[GSBN] Can bale buildings be air tight?- How to ventilate

Fri Mar 15 18:48:45 UTC 2013

Technology its just great when it uses our natural resources without
poluting.

There is a device that can give a good ventilation, reduce moistures and
heat the house on winter, using only... the sun.

A similar product is available in US at https://chesapeake-solar.com/ or
find dealers in Australia, New Zealand and other countries at:
http://www.solarventi.com/dealers/world.htm

More information about this device (from Danmark) :
http://www.solarventi.com/produkter/modeller.htm

A friend of mine made one similar for less then 200 dolars,

[image: Inline image 1]

All the best

Jorge Van Krieken
Portugal

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Derek Stearns Roff <derek at unm.edu> wrote:

>  I'm in partial agreement with Graeme, and I appreciate his comments.
>  I'm opposed to waking up dead from any cause, although I admit that this
> reflects prejudice and supposition in my case, since I have never tried it.
>  But I think we need to be careful of false dichotomies, spurious
> connections, and wishful thinking.
>
>  I advocate healthy buildings and a healthy world, and I suspect everyone
> on this list would say the same.  I advocate connection with the natural
> world, while preferring to sleep in a healthy natural house, rather than
> spending my life in the much more natural state of our ancestors 100,000
> years ago.  I don't have the skills needed to survive as humans did deep in
> prehistory, nor do I have the community and habitat to support that
> lifestyle.  Like most of us, I am striving to understand the best balances
> and combinations between old and new.
>
>  I think it is a false dichotomy if we equate tight houses with health
> risks and leaky houses with health.  How many cases can we document, of
> people who have woken up dead because the mechanical ventilation system in
> their tight house failed overnight?  Around here, the people who are killed
> by their houses each winter live in leaky houses, with bad wood stoves or
> fossil fuel furnaces.  Most of the people with chronic home-induced health
> problems don't live in well-designed tight houses, rather they live in
> average to leaky homes, with compromised heating and coolings systems,
> mold, toxic materials, and ventilation problems.  Having random leaks does
> not guarantee good ventilation, nor good indoor air quality.  Neither does
> having a mechanical ventilation system.  Creating a healthy house requires
> knowledge, understanding, and attention to many details.
>
>  Derek
>
>  Derek Roff
> derek at unm.edu
>
>  On Mar 14, 2013, at 3:51 PM, Graeme North <graeme at ecodesign.co.nz> wrote:
>
>   Well my 2c worth is that in NZ we have a long history of cold damp
> houses, in a very humid mostly temperate climate.  (As it is at the moment
> we are in the grip of the worst drought for over 70 years so any hint of
> damp would be welcome.)
>
> That aside - the best strategy I have found for drying out damp houses is
> to use hygroscopic materials in the fabric of the house - and the best and
> easiest is earthen walls or at least earthen plasters on any suitable
> substrate such as dry wall.  Of course to help get over cold we insulate
> and that's where sheep's wool, or strawbale,  or low density earthen
> materials, come into their own.  Condensation on windows and the
> accompanying wet window sill syndrome simply vanishes.  Needless to say we
> don't have several cm of snow lying around but we do get some pretty good
> frosts.  Then reducing the size of houses and the size of windows in them
> also helps. Lets face it, oversized badly orientated triple or quadruple
> glazed self ventilating thermally broken windows are still not nearly as
> good as a bit of well insulated wall at keeping heat in or out.
>
> I suggest that the approach of using more and more of the earth's
> resources to sort out these building issues  may not be a good primary
> design strategy, especially when it leads to oversize buildings, with
> oversized windows needing mechanical ventilation systems etc., -
>  mechanical systems that are only as good as their energy supply.  I don't
> want to wake up dead of asphyxiation in an air tight building because the
> electricity failed while I slept.
> *
> *This is not to dismiss some very good building science and its
> associated research, but I am finding this conversation on interior air
> quality in air tight buildings a bit disturbing when we end up with
> buildings so tightly sealed that the occupants are at risk from either the
> building fabric itself, or even more alarming, from their own breathing!
> People would be much healthier outside the building under these
> circumstances.  Interesting, isn't it, how, if a person feels ill we often
> take them outside, where they usually feel much better?  We really do need
> protection from the built environment.
>
> I prefer a design approach that minimises the use of expensive, resource
> gobbling, and complicated materials and systems.  A colleague of mine sums
> it up thus:
> *The.... division is between those who fling open their doors to embrace
> the day, and those who huddle behind triple glazing worrying whether they
> are going to be comfortable**.   *Tony Watkins FNZIA
>
>
>
> Graeme "Stirrer"
>
> Graeme North Architects
> 49 Matthew Road
> RD1
> Warkworth 0981
>
>     www.ecodesign.co.nz
>
>
>
>
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> http://sustainablesources.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/GSBN
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>
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