[GSBN] [nbne] no Timber frame for Alberta house

[Laura Bartels]

I'm out the door to a wedding so can only offer a brief note right now (maybe some of you know Matthew Harris, who has worked at SEI for years and also worked on some sb project in CA, including one of Kelly Lerner's. If you do, congrats are in order). To explain a bit more about the Buffalo House design, it uses crawlspace design because that is the most common in the area. Most of the HUD "core" homes have crawlspaces. During design charrettes, it was determined that the design should stay somewhat recognizable in form, with improvements to layout based on earlier charrettes held by COUP, that the construction style (besides the whopping change to straw bale) should still be somewhat familiar so that it wasn't "all new". However, the crawlspace was modified by being insulated on the exterior of the stem wall and footer with 4" of XPS per shallow frost protected specs for this climate zone. Kelly Lerner may want to chime in on anything additional as she helped with this as well. 

The comment about passive survivability is right on track, and is an important element as we work with any client(s), not just tribal communities which can lose grid power regularly depending on the location.

OK- that's all I can comment on now, but am interested in this whole dialogue of high wind, timber frame, etc. 

Laura 


On Sep 18, 2011, at 8:54 AM, Derek Roff wrote:

>>  This was a key design criterion of the
>> Buffalo House project in South Dakota, organized 
>> by the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy and Laura Bartels.   The HUD houses
>> built by the Tribal Housing Authority on the 
>> Rosebud Lakota reservation were generally built on piers AND badly insulated.
>>   They cost a fortune to heat in the Great Plains 
>> winters, and when people were not there paying for heat, the pipes froze.  
>> So the Buffalo House is a model project to show 
>> that a HUD-style size and shape can be built with straw bales over a crawlspace,
>> with passive solar consideration in the 
>> window design.   Not only is it intended to be heated for much less cost, but
>> it is supposed to demonstrate "passive 
>> survivability" i.e. not freeze when someone isn't home. 

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