Ideas to build a green masonry home?

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi Christopher,

Where are the entry points? How will it be situated on the site -- do you have a site plan? How flat is the area where the footprint of the house will be -- total elevation change? What is the floor and the roof structure? Do you need to worry about earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, freezing winters, etc? Will you be using renewable energy for heat, domestic hot water, electricity? Do you want to incorporate gray water and/or rain water systems?

Those are darn big rooms! The structural span of the roof will be very tough, and you have to have enough pitch to make it work with the roofing material. I'm not sure that you will want the rooms to be that big -- they will just require a lot of walking? Your two bedrooms sound big enough together for a Great Room. I once was asked by clients to make a kitchen the was like 18' x 22' and it was simply too big to be efficient. Just because too small is no good, and a bit larger is fine; doesn't mean that gigantic is better! You want a "Goldilocks" design, I think...

[EL42Coupe]

I'm jealous. I love the idea. I have some similar ideas. I might post them later.

Gotta ask though, how many people will be living here? I'm guessing 2. But going off your designs, I figured 3 people could live comfortably (me,wife,child) in 50x50 instead of 50x80.

I imagine shaving 30 feet off the house in any given direction would help solve some of the roofing issue. (please consider using pillars in your "great room". they add support and can be easily decorated to match) and definitely free up some funds for other things like building a power supply.

Something else to consider, i came across a site a couple years ago where some people built their own house and they used a woodburning stove with a custom "water-pipe-built-through-the-middle-of-it" design to heat their bath water.

It would work perfectly if you put the kitchen where the part of your master bath and walk in area are currently located giving you the shortest possible plumbing route.

so i guess just make pantry and guest bath trade places, put the wash in the spare room, flip master bath, relocate walk in area, place kitchen there.

and while burning wood may not seem the most eco friendly route, i will say this, I lived in a very remote cabin for a couple years, and i burned scraps. Fallen limbs, busted pallets, busted up wood from demolition sites (get permission) particle board et c. so I don't personally think it was THAT bad...

and what if you hooked up a turbine to the chimney? another power source to feed your batteries. (albeit a small one you could still build it for free/almost free and it would be worth 2.5 bragging points.)

[Christ]

Neil - It's not a final plan, was just the first in a series of layouts that we thought of... the rooms will inevitably be smaller than that, but there has to be an "extra room", in case there comes an "extra child" to the family. Planning in advance, so I don't have to remodel later, basically.

I'm not entirely sure what the overall grade of the layout area is, but the whole area and part of the surrounding area where the actual foundation is being poured is going to be flattened and the area directly above and below that are going to be terra-formed (tiered structure with drainage into the creek).

There are a few trees in the way, unfortunately, which will need to be removed, but my father burns wood for heat anyway, and they'd have come down at some point regardless of the situation.

The actual land plot is within 100 feet of the dirt road that my dad lives on, and the land directly across the road from my "plot" is also mine to use. I intend to use solar-powered water pre-heaters (coils in a box, basically) for heat and during the summer, on a bypass loop to help generate electricity for the house. So far, I haven't a clue what fluid I'll be using in the pre-heater, but it has to be something that, if a leak/break occurs, won't harm anything around it, and won't cost me my first born to replace. That pretty much cancels ethylene glycol, for sure.

My father's property runs on a well fed by the creek that runs on the property, which means that I can either dig further into his well, dig my own well, (at over $5k), or accept the reality that it's all rain water to begin with, and start using the rain water and water collection from the creek.

Water from the creek, since it's cold all year 'round, will ultimately be what cools the house (when necessary) through the summer. The land is mostly shaded, so only horribly hot days will call for any kind of A/C, which will just be cold water running through a rather large radiator, with a fan blowing through it into the home's duct work.

So far, the floor and roof are both scheduled to be concrete... living roof, actually.

Looking at that floor plan, there is only one entranceway... technically, this won't pass code, b/c there needs to be an "emergency exit" or "secondary exit way"... that will be on the other side of the great room, and will exit in to the "yard" area. Proper orientation will place the great room's long wall facing south, so the entranceway will be to the east, facing the hill area, on the opposite side of the home from the road. (cuts down on dust)

The walls of the home will primarily not be exposed to sunlight during the day, due to the wooded land surrounding my plot, except during the winter, when the trees loose their leaves. The plot is between two large hills, so "daytime" and direct sunlight hours are cut slightly, but it shouldn't cause too many issues with anything.

