What did you think about the point in the article suggesting millions of people dying on South America caused the earth to cool down due to reforestation absorbing more green house gas. I find this hard to believe.
Yep cheap energy and modern building techniques made us lose a lot of the common sense of yesterday.
Good thing initiatives like the passive house institute are bringing back some of these principles, you can easily cut a modern home heating/cooling needs by 70%+ by following simples rules
> Fireplaces were strategically arranged so minimal heat would be lost to the outer walls
I'm always a little confused by radiators placed underneath windows in modern buildings. I'm sure it evens out cold spots, but it sends a lot of heat right outside.
Offices that use air handlers and VAVs also have narrow VAV zones along all perimeter windows. It’s for comfort, windows are where the most heat is lost/gained so heating or cooling those zones makes the space more comfortable for the people inside those areas.
I lived in a house for a bit with a bedroom was in the northeast corner of the house, and the radiator was on an inside wall. The only convenient spot for the bed was the exterior corner.
On more than one occasion, I found my bedsheets completely frosted stuck to the wall.
When we lost power for 10 days a few winters back we attempted to use the fire place for heat. It was a fail. Post and beam house (large wide open floor plan) with a large transfer from 1st to 2nd floor, and apprently my lack of skill for optimizing heat over beauty in the fireplace, left us without much of a thermal bump. To this day I swear we were pulling heat out of the chimney faster than we were heating the house; I cooled the house with fire.
To use it effectively you want one with water jacket and just use that hot water with your normal house heating system. You don't need much power to run circulation pump so UPS + some solar panels should be enough even in deep winter. There are also systems that get it out of the exhaust but that doesn't get you much heat storage, just instant heat and generally less efficient.
Old school version of that were masonry stoves that come with ton+ of mass for the bricks and smoke being routed all over (often including a place to sleep) to take as much heat as possible from it.
If I had money for that I'd put a big hot water tank for buffer, heat it normally with heat pump, and just had emergency water-sheathed fireplate, with big buffer you can just fire it up once and have tank slowly give the heat back to the building. Or fire it up at the coldest days to save some heat pump power in days where there is barely any solar.
I know someone who gets through the winter off their fireplace. Really old timber house with riverrock chimney. Their fireplace looks nothing like what you think of a fire place looking. You can’t see the fire, there is like this big iron door in front of it. They go through a huge pile of wood every winter, along with a couple electric heaters for rooms or office.
I assume most decorative fireplaces on the other hand are not built to heat the house.
An open fire is not a particularly warm thing to have unless you’re directly in front of it. Most of the heat goes straight up the flue, and it uses an enormous amount of air to keep burning - it will pull huge volumes from rvertwhere it can. This is why these old buildings didn’t suffer from damp issues - the open fires burning were ventilating them.
the fresh air inlet should be piped along the chimney walls, this would also recover the condensation heat of the water produced during combustion, but its not trivial to design while keeping in mind things like maintenance, different chimney column temperature (and thus different convective forces), capturing and effluence of the condensed water, ... the heated fresh air should not directly go to the fire but piped into the room.
Did you use a fire grate with a big space underneath and keep it swept clean? Or did you build up a big bed of ash under the grate? On the advice of a chimney sweep I put a perimeter of bricks under the grate to form walls and we're currently filling it with more and more ash (it really takes a while). It's starting to make a difference in how much heat comes back into the room. Without that void underneath, the fire doesn't burn so hot and cold air doesn't get pulled through so quickly.
(It feels like it's getting warmer - may all be wishful thinking though, I haven't taken any measurements!)
It appears that something like 50% of homes are still over 50 years old, which seems to be more than enough for “some subset of brits large enough to be notable complain about the cold weather because they don't have a properly insulated place to warm up in” to have explanatory power.
It's an interesting article on this one particular mansion, but the idea that "the same tricks for more efficient heating can be used in modern designs" seems pretty silly.
