Huff and puff all you like, Big Bad Wolf, Mary Ellen Blakey’s straw bale house isn’t coming down any time soon.

The walls of Blakey’s home in Clinton, New York, were constructed with bales of straw. The stacked bales – 1½ stories high – were smoothed with a garden-variety weed trimmer, then plastered and painted. The straw bale home is the first of its type in Oneida county.

A consultant for Syracuse University, Blakey designed the home herself, putting several years into the planning and just $140,000 into the construction. The result is a charming 814-square-foot home, with insulation that is 50% to 100% more efficient than fiberglass.

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Straw bale construction is only one facet of Blakey’s environmentally-friendly home. She designed the roof to extend two feet beyond the walls to effectively block sunlight and passively cool the home, and installed specialized windows. Three solar panels meet all her electrical needs. She grows vegetables in a backyard garden and cooks them using a solar oven. Her annual utility costs $500 total, or about $40 per month.

Blakey’s green home caught the attention of Richard Morris, founder of Green Local 175, an organization that promotes green economic development within a 175 mile radius in the community, from Utica to Rome. Over 100 people toured Blakey’s home during a tour organized by the group. Several are now considering constructing straw bale homes of their own. Surprised by all the interest, Blakey spent almost two hours explaining all the details to her visitors.

The 60-year-old hadn’t sought a leadership role in supporting green initiatives. “I just thought I was doing this for me,” Blakey said. “I think people really are hungry for an alternative,” she continued. “People have been so fascinated with this house.”

The Department of Energy reports a rising interest in straw bale home construction, fueled not only by environmental concerns, but by increasing costs in material and labor. Straw bales cost from $3 to $7 a bale, considerably less expensive than conventional materials. Straw bale walls are erected faster as well, sometimes during a single day with a “barn-raising” type of party.

The first straw buildings appeared in Nebraska in the 1890s, when early pioneers had few other options for building materials on the barren prairies. Their first attempt was not successful. Unplastered, it was soon eaten by cows. Plaster solved that problem, and yes, kept insects and moisture out, too. Two of those straw bale homes built a century ago are still in use today.

Straw bale construction is catching on. The city of Santa Clarita in California built a 25,000-square-foot administration building using straw bale walls, which opened in 2005, as part of their transit maintenance facility. A showcase of sustainable design, the building also features an under-floor HVAC system and solar panels.

Ms. Blakey can relate. Her primary goal in building her home was to reduce her carbon footprint, which is now just a quarter of what it once was.

As Blakey so rightly said, “It all depends on the choices you make.”

Story and photo via UticaOD

The unveiling last week revealed GlassPoint’s invention—a glass house located in an oil field in Bakersfield, California. The house contains several solar reflecting mirrors that are made to follow the sun’s rays. The sunlight bounces off the mirrors and is directed towards a series of water-filled pipes suspended from the ceiling, allowing the water to boil, turn into steam, and push the crude oil from the ground.

For decades oil companies have been using natural gas to heat the water boilers that coax the oil from the ground. This has led these fields in Kern County to consume 25% of the total natural gas consumed in all of California.

So not only would such an invention cut down the consumption of natural gas in the state, but after covering the initial price of installation, the cost of solar energy could easily compete with the cost of gas, and according to GlassPoint Chief Executive Rod MacGregor, it could mean as much as a 50% reduction.

The current stumbling block is how viable such a solution is, considering the large amount of acreage these companies extract oil from. For instance, in order to satisfy all the steam needs of an oil field the size the glass house site, there would need to be 100 acres of glass houses in all.

Perhaps the best news, however, is that big oil companies like Berry, Chevron, and Total are all considering solar technology as a very probable solution to their gas needs. Even if GlassPoint’s invention doesn’t make its way across the United States, it presents a very real step in the right direction.

The idea behind the Trombe wall is simple: collect solar heat throughout the day, and store it in a wall of high thermal mass. Then, the heat is released at night to warm up cooler temperatures. Better yet, the wall can fit seamlessly into modern home designs, appearing as if it’s simply there for added aesthetic appeal.

So how does it work? A high-mass concrete or masonry wall is installed on the south side of a home. Then, a layer of glass or clear glazing is added a few inches apart from the concrete or masonry. When the sun hits the wall, it enters through the glass or glazing and is trapped by the wall. It eventually makes its way to the inside of the home.

The Trombe wall works best in warm, sunny climates that have a high temperature difference between night and day, e.g. the mountain-west. So if you happen to reside in such an area, consider the Trombe wall. After all, who can beat energy efficiency and aesthetic appeal in one package?

