#20keco

Greetings from the ECO Team! 

As you may remember, in our last post we were using REScheck and REM/Rate to rate the theoretical energy efficiency of the past 20k houses. We’ve also been out testing the actual houses with our data loggers and blower door tests. We’re also collecting, with the home owner’s consent, the electric bills from the houses. 

What did we find? For the most part, the past 20k houses are not doing too shabby... which means that it’ll be that much more difficult to improve upon them. 

 “Yeah, that’s cool. But what’s up with the design?”

We’re glad you asked. 

The ECO House will be fighting all the other 20k houses (not just Dave’s House) for the title of most energy efficient, and hopefully cost effective, home that the Rural Studio has ever built. That means that the strategies that we choose have to be very cost effective to make sense. We’re in the process of choosing those strategies right now. 

In the meantime, here are some of the trends that we’ve been finding in the 20k homes based on the foundation:

Greetings from the 20kv19 Eco Team! 

We’re excited to share our progress with y’all! Since our last post, we built a mock up to test the spaces in the house. It really helped us visualize the spaces and see what was too big, what was too small, and what seemed to be the right size as only a full-scale mock up can. 

Above is the living/dining space on the right and the left would be the kitchen bar. 

After the mock up we were challenged to pare down and synchronize the design into the “one big move.” With that advice in mind, the team decided to really push the comparison between Dave’s House design and the Eco House. If we could change only a few things about Dave’s House in order to make it more energy efficient, what would they be? Our priorities are to make the most appropriate passive design for this climate, maximum occupant comfort all year long, and lower energy usage, respectively. Below are the SIX things that we’re thinking about changing:

Orientation: Broadside faces 10° East of South. This is one of the simplest things to do to increase the shading and minimize the amount of energy needed to heat and cool the building. 

Monopitch: Roof faces South. This design varies from the 20k’s usual insulated box + hat approach. It maximizes cross ventilation and allows the hot air to evacuate the space in the summer months. 

Windows: Big windows on the south to let the winter sun in and high windows on the north to vent the hot air in the summer. 

Insulation: Bring the wall and roof insulation up to 2015 energy code and then add rigid on the outside to get rid of thermal bridging. 

Foundation: Put the house on a slab on grade. The slab will help reduce air changes, along with providing a thermal mass to heat and cool. 

Porch: Shading the south windows is imperative in the summer. The designed porch will let in a good amount of light from the winter sun as well. 

One of the biggest challenges this project faces is what to compare our house to in order to rate the design’s success. Updating Dave’s House design will give us a nice benchmark, since there are 3 different Dave’s House designs available to us. 

We’re working on getting the electric bills for these houses and all of the past 20ks. Comparing the electric bills will let us see what a 20k is costing its occupants to heat and cool. Many of our clients use propane to heat their houses in the winter and we’re taking that into consideration. 

In the meantime, we’ve been comparing the houses in REScheck and Rem/Rate in order to see how the real life houses stack up. 

Peace out from the ECO TEAM. Go enjoy this amazing spring weather. Open a window and turn off a light :)

Newbern, AL

High of 85!!!!

Wind SSW @ 12mph

Humidity 36%

Sunrise 7:01 am 

Sunset 6:59 pm

Moonrise 12:09pm

Greetings from the Eco Team!

Since our last post, we’ve made the decision to move forward with the entire house model. This means our project will be equipped with both a bathroom and a kitchen, and will be more comparable with other 20k houses in both size and function.

Because the house is so much bigger and the results will be more long term, a large part of our project will be what our team passes on to the future students of Rural Studio. We’ve begun to lay out a template for a log book that keeps track of the occupant’s activity, the energy used in the home, and the general climate information of the area.

Were now working on material studies, like the one in the .gif above. Can the house look like it has a tighter building envelope? What if the layers peeled away to show what was underneath? Stay tuned for our next iterations.

Greetings from the 20kECO House… man, have we been busy!

We have had a handful of critiques since the last post, and they have all really helped us to develop a better argument and design for the ECO house. The strongest steel goes through the hottest fire, as they say.

We’ve decided to let the Rural Studio be the client to this house. This is mainly because of the difficulty our team has faced in accessing the previous 20ks. Also, this means we can run tests on this house that we wouldn’t feel comfortable doing on a house owned by one of our neighbors in Hale County. The idea is that an upcoming thesis student would live in the house full time to record data and help simulate a house that would be otherwise occupied by a traditional client of the studio. Hopefully, this will yield long term results that will inform the next generation of 20k houses.

There are two ideas about where this house could go. One idea is that our team designs two “pods” devoid of a kitchen or bathroom that would be very similar except for a few key details. Having two would allow the studio to have a constant while running tests. This method would give us the most accurate results for the tests we have set up because we can test the two against each other at the same time. However, it has been questioned whether the data might be skewed because of the lack of cooking, showering, etc. going on in the pods. This leads to the next option, a one-bedroom house that would be monitored in a similar way to the other 20k houses. The data collected from this house would be more comparable to the data collected from the other 20k houses.

At the same time we’ve been working on details for the house as well as some of the house’s formal moves. So far, we’ve been running with the singular house idea. Below are some updated designs and action shots:

Greetings from the ECO House! We have a lot of juicy info to share with you, so sorry in advance for the long post! In our last post we wrote a little bit about the “test house” we’re working on. This study will be crucial for our understanding and assurance of our passive schemes. We are unsure of how many test houses that will be built, but below are the candidates so far. The schemes mainly focus on exploring roof orientation and porch location. All of the sections are 14′ wide (pretty darn skinny!) to allow maximum cross ventilation and solar heating efficiency. The idea of a loft is also being tossed around because it allows the user easier access to the high window, and because it puts them up higher in the winter where all the hot air will settle. Roof Plane facing North / Porch on the South

Roof Plane facing South / Side Porch

Roof Plane facing North / Side Porch

Roof Plane facing South / Porch on the South

Below are some screenshots from a wind study done in a Revit plugin. First, you can see wind flowing from the left to the right over a monopitch. This simulates a roof plane facing south.

Next, wind flows from right to the left to simulate a roof plane that faces the north. This tells us that when the wind blows from the south (the predominant wind direction in this area) it counteracts the stack effect by reversing the flow through the high window. Once again we reach a contradiction. This orientation seems to be better for solar gain, but less appropriate for ventilation.

You might also be wondering why the windows in these sections are so low to the ground. Well, we did some research and the lower the window, the more light hits the slab. Who knew?

Greetings from the Eco House!

So, just how does one begin to design a house that incorporates passive heating and cooling strategies and is also affordable? Some have called our mission impossible. But we don’t scare that easily. Above are some diagrams representing the decisions we’ve made and some options we’re considering.

As you can see, we have discussed (sometimes argued) everything from building footprint and orientation to fancy alternative heating systems and green roofs. Through research, advice from experts, reasoning, and experiments, we’ve been able to narrow the building down to...*takes deep breath*...a long and narrow building built on a slab oriented to the south with a mono pitch roof with high windows on the tall side probably with earth tubes somewhere and a porch with some type of moveable shades...whew.

Hey y’all!

We’d like to introduce all you wonderful people out there to the 20Kv.19 House team! Hailing from all over the Southeast, we - Josh Banks, Will Gaskill, Forrest Burleson, and Saxon Gibbs - are here to bring you the FIRST EVER Rural Studio ECOHouse!

Taking a comprehensive look at the short-term and long-term environmental impacts of building construction and occupation, we began our evidence-based research by analyzing and testing the previously designed and built 20K Houses. Throughout the year we will continue this investigation focusing on passive strategies, local materials, and embodied energy analysis.