Cob: Thermal Mass

[Robert Waldrop]

We have been living without air conditioning for three years, in a
1929 construction brick/plaster/llathe/uninsulated house in Oklahoma
City.   Here's what we do.  We open the house all evening and night
and ventilate (we put box fans in south facing windows to pull air out
of the house, and fans in north facing windows that pull in air).  We
planted a trellis along the sunny sides of the house to provide summer
shade.  We keep the house closed up until late afternoon, and use
ceiling fans.  In the late afternoon, it gets really hot in the
summer, and the solution to that is to go outside and spray everybody
with the water hose about once every hour.

We intend to add superinsulation as soon as we get the house rewired
which hopefully will be this year.  we ventilated the attic last year
and that helps a lot.  "Superinsulation" is r 50 in the walls and r 75
in the attic, using cellulose.  We chose those values because of a
visit to a straw bale home late in the afternoon on a 100 degree day,
and it was nice and cool inside.  R 50 is the generally accepted r
value for straw bale walls.

Robert Waldrop, OKC
http://www.bettertimesinfo.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Amanda Peck <ap615 at hotmail.com>
>Really comfortable for the whole day?  Uh, probably not.  Give one an
edge
>so that the house is OK until, say, 10:30 or 11:00, then bearable
until 2:00
>in the afternoon?  Entirely possible.  May not even depend much on
thermal
>mass, just the air in the house.  Time-tested strategy for Southern
homes
>before air conditioning became standard.