When you have a house or property to improve its often seen that the only way to be more green is to build a new property from scratch making use of all the sustainable building techniques, such as Passive Solar and Thermal Mass. What is often forgotten in all of this is that the existing property might have the ability to ‘gain’ these qualities with a bit of planning and thought.
For instance if the existing building is of sound construction, has no obvious problems and has the right solar orientation – then you are most of the way there to start with.
Also if it is built on a concrete slab or has internal brick walls, did you know you can use those as ‘heat banks’ to help keep the internal termperature constant – independent of what the external temperature is doing? This is called Thermal Mass design.
If the building is mostly orientated along a East-West line with the majority of the windows or rooms facing towards the Sun; then you have good potential to make use of Passive Solar and Thermal mass techniques to cut down your heating and cooling costs. Also you will probably find the roof line follows the East-West line as well – so excellent for solar power or solar hot water heating.
Also if the existing building has insulation (or has the ability to have insulation added easily) you have the ability to create an ideal Passive Solar building – in that the insulation will help maintain a comfortable internal temperature. The insulation helps ‘disconnect’ the internal temperature from what the external temperature is doing. Further with the use of the right curtaining you can turn largely inefficient and badly insulated single pane windows into windows with the same combined effective R-Value as double glazing.. For a fraction of the cost..
Basically, before going down the knock down and rebuild route – have a good think about what can be done with the existing property.
Tags: Basic, Construction, Design, Home, Improving