David Wright: Passive Solar Design
(Page 9 of 16)
September/October 1977
By Travis Brock
PLOWBOY: So you came up with elegantly simple solutions to your problem instead. Things like underground dwellings in Tunisia . . . or the very thick-walled adobe structures that were traditional in the Mexican desert and our Southwest.
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WRIGHT: That's right. And that's how I finally got into passive systems. The active air systems we were playing around with at Sun Mountain Designs made a lot more sense than the active fluid systems we had started out with. But they were still pretty complicated and expensive to build and operate . . . and, aesthetically, they didn't add anything to the looks of a building.
So I began to look around and think about how the native peoples there in New Mexico had survived and kept themselves comfortable. I especially studied the cave dwellers who had lived at Mesa Verde and Betatakin and Pueblo Bonito and all the rest of the Navajo National Monument. Their south-facing cave dwellings had been heated during the winter by the low sun. During the summer, though-when the sun was high -the same dwellings had been shaded by the big cliffs that towered up over them.
When you stop and think about it, that's really a very sophisticated use of low-energy materials and natural elements. It's a maximum use of obvious resources with an absolute minimum of high technology. And it worked. That impressed me.
All of a sudden . . . I realized just how simple it'd be to get a double return on your investment . . . to make adobe work for you in two ways.
I was also greatly inspired by Steve Baer . . . especially his use of 55gallon drums of water as a passive heat sink in his solar-heated and - cooled house at Corrales, New Mexico. (EDITOR'S NOTE: See The Plowboy Interview in MOTHER NO. 22. )
But all of a sudden I saw that while the water-filled drums were fine as a heat sink, that's all they were. They were just non-structural heat sinks. And I realized that a big mass of adobe could do that job just as well-it could absorb Btu's from the sun and then radiate that warmth into a living space just like those barrels of water did-while, in addition, that adobe could also be part of a building's structure.
It was as easy as adding one and one and getting two. Once I'd thought about it, I realized just how simple it'd be to get a double return on your investment . . . to make an adobe structure work for you in two ways. All you had to do was put those heavy walls up and then isolate them from exterior tempera ture swings. Build the walls and insulate them on the outside.
PLOWBOY: Insulate them on the outside?
WRIGHT: Sure. I know this is just the opposite of the way we've gotten used to doing it, and that's where we've been going wrong for the last 50 or 100 years. We've fallen into the habit o building up an adobe or a cement block or a brick wall, slap ping some insulation on the inside, and then putting in enough baseboard heaters to keep ourselves warm.
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