HALL'S HOME IMPROVEMENTS

ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABLE BUILDING

Since 1998, I have been researching Ecological Building and Design Construction Methods and Systems.  As part of this research, I have actively put my research into practice:  designing and constructing on my own house using many of the below technologies. 

WWW.OURCOOLHOUSE.COM/SCOTT  is a link to a web page in which I have chronicled the progress and construction of my Passive Solar Straw bale House in which our family now lives.  

Below is a list of some basic concepts I used in my own house which are in support of owner comfort and health, along with ecological sustainability:

Passive Solar Design:  Using proper orientation of the home, proper window placement, correct roof overhangs, and adding thermal mass inside of the building structure (to name just a few strategies).  These strategies are simple and add very little initial cost to the structure but for the long term add a huge value to the structure:  Reduced heating and cooling costs and added comfort to the home for the entire life of the home.  

Radiant Floor Heat:  Highly increased comfort with warm floors as the heating source of the home, and decreased energy usage.

Super-insulation: By increasing the amount of insulation (R-30 walls or more,  R-50 in the attic or more) and minimizing the amount of air that comes into cracks of the home you can drastically reduce energy usage in the home.

Energy Recovery Ventilator(ERV):  Due to the increasing "tightness" of modern homes, asthma rates and other breathing problems over the last 20 years have gone up dramatically.  This trend only gets worse as homes use tighter and tighter construction methods.  An ERV serves to exhaust stale air in the home (but capturing the heat in the stale air first, or 'coolth' in the summer) and bring in fresh, filtered outdoor air year round.  A local company in Athens Ohio manufactures one of the most energy efficient ERV's on the market today.

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Ecological/ Sustainable Design and Construction:

You can read my account/ chronicle of my own straw bale home building process that shows the progress of my own home that I  built at OURCOOLHOUSE.COM/SCOTT.

I have several business associates with a strong interest in sustainable building construction.  In the future,  we will be collaborating on projects together, projects dealing with super energy efficiency and occupant comfort in mind.

Here are the key components that I feel are important in a home:

1) A 'feel' of warmth, coziness (yet spacious), an environment which evokes a certain feel to it that makes you love to be there.  This is accomplished using a variety of techniques:        

        A) choosing natural building material, stone, wood,  etc                for inside the home

        B) A design layout which is more open (instead of boxed             in), yet, using techniques such as varying ceiling                     heights, which provide energetic transitions from room             to room.  This can do wonders in creating a feeling of             'warmth' in the home.

2)  Extreme energy efficiency:  this is done by super-insulating walls ceilings, foundation and also building an airtight structure (minimize the amount of air that is exchanged through cracks, etc.

3)  Health and comfort:  Use an energy recovery ventilation system in the home to provide constant fresh air in the home while exhausting stale air in the home.  The erv (energy recovery ventilator) provides heat exchange so you are not wasting energy while at the same time bringing in fresh air.

4)  Design correctly to the site, orientation to the sun:  By running the longest axis of the house east-west, you keep the south side where more windows can be installed to provide natural passive solar heating in the winter.  Correct roof overhangs keep the summer sun from entering the structure

5) Lots of thermal Mass:  Thermal mass is any material that holds and stores heat.  Concrete, stone, stucco, etc:  these are materials that inherently store heat.  The benefit of adding thermal mass into a home is that the home's interior temperature becomes more stable so it is easier to keep the comfort level at a particular level.  It also will serve to keep your heating and cooling system sized lower due to the heating and cooling loads being spaced out more throughout a wider time cycle.  Additionally, a major benefit is that while taking advantage of using the sun to help heat the house, the thermal mass materials in the home will "soak in" the heat (or the 'coolth') and slowly give off the heat to the house as soon as the temperature in the home would start to drop.

6) Another technique that is of value if desired is to use the south side as a sun room and use ceiling ventilators to bring the heat into the house when the house needs heat.  This will provide a more precise temperature variant inside the home while still utilizing the sun to heat your house.   Of course for the cloudy days in the mid-west, a small backup standard heat system can be used, but with super insulation, right orientation, it will require only a small fraction of the energy used to heat a standard home.  Over the life of the home, many tens of thousands of energy dollars can be saved, along with reduced fossil fuel usages.

There are many more basic technologies that can be used, but the above are just some of the basics.  The basic idea is to create a home that is:

1)  healthy and comfortable

2)  feels warm, cozy, yet spacious

3) is super energy efficient

There are many choices in constructing a home that has all of the above.  We are not talking about some weird, 'out there' home that looks funky.  If the above techniques are used with a quality design, the resale value of such a home would far exceed a similar home of the same size (yet with ordinary construction techniques).  These are some ideas:

1) A timber framed home structure, use (Structural insulated panels, SIP's), or spray in foam, or straw bale, etc to wrap the outside of the home (insulation).  Timber frame homes provide a lot of beauty inside the home with the large wooden beams.

2)  Standard 2 by 6 exterior wall construction with the addition of a "standoff" running horizontally across the 2 by 6's to give an extra 1.5" of insulation space and virtually eliminate 'thermal bridging" of heat from the exterior to interior wall.

3)  Straw bale construction:  There is a wealth of information on the internet about this.  There are over a dozen straw bale structures in Athens County including the one I built for our own family.

4)  A double framed 2 by 4 wall.  This would eliminate thermal bridging, and also allow you to install as much insulation as you desire in the wall (wet spray cellulose, spray in foam, etc)  These types of insulation methods reduce air infiltration to a small fraction as standard fiberglass and will may off in a large way)

Along with my own many years of research and experimentation with these types of construction technologies, I have several friends/business associates with years of experience that they have drawn upon as well.  In any project, I would be drawing on the resources of several key people besides myself that have spent many years in their own research and experimentation with these above methods.

Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in consultation on a project.

 Thanks, Scott Hall.

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