We don't use fireplaces anymore (a major "trick" being to put them in the middle of the house rather than in the exterior walls), and while using large windows to capture sunlight and heat works great in the winter, it also leads to overheating in the summer and thus more energy for air conditioning.
> These are modest changes, imperceptible to most, and they won't enable us to forgo active heating and cooling entirely. But they do echo a way of thinking which, today, is oft ignored. Hardwick Hall was designed with Sun, season and temperature in mind.
Everyone I know who has built a house has thought very much about sun, season and temperature. This is very much a factor in determining the sizes and quantity of windows on south-facing vs. north-facing walls, for example.
Again, it's a very interesting article on this one particular castle, but the idea that it has something to teach modern architects and builders is pure fantasy. We're already well aware of all these factors and how they interact with materials and design.
> and while using large windows to capture sunlight and heat works great in the winter, it also leads to overheating in the summer and thus more energy for air conditioning.
A lot of contemporary energy-efficient designs slope the windows now such that light can enter in the winter but not the summer, but in the past this problem would have been remedied with awnings.
> Everyone I know who has built a house has thought very much about sun, season and temperature.
I've lived in houses that certainly did not take into account sun, season and temperature. I learned a lot from that experience. My current house is optimized for it. I've learned a few more things about it, and could do better.
> the idea that it has something to teach modern architects and builders is pure fantasy
Not my experience with architects and builders.
For example, how many houses have a cupola? They're common on older homes, but non-existent on modern ones. What the roof does is accelerate the wind moving over the roof, then the air vents in the cupola let the wind through, which sucks the heat out of the attic.
Another design element is eaves. Eaves shade the house in summer and don't shade it in winter (for more heat gain). Eaves also keep the sides of the house dry, which means your siding and paint and window frames last a lot longer. Mine are 1.5 feet. Most houses around here have tiny or even non-existent eaves.
The advent of air-conditioning is when architects stopped paying attention to the sun.
>a major "trick" being to put them in the middle of the house rather than in the exterior wall
I vised Löwenburg in Kassel which has bedrooms with similar curtains around the bed. Much later (1891) and with other heating technology of note. I was intrigued by the fireplace design in the room immediately behind the bed. The open fire is backed by a huge granite block built into the wall. The room had a close connection to servant stairways directly down to the exterior.
The guide describe the otherwise plain room as a dressing room. It looked like a convenient place to store a lot of firewood to stoke the fireplace attached to the bed behind it to me.
A great example is the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. At first glance, the building seems to be a giant rectangular box made of glass. Hardly ideal in the long, hot Arkansas summers.
It’s not the truth, though. In reality, the building is said to be highly efficient and was the first Federal building to be LEED certified. Amazing.
I guess we’ve learned a few things over the years.
> The house has lessons for how we can heat our homes more efficiently today
The problem in Europe isn't keeping warm in the winter but keeping cool in the summer. In part thanks to their near-total lack of AC in residential buildings, Europe has an extremely high heat-related death rate. 200k people per year die of heatstroke in Europe: this accounts for 36% of global heat-related deaths. This is despite Europe being only 9% of the world population, having a very cool climate in comparison to India and similar countries, and being among the richest regions in the world.
Or go solar with a battery, or just have a massive battery hooked into your distribution panel and leave the 19th century heating hacks in the 19th century. Optimize what you need for today, not whatever was state of the art 200 years ago. An electric space heater running continuously is enough in an emergency.
I live not far from Hardwick Hall, drive past it frequently, and have visited it a few times. Learned a lot of of new stuff about it from this article, thanks.
> Pretty much all the fireplaces I see are also built on the central spine of the building, meaning not much heat would be lost to the windows or exterior wall.
Or maybe because, as the first half of the article say, it is because the outside walls have nowhere to put a fireplace, because they are covered in windows?
> he told me it can feel around 10C (18F) warmer inside on a cold winter's day. Other, typical Elizabethan houses, he estimates, would have only feel 2-3C (3.6-5.4F) warmer.
