy is cheap copper will still be too expensive for most people to afford to use it to absorb solar energy.

I agree with the idea of combining solar and wood with mass for cold climates. . . . but I think they're pushing the envelope way beyond what will ever catch on in the real world.

I re-read that article about Kassels' house, and didn't see where it was described as affordable. The spin on this that I got was of a 60-something retiree who waited 35 years to build his dream home, then sunk his retirement savings into creating a price-is-not-really-the-issue home that would be comfortable and have a low carbon footprint. By sharing it, he may have inspired a few thousand people to start thinking about what they could do differently. He was also willing to take the hit, if you will, by applying this technology, and finding out who it could be done better by someone else. I'd guess that house was a labor of love, and was built to pass down to their son.

Fairbanks underwent a huge housing boom here in the '70'ies when the oil money was flowing. L48-style suburbs popped up like mushrooms, and live on--big barns of houses build with no regards to solar orientation and single-wall 2x6 construction. I've heard--and whether this is accurate or not, it's believable--that the average house in Fairbanks uses about 1600 gallons of fuel oil a year for heat. People are starting to expect to do better now, in part because examples like this demonstrate what is possible.

Over the last year I watched a neighbor's house grow slowly, probably on the buy-a-board-and-nail-it-up mortgage plan. I was confused and fascinated--it appeared to be being built inside out--and someone said, "No, I've heard of that, it's called the REMOTE wall--the insulation goes outside the sheathing." The local military bases are now utilizing that technique in new housing. These are two examples of construction with a clear eye on the bottom line selectively using the fruits of cold-climate housing research.

I think that the hope is that by trying different things, and even exploring some inviting dead-ends, we'll have a better sense of what is possible. I live in a house that was built about ten years after the aforementioned boom by a visionary who was, at the time, pushing the envelope. It still performs well, but the ideas in it are now just common sense--passive solar, thermal mass, earth-sheltered, maximum insolation, R- 60 ceiling, double-wall construction, plumbing on central walls, high-efficiency boiler. Yawn.

There's always the real-world compromise between what is possible and getting up some shelter because winter's coming and you have to have a place to live.

 

[snowleopard]

And two cords of wood with 22" walls?!?

I didn't "forget" to take off the rebates because I paid for them.

I like the articles and designs. If you can make it work in Fairbanks you can make it work just about anywhere, and if the price tag drops enough it might actually make sense for some areas.

The Fairbanks climate and building conditions are benificent compared with some of the conditions in rural Alaska. There's a quote attributed to a King Islander: “Before the missionaries came, we lived underground in sod houses and laid away our dead on the tundra. . . . Now we live above ground and bury our dead. - and we haven't been warm since.†I've been in some old underground houses--homes, rather-- that could be just about heated with body heat. HUD houses are now typical of housing in villages, and residents are moving to urban areas because they can no longer afford the cost of heating these places (2x4 walls with the wind whistling underneath, not sited towards sun).

I was at a local building supply store last week looking at new toilets. This vendor sells package houses that can be trucked, barged, or flown into rural villages, towns, and off-road hub cities, complete down to the last nail you need, like the old Sears houses. I was looking at toilets, and was told of their .8/1.28 deal-flush "This is the one we're putting in our package houses." The bottom line is driving that decision. Green makes sense and cents, in this case, and I for one am cheered by this.