Cob: Re: Re: Insulating in cold climates

[Michael Saunby]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Hunt" <billhunt at redrock.net>
To: "Julie Newhook" <julie.newhook at nf.sympatico.ca>; "Coblist"
<coblist at deatech.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 4:13 AM
Subject: Cob: Re: Insulating in cold climates


> Hi Julie- That's an interesting idea.  It would take a great deal of
fleece
> to insulate a house.  Do you have large volumes available to you?  One
> thing that would complicate using it with cob is that generally you are
> better off with most of your thermal mass (such as cob) inside of the
> insulation, so it can store heat from passive solar, or any other heat
> source.

Do you have some equations for this?  I'm sitting here thinking, it's been
quite warm here for a few (quite long) days,  and the temperature inside the
house just stays much the same.  What would insulation on the outside of the
house do?  Well during the day it would perhaps stop the outer inch or two
of wall heating up, but then a reflective coating (say white paint) would do
much the same and during the night it might stop the same couple of inches
cooling down.  If I actually wanted to change the temperature of a room
inside the house I'd still need to use a fantastic amount of energy to
change the temperature of the walls. Of course you don't, it's just a case
of raising (or lowering) the temperature of the air in the room and
accepting that the walls will either warm or chill it.

I think I'll just stick with my current scheme.  If it's cold out then I'll
need less clothes when I'm inside than out, and the reverse when it's warm
out.  But then if you spend all your time outside who cares, and if you
spend all your time inside you'd do better to worry about ventilation and
the ill health that poor ventialtion can cause.

Michael Saunby