Hello,
I'm part of a group developing an permaculture / Open Source Ecology project in
Extremadura, Spain.
http://openeland.org/en/
We're organising a two week summer camp where we will have a number of workshops
etc and I'm planning on moving to the site for a few months to get the site ready.
So, I'm wanting to build a structure which will be quick to build which I can
live in for a while. It it works out I may be some more for the camp. I want to
use sustainable (or least recyclable) materials as much as possible and want to
structure to be durable enough to last a few years and be usable all year around
- which I think means it needs to be insulated.
The site is fairly hot during summer (30 degree centigrade plus), but gets cold
over the winter (down to -3 in February when we were camping there!). It's
general fairly dry, with most of the 750mm of annual rainfall happening in
winter and days of 30mm+ rain not uncommon.
I've also been looking at small building designs like these:
http://www.countryplans.com/jshow.com/y2k/listings/3.html
http://www.simplesolarhomes.com/steps-for-building-a-small-solar-home/
I'm also thinking about a Hexyurt, but concerned about getting the weather
proofing and insulation right.
One options is to build insulated panels for the roof and walls. Help, wood, or
cellulose is probably the preferred insulation to be sandwitched between the OSB
on the outside and some other interior board (probably more OSB), but rockwool
is currently about 10% the cost here at the moment (and is apparently partially
made from recycled materials and itself recyclable).
I can visualise how the panel construction for the walls, with vertical 60
degree wedges between the panels sealed with silicone. I'm not completely sure
how the roof would work and would be interested to hear ideas.
One thought is that a good quality of seal between the top of the walls and the
roof could be achieved by a layer of foam that compresses when the roof is put on.
My main concern is water getting in the roof seams. I was thinking I could cover
the whole structure in tar paper, but I don't seem to be able to source it in
the UK or Spain. The plastic membrane equivalents are only UV stable for a few
months.
My next idea is the membrane could go under the OSB. It would be quite a
complicated construction but the only way I can see it working is there's a
strip of plastic under each edge seam, which is allowed to fold into a bit of a
valley and is secured on the inside by two pieces of batten (which would also
form the cavity for the insulation - will be complete pain to cut and fill with
rockwool type insulation).
I'm not sure if a H13 form roof construction would make this easier by only
having two angled roof edges or harder by introducing a horizontal seam.
Compressible foam could also be used between the roof triangles to improve air
tightness. I am thinking about passive heating and cooling ventilation like this:
http://www.simplesolarhomes.com/category/passive-cooling-and-heating/
Anyway, I'm interested to hear ideas. I realise polyisocyanurate insulation
boards would be much more straight forward, but I am keen to avoid it as it's
not widely used or recycled (in Europe at least, as far as I know).
Christopher.
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