[Cob] Chill out / misinformation

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006, GlobalCirclenet wrote:

>
> I know it's fruitless to argue with the clueless, but ... replies interlined

First off I will put on my coblist Kahuna hat and say CHILL!!

We don't need this kind of hostile tone on the list from anyone, it 
just escalates into nasty arguments, and then I have to actually 
do something like removing people from the list which I really dislike 
doing (as most of the list old-timers will recall).

Second (switching from my kahuna hat to my techie / builder / teacher / 
know-it-all hat :-)

There have been alot of statements by a number of different people during 
this argument that are incorrect and/or potentially problematic.  I am 
going to address all of them here as best I can remember them regardless 
of who posted what.

  - Putting wet papercrete between walls is problematic for the reasons
    given by Charmaine, it also may be a problem due to cement content (I'm
    not much into papercrete so I don't remember it's content level).
    The problem with cement is not just the potential for spalling if it is
    used as in a surface plaster, but that it is not sufficiently
    breathable for the wall, and it doesn't matter where in the wall you
    put it, if it reduces the breatheability of the wall it's going to
    cause problems.

  - With regard to heat confusion (and I will restate some of what went
    before) heat does not rise, heated air rises, but only relative to
    colder air, this results in convection currents, so a poorly insulated
    ceiling will cause greater loss than the walls will because the rate at
    which heat is transferred increases with a larger temperature
    difference, so if the ceiling is warmer than the walls and insulated
    the same, it will lose more heat.  Now if the air is reasonably close
    to a uniform temperature, you will not get any significant convection
    currents and therefore will not see any significant difference between
    the heat lost through the ceiling and that lost through the walls if
    they have the same level of insulation.  In a poorly sealed and poorly
    insulated house with single pane windows, every cold spot on the
    exterior of the building and every air gap is cooling parts of your
    interior air which results in you having cold air which will naturally
    drop down as the warmer air rises up and you will get convection
    currents.  In a well sealed heavily insulated house with low-e, triple
    pane windows, insulated doors, etc., the cold spots go away almost
    completely and along with them, the temperature differences in your
    air, so you only get temperature differences from your heating (or
    cooling) systems, and because of the heavy insulation (and therefore
    slow heat loss), the churning of the air due to the occupants and or
    results in the air temperature being almost completely uniform so that
    there is virtually no separation or convection and no measurable
    difference in heat loss through walls or roof with the same insulation.
    This is not speculation, this was measured experimentally many years
    ago, and though I don't remember the details from the report, I recall
    the R-values for walls and ceiling were less than those commonly
    reported for straw bale (I think it was around R-40).

    I would also like to note here that plastered straw bales (as in
    whole bales) have been used many times that I am aware of for ceiling
    insulation.

>>> This "almost-all eco-earthen house" apparently doesn't have a roof,
>>> windows, doors, appliances, utilities, foundation, or anything else.
>>> Because all those things require other materials not "so eco-earthen".
>>
>> They do?
>> Foundations of dry-stacked stone are "eco-earthen"...can't get much more
>> "eco-earthen" in fact.
>
> If you happen to have plenty of stone shaped just right on your 
> property. Or you burn a lot of fossil fuel hauling it there. That's if 
> the code police don't shut you down.

Lots of places have no building code requirements, and depending on 
where you are building, stacked rough stones or hand cut stones can 
be quite safe, even in a quake zone, alot depends on your building 
design, and ultimately if the quake is large enough, it really won't 
matter what your design was.  The tradeoffs have to be weighed for every 
circumstance and you have to decide what the probabilities are of a quake 
big enough to cause a problem.  I bring up earthquakes here as that is the 
only reason I am aware of for the code police to even care about your 
using rock in the foundation, and plenty of people do it with code 
approval by including some cement and rebar in the foundation along with 
the rock.

