Cob: Thermal mass works, PAHS works, Insulation works

[Amanda Peck]

But not necessarily under equal circumstances.  Seems like I've heard the 
Passive Annual Heat Storage people saying it takes a year or so to get the 
building working right.

Three points.

a) My friends with the (uninsulated) high thermal mass house would probably 
laugh at you both.  It takes a lot more than an hour with a little 
resistance heater to heat up the walls in the basement.  You have to get 
them heated a couple of inches in. You are not, after an hour or so, trying 
to heat up the soil outside  And if in addition you have plenty of solar 
gain--through the windows, through the greenhouse via a blower, you can 
survive most any (Tennessee) winter with only a few fires in the fireplace.  
They keep telling us--closing in on ad nauseum--how warm their house was 
when they got up--and how they need to have a fire in the wood-stove in the 
community center--even if the rest of us are pretty comfortable.  I 
house-sat at their house, and three or four days of mostly pretty cloudy--or 
the insulating curtains drawn--and their house is still only around 63 
degrees.

b) I've already posted this once here today.  IANTO SAYS (therefore it's 
true!!!!)  that cob, and by extension anything that depends on thermal mass, 
is probably not the best material for a building that isn't occupied and 
heated one way or another, most of the time--like Drew's basement.  
Insulation and quick heating qualities do count in this case.

c) the thermal mass gurus (maybe including Evans) assure us that if you had 
for some reason (smoke from steaks, or whatever) to replace all the air 
currently in your home, the insulated stick-built building would take a lot 
longer to get back to a comfortable temperature than the high thermal mass 
building.


I've snipped, paraphrased, and added a bit to this:

Drew says (correctly):
 > If I go into my 40 degree uninsulated basement and put on a
space heater while I'm working on something, the temperature warms up right 
nearby the heater only.


Darel goes on (correctly) to say that the passive annual heat storage works. 
  (Even in something as teensy as a tiny storage shed.)



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