[Greenbuilding] Earthship in New York

[Gennaro Brooks-Church - Eco Brooklyn]

Ross I find your smugness in your opinion off putting considering you have
no idea what I am building.


Gennaro Brooks-Church
Director, Eco Brooklyn Inc.
Cell: 1 347 244 3016 USA
www.EcoBrooklyn.com
22 2nd St; Brooklyn, NY 11231


On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 7:45 PM, Ross Elliott <relliott at homesol.ca> wrote:

> Not to rain on your parade Genarro, but "Earthship" and "Passive House" are
> rather contradictory terms, at least in New York's climate. The insulation
> values needed to reach Passive House are a long way off from dirt packed
> tires, and much as I admire what Mike Reynolds did in New Mexico with
> materials that weren't being recycled back then, bottles, pop cans and
> tires
> are no longer just garbage. It's a tremendous amount of work to build with
> tires, some people I know of spent several years just getting the walls up
> and then couldn't afford to complete the structure. Some are convinced the
> thermal mass of Earthships have some magical effect on energy consumption,
> and that over-glazed sloped south walls don't leak, overheat during the day
> and lose heat excessively at night, despite evidence to the contrary. I've
> been to Taos and stayed in an Earthship, and have read everything Mike
> Reynolds wrote and watched all the videos, and I respect the creativity in
> these homes which certainly should be part of any decent green building
> project, but I hope that by investigating "Passive House concepts" you'll
> discover the shortcomings of Earthships in a cold climate. Why not
> insulated
> rammed earth, strawbale, or even super-insulated wood frame construction?
>
> Solar thermal radiant is barely economically feasible (with a backup
> system)
> with a certified Passive House in northern climates, so go with a cold
> climate air source heat pump or geothermal, if those are your only choices
> and you really want a tire house. But if you build a true Passive House,
> you
> can heat with a much simpler, cheaper combo DHW system, cool with a ground
> loop and night cooling bypass on your ERV and save a fortune on HVAC
> installation costs. Plus you can add solar thermal to the mix if you like,
> with an appreciable % of energy boost.
>
> Ross Elliott LEED-AP, CPHC
> Homesol Building Solutions Inc.
> Almonte, ON
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Gennaro Brooks-Church - Eco Brooklyn <
> info at ecobrooklyn.com> wrote:
>
> > This is a typical tire packed earthship. I am looking to implement
> > Passive House methods and see where we end up. I'd like to use as much
> > salvaged materials as well of course.
> > I guess my question is not so related to an Earthship though. It is
> > more one of using solar thermal radiant or Minisplit PV.
> > Matt you raise an excellent point about humidity. For that reason
> > alone it may be worth going with Minisplits.
> > The larger question is what is a better use of money for an East Coast
> > building with land, solar thermal, PV or geothermal....?
> >
> > Gennaro Brooks-Church
> > Director, Eco Brooklyn Inc.
> > Cell: 1 347 244 3016 USA
> > www.EcoBrooklyn.com
> > 22 2nd St; Brooklyn, NY 11231
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Greenbuilding mailing list
> to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
> Greenbuilding at bioenergylists.org
>
> to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
>
> http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20130726/9e22e209/attachment.html>