Stone does not need to be just the right shape, or of particularly good 
quality.  I have built with just what was available on many sites 
including soft crappy stone, barely moveable bolders, and wonderful flat 
nicely shaped rocks that you could just pickup off the surface of the 
ground.  Some of it had to be dug up (by hand) and hauled a 1/4 mile, some 
of it you could just walk over and pickup, some needed to be modified 
with a rock hammer and/or chisel, most of it was used as-is.  I am 
currently working on an experimental building design that dispenses with 
conventional foundation rock altogether (other than small rocks for 
drainage).

>> Windows are what you make of them and may be both
>> detrimental and beneficial to a heating/cooling system at the same
>> time...and your heating system may be passive solar gain and a wood
>> fire...your cooling system may be earth berms, a cold sink, or simply
>> opening said windows to allow the air to move through.
>
> All windows lose heat. But you can do without windows, or doors for 
> that matter. Just never look out or go outside. And while you're at it, 
> show us a passive solar house that doesn't require a lot of thermal mass 
> concrete, stone, or water-holding structures which all require energy to 
> make, move, or install. Maybe you'd like to shovel enough dirt to berm a 
> house without heavy equipment. I wouldn't at 62.

Why not carry it one step further and state the obvious, everything loses 
heat!  Windows may be a net thermal gain or loss depending on the design 
of the building and the climate, but even in the coldest climates, a 
window may still be a net thermal gain with proper design.  Many modern 
structures are carefully designed specifically using windows to manage 
thermal gain or loss.

>> Roofs as well can most certainly be eco-earthen. Use totally natural
>> materials if you don't mind re-roofing every few years or so. Insulate
>> the ceiling with wool. There are hundreds of options for making an
>> eco-earthen roof...from practical to impractical...but all of them
>> do-able to some extent or other, in some part of the world or other.
>
> Wool? As in sheep? Can you spell v-e-r-m-i-n? Hundreds of options? Like 
> thatch? They have to redo thatch every year. Try and get fire insurance 
> on that one.

Somewhere around here I have a chart of insulation materials along with 
their thermal ratings, burn characteristics and a variety of other data, 
while it doesn't have "hundreds" of materials, it does have at least 25 or 
thirty different materials, most of them natural or minimally processed 
ranging from sheeps wool and vermiculite to standard glass bats.

To address two items you mention above, sheep's wool carded and dipped 
in a quite benign chemical (I don't recall which one) does not have any 
more problems with vermin than anything else that I am aware of, my house 
is insulated with it and it is widely used in some areas of the world. 
Untreated sheep's wool (not even washed) has been heavily used in some 
buildings that I have worked on, and stayed in repeatedly for a long 
period of time and I have yet to see or hear of any problems there either. 
I'm not denying the possibility, but I have yet to see it.

As far as thatch goes, I am one of the few people on this list who has 
actually had some training in thatching (traditional european style, there 
are a number of distinctly different types of thatching world wide), and 
done correctly it generally does not require maintenance more than every 
10 to 20 years, and the roof will last 50+ years.  As far as insurance, it 
depends on the design of the roof as to how much of a fire hazzard it 
is and there are plenty of high end thatched buildings in Europe, and yes 
they have been able to get insurance for at least some of them.  With 
proper roof structure design (and this was demonstrated for fire 
marshalls), the roof will just smolder slowly for days rather than burning 
the house to the ground in minutes.

[snip]
> Then dream on. I assume you live in a cave, right?
>
>> I hope to h*ll that no one is such a sensitive soul that they heed the
>> narrow-minded cynicism normally regurgitated by "GlobalCircleNet".
>
> I practice what I preach. Do you? And I don't play the game of "more 
> sustainable than thou" ...
[snip]

I can't speak for the person you were addressing this to, however:

I do practice, and teach what I preach (preaching is not the same as 
teaching).  I do not claim to be more or less sustainable than anyone, I 
live what I believe and let that speak or itself.  People who visit me, 
observe and draw their own conclusions.

And yes, my place does bear some similarities to a cave :-)

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
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