SELF-HEATING, SELF-COOLING HOUSE
(Page 2 of 4)
July/August 1971
By Wendell Thomas
Cold air, of course, travels down the building's walls and goes down to the cellar without conduits if given a chance. At the same time, earth-heated air in the basement will be tending to rise and you may bring it up to your living space simply by boring holes in the floor near a central heater on the main level. The heater may burn wood, coal, oil, gas or electricity . . . but there warn't no electricity when we built this house!
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You don't need a complete, deep cellar to make this idea work. You could have only a crawl space or part of a crawl space but the deeper and wider the under-area, the more heat you'll get from the earth. The main thing is to have no doors, windows or ventilators in the under-space. It should open only to the living area above.
At the opposite pole from the complete, deep cellar, I suggest the following: In a moderately solar house, use a dark-stained concrete slab for your foundation and floor, well insulated from walls and ground. Three-inch conduits should be laid at the cold corners and deliver it near a central heater.
In 1957 my father died and left me a small sum of money and, since our two adopted children were growing up, I decided to build another dwelling. The site I chose was a little to the southeast of the first house in a verdant gully. This gave me the idea of burying the new house (also 32' x 24') in the earth almost up to the roof on the north and west and up to the window sills on the south and east sides. We named' it "Sunnycave."
When the 4'-deep crawl space for the house was dug, I solved the problem of earth-pressure on the north and west walls by leaving a strip of earth 6'-wide within those walls and by reinforcing the 8-inch cinder block masonry. When the house was finished, the earth around it (which we covered with honeysuckle) kept the dwelling warm in winter and cool in summer.
The house had no openings to the cold north but there was a block-sized ventilator at the west (near the ceiling, next to the north wall), with an air passage through the house to a companion ventilator in the east.
The west wall extended 4' beyond the south wall, to keep the winter's cold west wind off the south wall and windows. Near this extension was a sheltered doorway in the south wall. Another doorway was in the east wall. near the north. The south had three large and two smaller windows. The east had one large window, over the kitchen sink. There was door glass, and glass in the storm door.
The shed-type roof, with a pitch of 1 to 8, was supported by framing and insulated with conventional insulation. The roof sheathing was good 2" matching lumber on 4' centers of 6" unfinished rafters. The rafters rested on a 10" double beam running through the middle of the house from east to west. This beam rested on the walls and two posts. The ceiling was one-half inch sound-absorbent insulation board over conventional insulation.
