For the last several years my wife and I have been planning a house to be built on our property in North Carolina. For the first couple of years we basically watched the sun come up and go down so that we could properly place the house to insure warmth in winter and shade in the summer.
The goal is to build an energy efficient house that exploits the natural surroundings to heat/cool the house with a minimum of artificial heating and cooling. We will use the shade of the trees to cool during the summer and capitalize on the natural breeze that flows up the mountain side and circulates through the house via large windows at the bottom and a series of fans that pull the air upward through the house.
In the winter, the same trees that provided shade will now be leafless, allowing the sun to shine through the large windows and naturally heat the slab/tiles on the floor. An outside wood furnace will heat 380 gallons of water that will circulate through the floors and provide radiant heat for the house as well to heat domestic water for showers, etc. We will also utilize an indoor wood stove to provide heat for those months when we don’t want to keep the outside furnace burning. Wood is not an issue for us as we live on 50 heavily wooded acres.
We will use solar tubes to provide the house with light during the day and eliminate as much as possible the power that would ordinarily be needed. Construction will use 2X6 framing techniques with blown insulation throughout. The beams used on the inside (for cosmetics) will come from the property and is being milled at a local saw mill down the road.
I’m creating this thread to keep a log of the build as it takes place and to share the process (all it’s good sides as well as its bad) with my fellow FF’ers.
The goal is to build an energy efficient house that exploits the natural surroundings to heat/cool the house with a minimum of artificial heating and cooling. We will use the shade of the trees to cool during the summer and capitalize on the natural breeze that flows up the mountain side and circulates through the house via large windows at the bottom and a series of fans that pull the air upward through the house.
In the winter, the same trees that provided shade will now be leafless, allowing the sun to shine through the large windows and naturally heat the slab/tiles on the floor. An outside wood furnace will heat 380 gallons of water that will circulate through the floors and provide radiant heat for the house as well to heat domestic water for showers, etc. We will also utilize an indoor wood stove to provide heat for those months when we don’t want to keep the outside furnace burning. Wood is not an issue for us as we live on 50 heavily wooded acres.
We will use solar tubes to provide the house with light during the day and eliminate as much as possible the power that would ordinarily be needed. Construction will use 2X6 framing techniques with blown insulation throughout. The beams used on the inside (for cosmetics) will come from the property and is being milled at a local saw mill down the road.
I’m creating this thread to keep a log of the build as it takes place and to share the process (all it’s good sides as well as its bad) with my fellow FF’ers.
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