It 'feels' warmer...he 'estimates'. Nice way to do science
> Since it's winter, and cold, I move my desk to a south-eastern window. It brightens the mornings and if I wear another layer, I find I can lower the thermostat by 2C (3.6F).
More good science, change two variables but attribute the effect to only one of them. If I wear another layer of clothing, move my desk to the basement, sacrifice a goat, speak in tongues and draw a pentacle on the floor, I can turn the thermostat down 2 degrees too.
But let's start at the top
>England's longest river was usually flowing freely
Then list lots of evidence that it was not at all unusual for it to freeze at the time.
The castles and mansions were relatively modern. Most people didn't have "good" home design, they had older, practical architecture. Their homes had thin walls, were drafty, and had no chimneys; there was a hole in the roof where the smoke from your fire would go, so your attic was filled with smoke (where you'd smoke meats for winter).
You're better served by looking to 19th century lower and middle class architecture. Right before air conditioning, but with relatively modern designs using modern building materials and practices ("insulation" (horsehair and newspaper), fireplaces/stoves, corridors with doors to separate cold rooms from hot ones, windows designed to allow cross-breezes, covered porches to provide shade in summer, etc). Right before air conditioning came in, we had pretty much gotten to the peak of design that used natural forms of temperature regulation. Some designs even created mini greenhouses of glass, with half the wall mounted with earth, for thermal regulation as well as solar heating. The only better passive methods invented since then is geothermal.
The peak of winter heat management were the pechka, Russian rocket stoves built into literal tons of masonry, for the most thermal mass possible. You'd heat it up once with a small amount of wood and it warms the house the whole day. They were so big you could sleep on top of it.
I'm pretty sure humans understood taking advantage of sunlight to warm structures since the earliest structures. Most animals understand the sunlight/shade difference. The aztecs, egyptians, etc..
> Scandinavian cabins, despite lacking modern insulation, maintain warmth in sub-zero temperatures. This video explores centuries-old building techniques, comparing their performance against modern homes. Discover the surprising physics principles behind their resilience and energy efficiency.
This just reminds me of a random discussion I had with a very close German friend.
He pointed out that Tado (who do smart radiator valves) noted from a study, which drew from their data, that the UK sucks at insulation, losing heat up to three times faster than other European neighbours[0].
I was speaking with an architect a few months ago and dismayed to learn that they no longer bother designing for thermal management (relying on air-conditioning alone). They are fully focused on the aesthetic "integration" of the structure in the landscape. (I use quotes for the word "integration" because it implies a harmonious coalescing across domains, including temperature.) Their prior work beautifully incorporated passive heating/cooling, much to the benefit of the clients' health and happiness. Where did this architect lose the thread?
I've noticed in general a thorough dismissal of passive benefits. It seems that we are caught by a cultural need for immediacy. Thermal management, and particularly passive thermal management, pays immense dividends slowly, but it takes a greater intelligence or broader perspective for anyone to appreciate these advantages.
Those who sit still and think clearly see the advantages of passive benefits, and anyone who gardens or does systems design intrinsically observes the long-term flows and thus understands the passive benefits at play. But so many people – from practitioners like the architect to stakeholders like their clients – go through life wholly unaware of this goldmine that is right there in front of their imagination.
I envision even simpler and more practical thing, under-the-floor heating with addition of disposal water.
Me and my wife are taking shower daily, hers being hotter than mine (apparently that's common difference between female & male).
Every time, I am thinking that so much heat is going down the drain as waste, why not circulate this under the bathroom floor until it cools down.
Since we have a tub, I usually close the drain, sit/stand on a bench above the tub, rinse thoroughly at the end, keeping hot water afloat for next 20 minutes.
Since tub itself absorbs the heat, even after I open the drain and let go all the water, tub itself stays warmy for an hour or so.
Apropos the information box, I don’t believe that the European colonisation of the New World was a cause of the Little Ice Age. A claim that bold should really show it’s workings.
