|
Posted by Andre-John Mas on November 30, 2007, 1:11 pm
>
>
>
>
>
> >> Hi,
>
> >> I have had the chance to travel and have seen that in some countries
> >> there are some effective solutions to keeping a building cool, warm
> >> or simply making them work in the environment they are in. Contrast
> >> this to some modern buildings which seem to ignore completely the
> >> environment in which they are present. Some of the design issue I see
> >> are:
> >> - buildings which have roofs that aren't designed for the amount of
> >> rain or snow
> >> - inefficient design for cooling
>
> >> In some of the counties I have visited I have seen, as smart of use
> >> of 'technology' (does not have to be modern):
> >> - tall rooms for keeping spaces cool
> >> - large vertical chimneys that rise up beyond the building that are
> >> designed to capture the moving wind, to extract the warm air in the
> >> buildings
> >> - stilts that help keep the building away from the damp and help
> >> cooling of the building
> >> - roofs that slant to reduce the impact of snow and rain on the
> >> building
>
> >> These are just a few, though I would be curious to see what seemingly
> >> simple building techniques that you have seen elsewhere that could be
> >> used in our new buildings, to help them better fit into its climate.
>
> >> Andre
>
> > Just about all the things you mentioned are incidentals, not methods.
> > Ex:
> > Not everyone can afford high ceilings and a house without a fireplace
> > has no use for a chimney no matter how tall it is.
>
> I thought the OP was referring to a thing used in North Africana nd soem
> Middle East buildings, where earthen homes had towers which, IIRC (not
> sure) might be called "wind catchers" or somehting similar (I'd have to
> check). Anyway, the idea was that these were, in fact, tall and sturdy,
> and both brought winds into the house (thick earthen walls BTW), and
> allowed hot air to rise and escape.
While the examples were from North Africa and the Middle East, the
point was more about using technology intelligently and not ignoring
something because it is hundreds of years old. Sometimes the solutions
are already being used in other cultures or were being used locally
until a while back. In many ways in trying to build a standard house
or using electronic devices to a job, we fail to realise that there
are already effective technologies available to keep a builing warm, a
building cool or keeping the water away fromt the floor. This is a
general comment, since there are certainly buildings that adhere to
smart design, but there are also so many that don't. Also as stated in
other comments there are new technologies that build on and improve on
what already exist.
For me passive-energy is something I like to think about in buildings
- that is letting natural physics do the work, rather than throwing a
motor in to do the work, if at all possible. With concerns about
energy expenditure I would like to see more energy concious designs
come into play. I haven't been everywhere and I haven't seen
everything so I am hoping to find out other technologies that have
maybe ignored that we could reintroduce. The point about some houses
not having over-hanging roofs to create shade, or keep water away from
the main structure, which was brought up in another comment, is an
example of where we build and miss something out because we didn't
understand their importance.
> I thnik theword"chimney" is used in the general sense,m as oppsoed to the
> specific sense of being incorporated with a fireplace.
I was using it to describe a vertical structure through which heat
escapes.
Andre
| 
Yahoo! 
Google 
Windows Live 
del.icio.us 
digg 
Netscape 
XML Sitemap