Better building ideas.COUNTRYSIDE: The article on the Overmyers' house at 9,100 feet (Sept/Oct 2007) is a great way to get the word out about energy efficient technology. When I was living in Florida some issues came up. We found that a typical cement brick house was okay for hurricane resistance but the structure showed signs of damage (our house had cracks in the walls after Charlie ran over us). Another issue was the fact that we could not even hope to cool our house with solar panels as the house had so many energy loss challenges. I started to look at why our current building technology has been the same for 60 years! We updated every appliance, car and many other things, but failed to update housing technology. The wood product manufacturers and many other building materials Building materials used in the construction industry to create . These categories of materials and products are used by and construction project managers to specify the materials and methods used for . suppliers seem to have things locked down. I found a great technology called S.I.R's (Structural Insulated Panels). The SIP product is basically two skins bonded to a foam core. It may sound funny or even weak, but trust the data for yourself, the SIP products are like individual I-beams when it comes to structural support. "The Federation of American Scientists The Federation of American Scientists (FAS)[1] is a non-profit organization formed in 1945 by scientists from the Manhattan Project who felt that scientists, engineers and other innovators had an ethical obligation to bring their knowledge and experience to bear (www.fas.org) have been chartered to find the best building material for this new century. One great technology that the fas.org found was the use of Cement Fiber Board (CFB CFB Canadian Forces Base ) bonded to EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) A PostScript file format used to transfer a graphic image between applications and platforms. EPS files contain PostScript code as well as an optional preview image in TIFF, WMF, PICT or EPSI, the latter being an ASCII-only format. or other foam cores. The cores are typically 3.5 or 5.5 inches thick. I have seen how well a SIP house survived a huricane. Habitat for Humanity Habitat for Humanity, nonprofit ecumenical Christian organization that enables low-income people to own affordable, livable housing. Headquartered in Americus, Ga., it was founded in 1976 by businessman Millard Fuller and his wife. has been building with this type of SIP in Florida for at least five years. My intent is to build a house with this same CFB, SIP technology, however I want to build a Net Zero house. Net Zero is an off-grid house that is super energy efficient. The twist is we want to add a greenhouse to our design, and the Overmyers' house has that unique greenhouse feature, and it is energy efficient! We are designing with solar PV, wind and bio-fuel generators for power, that will be delivered to fork lift batteries driving 5kw sine wave A continuous, uniform wave with a constant frequency and amplitude. See wavelength.  A Sine Wave _title> Sine wave inverters. Our heat will be solar vacuum tube water heat collectors with a wood fired water boiler. I have an idea of using geothermal for a first stage heating/cooling system but I have not finished the design. There is a high cost for pumping water around the loop, so I am trying to design a thermal siphon siphon (sī`fən, –fŏn), tube through which a liquid is lifted over an elevation by the pressure of the atmosphere and is then emptied at a lower level. system that works with little pumps.--Fred Pollard, Washington |
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