[Cob] Solar Design

[Barbara Roemer]

The latest CASBA (California Straw Building Assn.) newsletter just came out,
for which editor and architect/premiere solar designer Dan Silvernail wrote
some salient notes. Seems like they ought to be out among all natural
builders, so here's an excerpt, with Dan's permission.  I substituted
"natural" and "natural materials" and "natural builders" for straw
references:

 


...(Merely) building with (natural materials) is not enough; we must do so
mindfully - mindful of a diminishing conventional energy resource, of global
competition over an increasingly scarce commodity, of the ecological price
we pay for burning fossil fuels.  To build responsibly we must realize the
most energy-wise structure our methodology supports....

Of other facets, the more -perhaps most- important is appropriate solar
design.  If as (natural) builders we are not mindful of applying the
principles of solar design, we've really only delivered "half the goods" to
the environment in terms of sustainable practice.  Put another way, we can
insert straw insulation (I'd substitute thermal mass here for straw
insulation) into our walls 'til the cows come home and if the building
doesn't provide appropriate solar response, optimizing sun and wind energy
as cleverly and wisely as we can to diminish our reliance on fossil fuels,
we've simply missed the point.

Nearly every (natural builder) knows this, but in the heated assessment of
competing priorities which is the design process, solar design most often
plays second or third string to other concerns such as site issues or budget
constraints.  It must not.

...(L)et me cajole my audience to remind and avail ourselves of solar design
practice.  Let's know it better, increase our understanding, assign value to
it, implement it, assign it priority, educate our clients to it and make
them commit to it as a personal goal.  Our doing so will diminish the
unwholesome relationship that dependence on fossil fuels now brings, and
optimize the benefits that true (natural building) practice can bring.