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

[Graeme North]

Thanks Derek - I do work on the assumption that waking up alive beats the alternative but yes, I recognise that there are prejudices and suppositions involved there - ones I don't intend to apologise for.   

And indeed there are instances where highly insulated and air-sealed surroundings have killed.  Think of the tragedy when people - often kids -  get trapped inside an old fridge or freezer.  Not quite a house I agree, but some houses seem to be heading in that direction.  The slang term for polystyrene clad houses here is "chilly bin" houses. ("Chilly bins" are those handy portable polystyrene containers we use to keep picnic stuff cold in).  When these houses incorporate air-sealed windows and doors, have very limited air changes, and are full of toxic materials and furnishings, they give a rather unhealthy environment.  
I do agree that energy use needs careful attention, very much so, but also our ability to interact with our natural environment needs careful conservation. I for one, do not wish to inhabit some kind  of perfectly controlled machine, one that used to be called a house, that delivers perfectly homogenised living conditions 24 hours a day.   Variation in temperature and humidity is perfectly acceptable within quite a range, as we all know. Moderating the extremes does make for better comfort, and health, and its what we aim for I hope. Some technology can be appropriate here, especially if it is  appropriate technology,  but we do not need every room in an oversized, overstuffed, house to be a consistent 21deg C.   There seems to be a growing fear of the outdoors and all the dangers that lurk therein.  We live on a spaceship called Earth, and not on a rocket to Mars.

Yes I agree that unsafe and unsanitary housing adversely affects far too many people, and certainly contributes to some avoidable illnesses. 
How to improve this situation without costing the earth is an interesting topic that exercises many of us, and as Derek says, the solutions will require knowledge, understanding  and attention to details.  Hence the rich value of these discussions, and the value of this network.

But I also think that mental approach has a large part to play. For my money, sustainability is an "attitude" that precedes anything else.  What I don't like is a resource-rich approach that mimics, far too much for my liking, the notion that if something isn't working, then you are not throwing enough technology (read "brute force") at it.  
And there is always Jevon's Paradox to come into play, just when you think you are on to something.

Cheers

Graeme   






On 16/03/2013, at 3:17 AM, 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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