[Greenbuilding] one more pleasure (or not) of heating with wood

[Speireag Alden]

Sgrìobh Lynelle:

> I've had really mixed reviews on using solar for pre heat---what do I do with the excess heat in the summer, as I have no pool to heat! Winter gain here, southeastern Ontario, is not great, given cloud cover. 

	In theory, you put tubes in the ground and dump the heat there.  Theoretically, you could enclose a large volume of damp soil with some level of insulation, accept that you'll lose a lot of heat, and get back what you can.  Some annual designs would have you dump it into the soil around the house, at a distance such that the heat works itself to the house at about the time when you want it, in late autumn and winter.  See John Hait's design for this:

	http://www.norishouse.com/PAHS/UmbrellaHouse.html

	The efficacy of these houses is much debated on the list, with a lot of skeptics (which is fine) and a few starry-eyed optimists, of which I am one.  However, since my house isn't finished and operating yet, I have no real-world experience myself with which to answer skeptics.  I did correspond with a fellow in Virginia who had been living in his house for more than a decade, and who was well-satisfied with it and regarded it as superior to other houses he could have built.

-Speireag.


--
God is too big to fit inside one religion