41 comments
[ 0.17 ms ] story [ 74.0 ms ] threadAnd here's more info on The Little Ice Age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Debatable as to whether solar activity was a contributor to The Little Ice Age.
Good thing initiatives like the passive house institute are bringing back some of these principles, you can easily cut a modern home heating/cooling needs by 70%+ by following simples rules
I'm always a little confused by radiators placed underneath windows in modern buildings. I'm sure it evens out cold spots, but it sends a lot of heat right outside.
On more than one occasion, I found my bedsheets completely frosted stuck to the wall.
Old school version of that were masonry stoves that come with ton+ of mass for the bricks and smoke being routed all over (often including a place to sleep) to take as much heat as possible from it.
If I had money for that I'd put a big hot water tank for buffer, heat it normally with heat pump, and just had emergency water-sheathed fireplate, with big buffer you can just fire it up once and have tank slowly give the heat back to the building. Or fire it up at the coldest days to save some heat pump power in days where there is barely any solar.
I assume most decorative fireplaces on the other hand are not built to heat the house.
Open floor plans also destroy the efficiency as the heat goes up which made your already inefficient heating even worse.
Combine both together and you probably have 5% efficiency.
(It feels like it's getting warmer - may all be wishful thinking though, I haven't taken any measurements!)
It appears that something like 50% of homes are still over 50 years old, which seems to be more than enough for “some subset of brits large enough to be notable complain about the cold weather because they don't have a properly insulated place to warm up in” to have explanatory power.
We don't use fireplaces anymore (a major "trick" being to put them in the middle of the house rather than in the exterior walls), and while using large windows to capture sunlight and heat works great in the winter, it also leads to overheating in the summer and thus more energy for air conditioning.
> These are modest changes, imperceptible to most, and they won't enable us to forgo active heating and cooling entirely. But they do echo a way of thinking which, today, is oft ignored. Hardwick Hall was designed with Sun, season and temperature in mind.
Everyone I know who has built a house has thought very much about sun, season and temperature. This is very much a factor in determining the sizes and quantity of windows on south-facing vs. north-facing walls, for example.
Again, it's a very interesting article on this one particular castle, but the idea that it has something to teach modern architects and builders is pure fantasy. We're already well aware of all these factors and how they interact with materials and design.
A lot of contemporary energy-efficient designs slope the windows now such that light can enter in the winter but not the summer, but in the past this problem would have been remedied with awnings.
I've lived in houses that certainly did not take into account sun, season and temperature. I learned a lot from that experience. My current house is optimized for it. I've learned a few more things about it, and could do better.
> the idea that it has something to teach modern architects and builders is pure fantasy
Not my experience with architects and builders.
For example, how many houses have a cupola? They're common on older homes, but non-existent on modern ones. What the roof does is accelerate the wind moving over the roof, then the air vents in the cupola let the wind through, which sucks the heat out of the attic.
Another design element is eaves. Eaves shade the house in summer and don't shade it in winter (for more heat gain). Eaves also keep the sides of the house dry, which means your siding and paint and window frames last a lot longer. Mine are 1.5 feet. Most houses around here have tiny or even non-existent eaves.
The advent of air-conditioning is when architects stopped paying attention to the sun.
I vised Löwenburg in Kassel which has bedrooms with similar curtains around the bed. Much later (1891) and with other heating technology of note. I was intrigued by the fireplace design in the room immediately behind the bed. The open fire is backed by a huge granite block built into the wall. The room had a close connection to servant stairways directly down to the exterior.
The guide describe the otherwise plain room as a dressing room. It looked like a convenient place to store a lot of firewood to stoke the fireplace attached to the bed behind it to me.
A great example is the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. At first glance, the building seems to be a giant rectangular box made of glass. Hardly ideal in the long, hot Arkansas summers.
It’s not the truth, though. In reality, the building is said to be highly efficient and was the first Federal building to be LEED certified. Amazing.
