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Woz Details His Plans for Energy-Efficient House
An anonymous reader writes "ECN magazine has posted a long interview with the Woz on his new passion: energy-efficient housing. 'ECN: In PC World, you said, "It's like the way I used to make computers" -- how so? Woz: Simple design. Think about the right way to build something and take a lot of time to get it the best that can be done with the fewest resources used. No waste. Build it right and with few parts it does a lot. Don't cover things with more and more and more technology for features. Design them in from the start. It starts with the architect, of a home or a computer, working from a knowledge of the building materials and a desire to choose wisely.'"
Some very simple house designs that have a lot going for them: straw bale houses, yurts (see www.yurts.com) and the sort of concrete-over-foam that Habitat For Humanity build. Can Woz really improve on these? I figure he'll find something that already exists and popularize it, with a bit of apple polish.
Thomas Edison saw the cast concrete home as working-class housing:
These 25x30 foot two story homes had 500 structural pieces and weighed about 250,000 pounds.
The ultimate test of the Edison process would be in mass production. After careful planning, the first large-scale development began, with forty houses planned to be built off Route 22 in Union, New Jersey, during July and August of 1917.
The street was named Ingersoll Terrace. Basements for the first eleven houses were dug with a steam shovel, and all the equipment and materials were put in place. The first few houses went up very slowly, as laborers struggled to learn the system and become familiar with the molds. Eventually the crew began to move with increasing speed and expertise. By the time the mold was broken on the eleventh house, the process was almost as systematized as Edison had predicted.
In the end the technical side of the monolithic concrete house was another Edison success story. But neither Edison nor Ingersoll had predicted the marketing nightmare they would encounter. Ingersoll decided, as a test, to put the first houses up for sale at the agreed price of $1,200 before building the next block. To everyone's surprise, despite the extremely low price, not a single house was sold in the first month. Ingersoll abandoned the project, and no more Edison concrete houses were ever built.
Some historians and Edison biographers blame the publicity and Edison's grandiose predictions for the demise of his most altruistic endeavor. No one wanted to live in a house that had been described as "the salvation of the slum dweller." People were too proud to be stigmatized as having been "rescued from squalor and poverty."
But there may have been a more important reason for the Edison monoliths' failure to catch on. The architect Ernest Flagg noted that "Mr. Edison was not an architect-- it was not cheapness that wanted so much as relief from ugliness, and Mr. Edison's early models entirely did not achieve that relief." From looking at them, it is hard to disagree.
Ten of the original eleven houses remain standing on Ingersoll Terrace, so the technology of the process has certainly shown itself to be durable. The original owners are long gone, but newer residents have generally positive opinions of the little houses. According to Mrs. Joseph Fila, who occupied an Edison house for half a century, "The twenty-four inch walls keep out the summer heat and provide good winter insulation." Joe Kearny says that the maintenance cost of his concrete house is "zero." Dolores Chumsky is less enthusiastic; her house is plagued by an elusive leak that defies detection. She adds that any prospects for renovation or improvements are doomed. "Just try and get someone to come and make repairs," she says. "They may come in once, but they never come back." Edison's Concrete Homes
> A monolithic dome is at the very top of what I'd like to build to live in.
The general impression can be that of a stage set for Star Trek. Catalog of Monolithic Dome Home Plans, Torus Something that even a geek may tire of very quickly.
> Actually, they dont leak. It is made out of concrete and polyurathane foam.
Right, that's the idea anyway: you inflate a huge bubble, go inside it, and spray a layer of polyurethane foam, then spray concrete over that. This gives you three layers from outside in:
- plastic bubble layer
- urethane foam layer
- concrete layer
The plastic bubble layer is theoretically reusable, but generally isn't. The urethane foam layer provides insulation but is fragile. The concrete is strong.
Unfortunately, the two outer layers are far less durable than the concrete. So, the next step in the failed evolution of this design was to add a second layer of concrete on the outside. The result of this was that the two concrete layers reacted differently to temperature changes - and the result was cracks.
The next step in the evolution was to add rebar to the outside layer (chain link fences sections). That stopped the cracking problem. Or so the vendor said. We'll probably fine out in ten years that that caused other problems (not the least is cost) - but they won't talk about that until they have a fix ready to offer.
Personally, I think it's a good idea - and eventually we'll have a working solution. In the meantime I would never trust the "Monolithic Dome Institute" to be up front about its problems.
