Say what you will about the need for basements, but I haven't
fired up the woodstove in my garage yet this season, and it's 52
degrees inside tonight. That's 20 degrees warmer than the outside
temperature, and during last summers heat wave it was at least 10
degrees cooler than the outside temp. Why? Some credit must go to the
4 inches of insulation in the walls and ceiling. But what keeps my
garage so comfortable is the fact that it sits on a slab over earth
that averages about 50 degrees year round. That giant heat sink keeps
it cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
Some time back I figured out that I could easily convert my
garage to a small apartment. In fact, it'd be a lot less work than
rehabbing my 115 year old house!
So lets synthesize these ideas a bit... a city house should
be a small, simple structure. I wouldn't recommend building a house
on a slab in this climate- the cost of replacing the structure if
it's damaged by frost heaves is just to great. So we have to have a
basement, and getting in touch with that 50 degree earth is a good
thing.
So we start with a "basement". Code requires we go down at
least 4 feet, so we might as well do poured concrete walls a full 7
feet high. Keep the design pretty much square, so one wood or corn
stove can heat the whole place. Then put the kitchen and bathroom on
opposite sides of the same wall for a hilariously simple plumbing
system. Put on a gently sloping roof, for a shape right out of the
prairie school.
We now have a modest house that is energy efficent,
inexpensive, and nearly indestructable. Outgrow it? Well, you can
always ad a house on top or turn it into a garage.
dreaming of putting one of these into a Hawthorne hillside,
Dyna Sluyter
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