I guess we’ve learned a few things over the years.
https://www.clintonlibrary.gov/about-us/leed-certified-build...
The problem in Europe isn't keeping warm in the winter but keeping cool in the summer. In part thanks to their near-total lack of AC in residential buildings, Europe has an extremely high heat-related death rate. 200k people per year die of heatstroke in Europe: this accounts for 36% of global heat-related deaths. This is despite Europe being only 9% of the world population, having a very cool climate in comparison to India and similar countries, and being among the richest regions in the world.
> Pretty much all the fireplaces I see are also built on the central spine of the building, meaning not much heat would be lost to the windows or exterior wall.
Or maybe because, as the first half of the article say, it is because the outside walls have nowhere to put a fireplace, because they are covered in windows?
> he told me it can feel around 10C (18F) warmer inside on a cold winter's day. Other, typical Elizabethan houses, he estimates, would have only feel 2-3C (3.6-5.4F) warmer.
It 'feels' warmer...he 'estimates'. Nice way to do science
> Since it's winter, and cold, I move my desk to a south-eastern window. It brightens the mornings and if I wear another layer, I find I can lower the thermostat by 2C (3.6F).
More good science, change two variables but attribute the effect to only one of them. If I wear another layer of clothing, move my desk to the basement, sacrifice a goat, speak in tongues and draw a pentacle on the floor, I can turn the thermostat down 2 degrees too.
But let's start at the top
>England's longest river was usually flowing freely
Then list lots of evidence that it was not at all unusual for it to freeze at the time.
Great work
You're better served by looking to 19th century lower and middle class architecture. Right before air conditioning, but with relatively modern designs using modern building materials and practices ("insulation" (horsehair and newspaper), fireplaces/stoves, corridors with doors to separate cold rooms from hot ones, windows designed to allow cross-breezes, covered porches to provide shade in summer, etc). Right before air conditioning came in, we had pretty much gotten to the peak of design that used natural forms of temperature regulation. Some designs even created mini greenhouses of glass, with half the wall mounted with earth, for thermal regulation as well as solar heating. The only better passive methods invented since then is geothermal.
The peak of winter heat management were the pechka, Russian rocket stoves built into literal tons of masonry, for the most thermal mass possible. You'd heat it up once with a small amount of wood and it warms the house the whole day. They were so big you could sleep on top of it.
Point of a thermostat is to not have to do this.
Requires a well calibrated heating system though, depending on outside temperature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVqwiMtoDhk
Someone appears to have had a bit of fun being unspecific
He pointed out that Tado (who do smart radiator valves) noted from a study, which drew from their data, that the UK sucks at insulation, losing heat up to three times faster than other European neighbours[0].
[0] https://www.tado.com/en-gb/press/uk-homes-losing-heat-up-to-...
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated nor am I a customer of Tado. Also, I'm British and I just felt like commenting here because it felt relevant.
I've noticed in general a thorough dismissal of passive benefits. It seems that we are caught by a cultural need for immediacy. Thermal management, and particularly passive thermal management, pays immense dividends slowly, but it takes a greater intelligence or broader perspective for anyone to appreciate these advantages.
Those who sit still and think clearly see the advantages of passive benefits, and anyone who gardens or does systems design intrinsically observes the long-term flows and thus understands the passive benefits at play. But so many people – from practitioners like the architect to stakeholders like their clients – go through life wholly unaware of this goldmine that is right there in front of their imagination.
Me and my wife are taking shower daily, hers being hotter than mine (apparently that's common difference between female & male).
Every time, I am thinking that so much heat is going down the drain as waste, why not circulate this under the bathroom floor until it cools down.
Since we have a tub, I usually close the drain, sit/stand on a bench above the tub, rinse thoroughly at the end, keeping hot water afloat for next 20 minutes.
Since tub itself absorbs the heat, even after I open the drain and let go all the water, tub itself stays warmy for an hour or so.