I remember reading about an underground home builder that had an interesting solution to the water problem - they used a layer of felt between the concrete and moisture barrier. If a hole formed in the moisture barrier, the felt expanded to a ridiculous extent, effectively sealing the hole. I think the company was formworks, but their website only mentions a superior water-proofing method but no actual description. Still, they claim 20 years without any of their homes having leaks, so it might just work.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Yes, and in my answers to questions I covered that issue, although I feel it's more a matter of feeling just personally that you do things that are good. We all do many good things and tell ourselves that this makes us good about everything.. That may be part of my reason for building an unusual energy efficient home, even though it's not consciously so.
In my case, I just bumped into a very cool technology. David Pogue was a judge with me and had the same reaction. I'm planning to move out of my comfortable large home and live without an air conditioner. If you knew me, you'd know that this is a major sacrifice. I will also have to be able to build a wood house and keep it that way. In expensive communities like where I currently live, you don't have much choice over even the shade of gray you paint your house. If it's wrong, the neighborhood committees make you repaint it. If you stain they get concerned if the stain you used wasn't approved.
Oh, I could always ditch to a hotel (or Hawaii!) on a hot day, ha ha. But actually, after my last kid graduated from high school I had a big house with a nice view and I used very little of it and I will be more comfortable when I complete my new home.
I have VERY little time compared to most people to plan and build a new home. For example, I'll only be home from my crowded schedule 5 days in the entire month of September. So it may take me a year or two to accomplish this whole thing. It's not rush-rush. I don't want to pay someone to build it for me either. I want to do it myself. Hopefully I'll have privacy.
I don't want to promote myself to the public about this. I'm sorry such appears to have happened. I don't even know how I got asked the questions. I must have run into someone casually and mentioned my home or the topic must have come up in some context. I pu the questions off for weeks but finally got an hour to reply to them this morning from a hotel in Boulder, Colorado, where I drove [with] my son to college.
I wish this had not been publicized. I want to be a good example but only on a person to person basis, not publicly. I have a good history of this. I didn't publish CD's or books on computer use, like Apple wanted me to. I privately taught classes to young students for 8 years with no press at all. I can go to my former students' graduations and see that I had a part in their lives. I avoided any management role at Apple for the same reasons. When things get like politics, count me out.
OK a new size TV
Rammed earth - does what it says on the can. Build a form, ram earth into it. Been a building method for....ever. Linky - http://www.rammedearthhomes.com.au/
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
I'm a civil engineering student, so I'm qualified to know: ALL concrete cracks.
Whether the cracks are a problem, on the other hand, is a different issue.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
After my last kid graduated from high school I had too large a home. I don't use it all. That's one of my big concerns. I don't like things bigger or more complicated than what I want. It's part of how I think. I'll be as comfortable as ever in this smaller home.
I don't use corporate jets. I drive my hybrid most places. I won't get a plug-in hybrid because I have come to feel a connection to our earth and the plug-in hybrid uses more resources overall. It saves gasoline directly but burns a lot of it to charge the batteries and uses much more in terms of cost - more than you'll get back in gas savings ever. Cost is reasonable to apply as 'resources'. As I mentioned in my answers to questions, if you spend more energy creating a solar cell than you get out of it in its usefull life, that's a no-brainer. It sounds good but the net is not. Actually, hybrids in general don't fare too well by this analysis but they are justified by very low pollution. I would weigh that my Prius using gasoline and batteries, with U.S. software to put low pollution above gas milage, pollutes less per mile than the plug-in hybrid will. In other words, I don't think that the coal burning to generate electricity is very good as to pollution, but I could certainly be wrong.
Also, I do care about such things as energy efficiency but I do not act as though you are good to do it and bad not to. I don't put anyone down for living their own way in this regard. It's for me and for me only.
OK a new size TV
Throughout the year, most of my transportation is in my Prius and on my Segway. I probably spend the same amount of time in each when I'm home. I take the Segway to town and to concerts almost every day when the weather permits. I don't want to live where it's too hot and humid, despite my love for Austin, Orlando, New York, etc.
I may move to a hotter place in California, or even out of California. I could have a normal house or a less normal house with some interesting aspects. I prefer to go the latter route, and it is a sacrifice for me not to take the safe route.
The self sacrifices I refer to are great amounts of my own money that I tranferred (as in charitable contributions) to environmental groups. Liking California doesn't run counter to this. I have contributed to many important forest and river groups in California in fact. I suspect that you read me wrongly.
OK a new size TV
It goes by other names. I have heard about 3 names used. Basically, if the dirt where your home is to be built has enough clay content (30%), which is common, then a [$200,000] machine is brought to the construction site. The dirt is dug (top 2 feet can't be used because of organic content) and a sealant (various shades of 'green') mixed. The mixture is compressed by the machine and a block comes out which is laid in the sun for a week or two. The blocks are grooved in the case I'm familiar with so they fit together and nails are not used.
Maybe other names are ram-earth or compressed-earth.
OK a new size TV