The only risk factor for the home as far as natural disaster is freezing temperatures in the winter... and it's Northern PA... not Alaska. I'm trying to build a solar heating system large enough to support the house (which means the house WILL be smaller than the drawing), so that only supplemental heat will be necessary on the coldest days.

Part of the foundation plans were to pipe in Geothermal heating pipes from about 60 feet down into the concrete foundation slab, to help keep the concrete slab a stable temperature all year 'round... on top of that, I wanted to run the solar-heater's piping through the slab as well.

No considerations have been made for windows or door type yet. The interior wall height is 9 feet.

I hope I included everything. I'll have some pics of the plot tonite... hopefully they're not too bad, and can give you guys an idea of what I'm working with.

[Christ]

Is gypsum (drywall) considered bio-degradable or environmentally safe? What is used in it's production, as far as chemicals, etc?

[Christ]

DCB - instead of solely using rammed earth method, I may consider packing the holes in the blocks with earthen material, instead of using insulation... dirt is free, and mortar isn't, so backfillling the holes with mortar probably isn't the best idea... mud, on the other hand, should help with insulation and heating/cooling cycles more than normal insulation anyway.

[Christ]

It's hard to tell, but this shot is from the road, attempting to show the grade of the hill in front of the foundation plot.


Shot of the awesomely uncleared driveway The driveway runs up about 30-40 feet north/northeast, and wraps almost a complete 180 at the top. It also continues up the hill into the woods for logging/fun trails.


Small creek. Runs E/W, is on the northern side of the foundation plot, approx 20-30 feet from the edge.


South facing, from the western edge of the foundation plot, where the land begins to slope again.


This shot is facing west, from the home plot's edge to the road, which runs N/S.


This road is within 100 Feet of my home plot. I have access to both sides of it, via my father's land.


new go-kart field


Repurposed heating oil tanks which may be used for passive solar heat, using water and anti-freeze, circulating through the floor of the home.

[Who]

Originally Posted by Christ

DCB - instead of solely using rammed earth method, I may consider packing the holes in the blocks with earthen material, instead of using insulation... dirt is free, and mortar isn't, so backfillling the holes with mortar probably isn't the best idea... mud, on the other hand, should help with insulation and heating/cooling cycles more than normal insulation anyway.

I'm not so sure on that. If I were building a house, I'd be trying to incorporate every passif-haus (passive house) idea I could. These are super insulated houses (and definitely not mud), with extremely low infiltration rates, minimized thermal bridging and super high efficiency energy recovery ventilation systems. Combined with topnotch but very expensive fenestration that we can't just go and buy in the window section at Home Depot, the Europeans are finding they can heat a house by internal loads only anywhere south of Scandanavia.

[Christ]

Originally Posted by Who

I'm not so sure on that. If I were building a house, I'd be trying to incorporate every passif-haus (passive house) idea I could. These are super insulated houses (and definitely not mud), with extremely low infiltration rates, minimized thermal bridging and super high efficiency energy recovery ventilation systems. Combined with topnotch but very expensive fenestration that we can't just go and buy in the window section at Home Depot, the Europeans are finding they can heat a house by internal loads only anywhere south of Scandanavia.

Thermal mass doesn't work out too well when your house isn't in the sunlight for the better part of the day.

[Who]

Originally Posted by Christ

Thermal mass doesn't work out too well when your house isn't in the sunlight for the better part of the day.

Thermal mass is thermal mass, but I'm not sure how that follows from what I posted.

[Christ]

I'm not entirely sure where it bridges what you said either... it was something that crossed my mind while I was trying to take care of my son and half asleep last night LOL...

Without looking at the type of home that you posted, the only thing I can say about it is that if any of the materials used in the home aren't naturally occuring, I'd rather not use the design as a whole.

I'm trying to keep this home as 100% "return to earth" as possible, so that when I'm gone, and my Son and his kids are gone, etc... it will simply turn back into the earthen material it was created from, even if it takes 300-500 years to do so.