3 ms·

this is such a telling story .. I am immediately on the side of the owner-builder, but then > in the fall, we have to run the air conditioning when it is in t

this is such a telling story .. I am immediately on the side of the owner-builder, but then > in the fall, we have to run the air conditioning when it is in the mid sixties outside! what? building design has a lot of parts to it.. "big cement slab" and "some insulation" are not the only parts.. But good quality design and the parts to build it are expensive. There is an underlying theme of saving money to accomplish something otherwise not possible. I am sympathetic to that of course.. Something is not right about the design, but what bad manners to point it out first! Someone put a lot of effort into some upgrade and they likely cannot change the decisions they made, due to time and costs, etc. good to hear the details and mostly supportive here -- green building has got to get better, starting yesterday IMHO

hedora 3y ago
The problem is that it is sunny in that month. Historically around here, we’d have more cloud cover, and it would be tuned right. The plan was to open the windows if this was a problem, but we’re also getting more flies / biting flies than before during those months. Of course, the excess sun means excess solar production when most people aren’t running heaters or A/C. The expensive fix is to increase the amount the roof sticks out by a foot or so to block the sun for an additional month in fall and spring. The cheap fix (what we are going for) is to put up curtains or blinds that let us manually tune the amount of passive heating we get from the sun. Either fix would also reduce glare, but only the curtains let us tune the pre/post solstice passive heating. It is colder post-solstice for a given angle of sun, so extending the roof enough for November probably implies paying more for heat in Jan/Feb.
- BenjiWiebe 3y ago
  Do your windows not have screens? That would allow you to have the windows open even when there's flies. Now if you have bad air pollution/smells (smoke, livestock, city) then screens won't help.
  - hedora 3y ago
    We have screens, but they are retractable (high wind area), and the flies are somehow drawn to the tiny gaps in the mechanism.

hedora 3y ago

The problem is that it is sunny in that month. Historically around here, we’d have more cloud cover, and it would be tuned right. The plan was to open the windows if this was a problem, but we’re also getting more flies / biting flies than before during those months. Of course, the excess sun means excess solar production when most people aren’t running heaters or A/C. The expensive fix is to increase the amount the roof sticks out by a foot or so to block the sun for an additional month in fall and spring. The cheap fix (what we are going for) is to put up curtains or blinds that let us manually tune the amount of passive heating we get from the sun. Either fix would also reduce glare, but only the curtains let us tune the pre/post solstice passive heating. It is colder post-solstice for a given angle of sun, so extending the roof enough for November probably implies paying more for heat in Jan/Feb.

BenjiWiebe 3y ago
Do your windows not have screens? That would allow you to have the windows open even when there's flies. Now if you have bad air pollution/smells (smoke, livestock, city) then screens won't help.
- hedora 3y ago
  We have screens, but they are retractable (high wind area), and the flies are somehow drawn to the tiny gaps in the mechanism.