Friday, May 18, 2007, 08:56 AM
The Hybrid Solar House has been designed and built by Enertia Building Systems for a few decades now. It is pretty sweet technology and the houses are nice to look at too!
Enertia® is a new technology for building houses so that they heat and cool themselves. This is achieved from the design, the orientation, and the materials of the home, rather than a furnace, heat pump, or air-conditioner. Three basic, millions-of-year-old principles of nature, combined with state-of-the-art windows, radiant coatings, and prefab manufacture, make it possible, and practical. The principles are inertia, thermal currents, and the energy capacity of wood.
What I find interesting is that they use solid wood walls (southern yellow pine) which have a great heat storage capacity with the resins in the wood.
When heated the resins turn from crystal to liquid. This state change uses a lot of engery (just like converting ice to liquid water). But this state change happens at around 70 degrees instead of 32 degrees. So you have this massive structure of the house that really wants to remain at 70 degrees. The daytime heating and night cooling keep the house in equilibrium.
These house plans also call for the use of a basement which surrounds that part of the house with another constant year round temperature of about 50 degrees. This provides a source of cool air in the summer and a source of heat in the winter. The outer shell of the house allows air to circulate from below ground up to the attic which keeps the temperature constant throughout the house.
Looks like you could get a 2100 square foot kit for $64,400 (pre cut solid wood pieces). You would then need to buy doors, foundation, windows, and other items. They said you should expect to pay 3 to 4 times that number for the total cost of building the house. That means this model would be $193,000 to $257,000 to build ($89 to $119 per sq ft).
Pretty sweet when you figure you would not have to the house much. Our annual heating gas costs in Seattle for a 1800 square foot house is about $500. Spread that out over a 30 year loan and that saves you $15,000. But when you look at homes, they often last 100 years or more so the long run energy and cost savings would be huge!
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