Photo Credit: Jeremy Levine Design via Flickr CC

In central France lies Poitiers, a city rich in Roman architecture and medieval history. Modern building in Poitiers is constructing a new sort of history, however, an energy-efficient, solar-powered and potentially profitable history. Sipea, a local non-profit builder of social housing in the city, is installing solar electricity at its headquarters to sell back to the power grid.

Sipea’s homes are built to Passive House (PassivHaus in Europe) standards, which means they are very well-insulated, use passive solar heat to its maximum potential and utilize a host of other green building features. But what is most fascinating about Sipea’s Poitiers headquarters are the unique solar modules. Instead of typical solar modules, the building uses transparent solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity while allowing a speckling of natural light indoors. The solar cells are not wholly transparent. They’re spaced a bit apart and sandwiched between two high-efficiency panes of glass, thus allowing natural light through while protecting against direct glare from the sun.

The building has extremely low heating and cooling costs – a hallmark of Passive House design – which help facilitate the profitability of its solar electric system. The combination of that solar electricity, passive solar design, tight insulation and other green building tactics make Sipéa’s headquarters net-negative, meaning it creates more energy than it consumes.

The building-integrated solar system produces roughly 9,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, which garners the organization a small profit thanks to energy conservation and France’s national feed-in tariff for renewable power. You might justly figure that the building must be tiny and short on creature comforts, but in fact, the new headquarters is much larger than its predecessor and has lower yearly operating costs.

Story and Photos Via Home Design Find

For starters, the homes are constructed from styrofoam blocks lined on either side with a layer of plywood, otherwise known as structurally insulated panels (SIPs). The homes also use solar heating for space and water, as well as recycle waste heat from appliances and other devices in the home.

That’s perhaps the most innovative concept used for these homes. Recycling waste heat is not unheard of (see heat recovery ventilators), but reusing heat from appliances and devices within the building is a practice most often seen on the commercial or industrial scale here in the United States. Given the amount of heat that most appliances produce, there is great potential for recycling heat in the modern home.

Holmberg’s passive homes are clad with dark wood paneling and what he calls “tubes” maintain shade over the front entry and rear patio of the house. The idea behind these patio shelters is to block out sun at the height of summer, keeping the home cool, but allow access in winter when the sun is low in the southern sky.

Another key feature is size. These passive homes are relatively small, using nearly every square inch as living space, including an attic-level second story. All interior walls are painted white to reflect sunlight around the living space. Yet even in such a seemingly small space, Holmberg has managed to fit up to five bedrooms, though second-story headroom will be limited considerably. In the interest of function and footprint, these passive homes maintain simple, traditional pitched-roof design while incorporating passive solar building at every opportunity.

While the architect speaks to the future of low-cost living in modern homes, his Four Passive Homes are far from affordable at this point, currently retailing for the Swedish equivalent of more than $680,000. Nonetheless, these and similar designs represent a growing tendency toward eco-friendly architecture. Today, we tend to focus more on retrofitting our existing buildings, but over time, as new construction picks up again, designs like Mr. Holmberg’s will play an increasingly pivotal role in new home design.

This “solar” labyrinth will collect and store energy to help heat or cool the building above. It is a huge exercise in capitalizing on the thermal properties of concrete, as well as the valuable heat generated by the sun (especially in Colorado where winters are cold but relatively sunny). The labyrinth is comprised of several staggered concrete support walls beneath the massive concrete floor of the RSF itself. You might call it a sort of shallow basement, but one that will trap warm air, which in turn will slowly pass through the concrete floor throughout the night and into the morning to ease heating loads for the offices above.

The Solar Formula

The sun enters the equation by way of a transpired air collector — a metal sheet with tiny, well-placed holes designed to draw air through. The solar heated air will be drawn by fans down into the labyrinth through air vents designed into the buildings’ stairwells. There it will embark on its slow, warming journey back into the building.

In the summertime, cool air at night will be drawn down into the labyrinth where it will slowly journey upwards to help keep the air cool and ease heating loads. The S-curves of the basement will force the air to linger awhile before escaping through vents, maximizing the amount of energy (cooled or heated) retained by the building itself.

Waste Heat Un-Wasted

NREL’s new labyrinth will also trap waste heat from the computer center housed in the facilities above. This air too will be trapped and take the same journey as its solar heated counterpart. Even in mild spring or autumn days, the waste heat from the computers can be used to stem off the morning chill, providing for a comfortable environment for workers as they arrive.

