THE FLOOR-STORAGE THERMAL-LOOP HOME

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Thus, as you'd imagine, it doesn't take long for the rear rooms to warm up. And then an interesting thing happens: For all intents and purposes, the temperature in the sun room stops rising, and the difference between the front and rear portions of the house stabilizes. Apparently, as the solar gain increases, the air in the thermal loop just moves more rapidly . . . depositing excess heat in the 900 concrete blocks below the floor. Our front room's temperature levels off at about 75 °F on sunny days, no matter whether it's plus or minus 30°F outdoors. And at night — because the living room loses heat through the south-facing glass — the direction of the airflow reverses, and the block-stored warmth is delivered to the bedrooms.

In short, we haven't even had to use insulating drapes to keep our home's interior temperature comfortable. On even the coldest sunny days during the winter of 1981-82, we burned no more than an armload or two of wood in our heater in the evening. And on cold mornings we took the chill off by lighting an armful of kindling.

OUR DRUTHERS

When someone asked my wife what we didn't like about our new house, she replied that she couldn't think of a thing. Upon reflection, however, we believe there are a few drawbacks to this sort of residence that should be mentioned.

Because of the large south room and the openings above the partitions, noise does carry more readily than it would in a building with smaller, soundproof rooms. In addition, without a basement or crawl space, the plumbing must be serviced through the floor. (We prepared for this eventual necessity by providing removable floor panels above the lines.)

The building's soil-level roofline has presented a couple of small problems, too. For one, our dog likes to stroll on the top of our house, producing a pitter-patter that can be heard inside. Also, the northwest storm wind sweeps unobstructed across the roof, sometimes depositing a large snow drift in front of our south window. We plan to remedy both of these annoyances with appropriate fencing.

Furthermore, there is one area where I think we could have saved an appreciable amount of construction money. By simplifying the ceiling and roof design — which consists of rustic 4 X 4 elm ceiling beams fastened to 2 X 10 rafters — we could have cut our lumber expense by as much as $1,000, and would have saved a great deal of time, too. Our home has the look we wanted, but we did have to pay a premium price for it!

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