The Integral Urban House

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SPACE HEATING

Although Berkeley winters are relatively mild, one study has shown that the average home in that town uses as much energy for space heating during the winter as a residence in Minneapolis! The reason: In chilly Minnesota, people know the value of proper insulation . . . while in "sunny California", insulation is—for the most part—used only as a last resort. Except, that is, for the Integral Urban House.

Tom Javits feels that if a Berkeley home were properly insulated, it'd need little—or no—space heating. And he's probably right, because last winter (before all its "extra" insulation was installed) the IUH had no space heater at all (a wood-burning stove is being added now), yet—except for a few frigid days—no one felt the worse for it.

Besides exceptionally good insulation, the Integral House has several other features which contribute to its year-round coziness. For instance: when the old Victorian mansion was rebuilt by its present owners, it was fitted with a large number of south-facing windows and only a few windows on the north side. This produces some degree of passive solar heating during the day. (The upstairs windows are equipped with insulated shutters that are closed to help retain warmth at night.)

Within the building's bathroom is a smaller version of Steve Baer's Drum Wall: a bottle wall, in which one-gallon glass jugs—filled with ink-blackened water and supported in rows just inside the windows—serve as heat sinks that absorb the energy in the sun's rays. At night, insulated shutters (outside the windows) can be closed to keep the bottles' stored heat inside where it radiates into the room.

As luck would have it, my own downstairs bedroom in the house (yes, I live here too!) is solar heated—quite effectively, I might add—by the adjoining greenhouse. Warmth radiates into my room during the day whenever I open a window between the two sections of the house.

Much of the IUH cooking is done on a beautiful old combination gas and wood stove (equipped with an O-shaped—or doughnut—stovepipe that radiates into the room a bit more of the heat which would otherwise go up the chimney). The house also uses a large solar oven-built by a student—for baking casseroles or bread on sunny days.

Most IUH staffers feel that wind and methane systems work best on a neighborhood or block level, rather than on an individual dwelling basis. For this reason, you won't find any windplant towers or methane digesters on the IUH grounds.

SELF-RELIANCE OR SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Occasionally, a visitor is surprised, disappointed, even annoyed, to learn that the Integral Urban House isn't completely "selfsufficient". The fact is, though, that the folks here at the IUH don't want their house to become an isolated haven in the midst of a city. (Besides, if a system—such as methane generation—is just plain inefficient on a household level, the IUH staffers would rather not use it . . . even if the alternative is to remain dependent—for the time being-on city gas or electricity.) Self-reliance— which has fewer overtones of isolationism and non-cooperation than "self-sufficiency"—is a better term for what the Institute is trying to promote.

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