The solar and computer heat that passes through the labyrinth can warm the building about 5 to 10 degrees before it is heated further by the heating system. “That may not sound like much,” said Phil Macey, senior associate at RNL, the design firm for RSF, “but it is meaningful across a whole year.”

The labyrinth beneath the north wing of the facility will be used for heating, while the labyrinth beneath the south wing will be used for both heating and cooling.

NREL’s new building on campus is expected to reach LEED-Platinum status, the highest rating handed out by the U.S. Green Building Council and could end up being one of the most energy efficient office buildings in the world.

Can You Have One?

This solar labyrinth is actually a lot like solar radiant heating, which many single-family homes in America already use. In that case a labyrinthine system of tubing is laid into a concrete slab (before it is poured) and hot, solar heated air (or water) is passed through those tubes during the day. The warmth of that air is transferred to the concrete and then slowly into the house as a whole.

In another (somewhat contrary) way it is reminiscent of a solar chimney or solar cooling tower, in which air in an attached tower is heated by the sun and begins to rise, forming an updraft which draws air out of the house. In the meantime, cool air is pulled into the house from below ground or, perhaps, from a basement.

I can see no structural reason why any normal home could not utilize the technology employed here by NREL. Just think of all those crawl spaces out there that could be circulating useful cool or hot air. Two things though: For one it is questionable how much of a difference a labyrinth would really have in a typical home — many times these designs work most effectively on a large scale.

Secondly, the added expense of ventilation and the time, labor, and materials needed to design and pour all that concrete might outweigh the energy savings for the average home. Still, that doesn’t negate the coolness and possibility behind such an ingenious design for the eco-home of the future. It could also work if we found a way to harness the waste heat from home appliances and HVAC systems.

Via Renewable Energy World

Glass, of course, cannot be ignored as a passive solar material. But the effectiveness of a window in passive solar heating has as much to do with aperture – or placement relative to the sun – as it does with material. All windows, however, are not created equal. Windows that are double- or triple-glazed with low-e coatings and efficient frames are best for passive solar design.

There are three essential materials behind passive solar design: masonry material, glass, and water. Furthermore, there are also three ways to harness solar energy passively: direct gain, indirect gain, and isolated gain. Which materials you use, and how you use them, will depend largely on which approach you take.

Direct gain is the simplest approach. It is a matter of allowing heat in through the windows. A dark colored masonry floor will absorb that heat and slowly release it throughout the night. While this technique may not eliminate heating bills, it makes for an excellent complement.

Indirect gain often involves at least two of the above materials. Take a Trombe wall, for example. It is typically a thick concrete wall (up to 16″) with a layer of glass on the exterior, south-facing side. This glass absorbs solar heat (while simultaneously preventing heat from escaping), which then passes through an airspace and into the concrete wall via convection. The masonry wall then stores the heat, slowly emitting it into the home through its other side. Concrete is advantageous for passive solar heating because it is an excellent thermal mass and releases heat slowly and consistently, well into the night.

Passive solar walls may also be constructed using water tanks. Water itself is an excellent heat transfer medium. The design of a water wall is similar to a typical Trombe wall except it is the water that stores and transfers the heat. In moderate climates, water walls have advantage over masonry walls because water offers faster heat exchange. A water wall also presents some unique aesthetic possibilities.

An isolated approach simply uses the materials already described above in a space (sunroom, greenhouse, etc) that is isolated from the main house. Any heat collected is transferred via vents or air ducts.

It is difficult to set a hierarchy on passive solar materials. Much depends on each home’s unique situation. In an arid climate you’d want a masonry wall because it delivers slow and steady, and you don’t want bursts of heat during the day. The key to using proper solar building materials is plenty of research and subsequent knowledge about the details regarding your home’s location. When building a new home or upgrading an existing one, iron out the details with your architect and building contractor to make sure the home is drawn up and built in the best way with the best materials.

Rule number one of the passive solar fish tank is to purchase fish that can stand the heat. You’ll need a certain amount of education on this one. We do not want to needlessly kill off fish. Furthermore, there are some design considerations beyond those inherent in water wall construction. For one, access to the tank will be necessary for cleaning the tank and feeding the fish. So there are some challenges here, for you and your architect, but the solar fish tank is a most definite possibility.

Hey, if you don’t want to go through the trouble of incorporating a passive solar fish tank into your remodel, you can still passively heat your fish tank. All you need is direct sunlight, perhaps even some glazing on the inside of the tank to increase light absorption. You could put it in front of a south-facing window or even build it into a masonry wall. Or, why not accent your greenhouse or solar sunroom with a solar heated fish tank? If you’re remodeling, speak with a solar contractor who specializes in passive solar construction