David Wright: Passive Solar Design
(Page 14 of 16)
September/October 1977
By Travis Brock
So the first thing we do is we go right to that specific piece of land in Oklahoma and we walk around on it. We see if it has the proper solar exposure and whether or not we can work with the slope on that particular piece of property. And if we don't think we can do something effective with what we've been given, we call it quits right there.
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But if we can see some real possibilities, we talk to the people who want us to design the house and we find out what they're looking for in the way of size, and what materials they'd like to build with, and what their budget will take, and we try to learn something about the way they like to live. We assimilate as much of that personal data as we can.
Then we write to the National Weather Service and get all the available information about the larger design parameters-winter extremes, summer extremes, humidity, etc. -that we'll have to work with. And we pick up the smaller design parameters-which way the wind blows and how hard and when and where the tornadoes come from and what they do about it-by talking to the old farmers and other people who've lived right there in that area for a long time.
If you can handle the change,you're going to be way ahead as the cost of energy continues to rise. You're going to save yourself a bundle.
We can also learn a lot by looking at the indigenous agricultural structures in the region. In Idaho, for instance, there are a number of terrific old potato storage buildings that are built out of timbers and earth and constructed halfway down in the ground. They're really inexpensive and it never freezes inside those storage sheds and I've found them quite impressive. I'm just waiting to do a house up there in Idaho so we can imitate one of those structures. It's hard to go wrong when you can look around at regional architecture like that and then copy what the pioneers-who didn't have our readily available sources of commercial energy to draw on-did to survive.
OK. By the time we've gone through this whole process, we've got a pretty good idea of what's happening. So we gather up all our weather data and our photographs of the site and topography maps and soil analyses and so on, and we come back to our office. And then we start playing around with forms and the usage of materials until we come up with the one structure that we think best uses the indigenous energieswhether they're wind, solar, or water-to solve all the building's external problems while making its internal space function as well as possible.
PLOWBOY: That sounds simple and straightforward enough.
WRIGHT: It is. On the other hand, when you start working with climatic design you immediately realize that it's an entirely different ball game than the old sledgehammer approach of just throwing up the same building for almost any part of the country and then varying the heating and cooling equipment that goes into it.
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