Our 2 storey strawbale house (3 actually) has an osier ceramic stove to heat the house and it isn't! The stove doesn't keep heat for as long as was advised. The boiler inside it also doesn't heat the water.
Altho straw is fantastically insulating, we have a large glass area in the living room, which we are now building a conservatory around to kind of triple glaze it.
We have an underfloor heating system installed, but cannot pump it until we have installed a wind turbine as we have only solar power at present. But the boiler, I don't think is big enough to heat the water for that.
Looking for suggestions on how to run the under floor system, LPG? How efficient is that? Also thinking of building a rumford stove upstairs.
Disappointing that our system doesn't work and looking for alternatives. We will only be using renewable energy and we have a small woodland.
Access to our site is along a narrow track, so deliveries are out of the question.
Any ideas welcome.
Tony
posted on 27-10-06
How air tight are you? what roof insulation? would you be prepared to loose some of the glass area in the living room? and is any of it roof glass?
Tony
posted on 27-10-06
Also you dont necessarily need electricity to make a pump go round. A pet rat for example could do it for you or a bicycle or a small toy steam engine infact any motive force could be connected to the axel of the pump to make it work.
How much thermal mass do you have in your home too?
Martian
posted on 27-10-06
I believe hamsters are more efficient and are known for their willingness to trot around treadmills for hours at a time. The downside is that they prefer to do this at night, but on the plus side they will probably live quite happily on/in your strawbale walls :-)
Rachel Shiamh (whitehead)
posted on 27-10-06
We have thermafleece roof insulation-very good and well insualted floors with Leca.
Thermal mass: thick clay plaster on inside and plinthwall 500mm of stone.
The glass is double glazed and yes, We may have to replace the glass with straw bale walling.
House is pretty airtight.
Still, the ceramic stove doesn't seem to do the job...
Thanks for the alternative pumping solution- were you serious about the hamster?!
Martian
posted on 27-10-06
No, I was only kidding about the hamster!
LPG is as efficient as your boiler, but is is more expensive than natural gas.
It sounds to me like you need to make sure you re not losing heat from anywhere other than your walls. If the other parts of your building are already well insulated, then this would suggest that straw bale is possibly not so good an insulator as the advocates thereof would have us believe.
Thanks to a report referred to by forstertom on the multifoil thread, I have read about convection losses occuring through the bales, maybe this is what is happening. They attempted to reduce such losses and increase stregth by by the injection of layers of gypsum.
Your feedback on this construction technique is appreciated as it can be compared to low energy house building using more conventional modern materials. Personally I would avoid construction methods which do not give guaranteed U-values and structural stability as the one-off cost of the build is likely to be outweighed many times by the cost of repairs and fuel.
Good luck with it, and keep all rodents away from your walls! :-)
