[Greenbuilding] ok - why do houses have to have stay the same tempinside?

[Corwyn]

On 8/20/2012 12:16 AM, Erin Rasmussen wrote:
>
> I was thinking of the temperature thing in the context of my block of nearly identical
> 1950's tract houses.  We've got a lot of different philosophies among the people who
> live on my block, and that's reflected in our utility bills.   So we all have similar
> houses, with varying degrees of insulation, and we all have similar furnaces etc.
> although I think I may be the only one on my block with no air conditioning, and we
> all have really different approaches to dealing with warm and cool weather.    We're
> all pretty happy with our houses, so the constant temperature thing is probably not
> the thing we're most happy with  :-) because even when they're fairly weatherproofed,
> these houses don't have it.

The constant temperature may not be the thing you are most happy with 
(in fact most people hardly notice it), but I suspect it would be the 
thing you were most unhappy with if it wasn't there.  If your house was 
the same temperature as the outside, I guarantee you would be thankful 
to be staying with the drunk next door instead.  Around here, when the 
power is down for extended periods, many people abandon their homes and 
sleep on cots in the local school gym with 100s of their neighbors.
I don't; my house survives quite well, though I get desperate for a 
shower after a while.

Once you start moving the house temperature away from the outside 
temperature, you start paying for energy to accomplish that.  Whether 
you like a constant temperature or not, doesn't matter as much as the 
fact that you are changing the inside environment.  The more air sealing 
and insulation you put in, the easier it is to adjust the inside 
temperature, and the less it costs to do so.  A better insulated and 
sealed house will be cheaper regardless of what temperatures you want 
the house at.  Constant temperature is just a particular goal, that some 
people like, and is no easier than any other goal.

>And I'm thinking that as the weather and a few dozen other things
> totally change around us that planning houses based on historical
> weather patterns may become increasingly irrelevant, and we may be
> thinking about these things in a different way in the future.

It is true that changes in weather patterns are going to affect how well 
houses perform.  But, if I was asked to design a house that accomplished 
a comfortable inside environment, no matter what the weather, it would 
have quite a lot in common with a house for a specific
climate.


Thank You Kindly,

Corwyn

-- 
Topher Belknap
Green Fret Consulting
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