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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.'"
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.
The answer to that is easy. concrete dome.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I don't think I can handle that much awesome in one headline. Careful there, submitters, some of us have conditions.
There's already tons of research on the concept of energy efficient houses. One popular approach is called Passive house and it's pretty amazing how much energy you can conserve.
Using the heat of crystallization of Pine resin is a really cool idea, but it seems unlikely there is that much heat capacity there. Dang, my CRC handbook doesnt list that number.
i'd love to see buckminster fullers house given a chance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house
get it the best that can be done with the fewest resources...
Like placing a reset button right next to the door bell?
I like things simple with fewer parts and fewer added technologies. Just think out the right ways to build a home and do it. So few people know how easily all our homes could have been energy efficient rather than energy wasters. I suppose it's an outcome of the fact that energy is so cheap and abundant now. I think of it this way. The timeline of history and of man will be many millions of years long. Over that timeline, at some point man was going to find oil and ways to use it. Whenever in time that had happened, the generations it happened for would have used it up. We are those generations using it up, but if we saved it and didn't even touch it at all, some future generation would quickly use it up. The time that mankind has oil may be a short blip on the long timeline of humans. Whenever the discoveries were made, that blip would have appeared. We needn't think of ourselves as bad just because we were the lucky ones to have the oil blip. - this is the same line of thinking that I have about our current energy production methods and the pollution it causes, only there is one more variable here: population size.
Once the population size reaches some critical mass, there are enough of us on the planet to really impact on the environment in a bad way, but as we do so, we start noticing the problems we cause and eventually in order to survive we have to move to better tech for both energy production and to less polluting manufacturing techniques. From point of view of energy we use what serves us best at the time and at this time burning oil serves us best because it's there, it's easily accessible, it's easy to transport and use. But more importantly it makes it possible for us to grow the total population to a point when we reach yet another critical mass, at this point the oil is going to be pretty much used up and the environment is much worse off then before, but we have so many people working on so many tech advances that it makes it possible to shift to a different energy source (nuclear/thermonuclear/geothermal/black hole gravity pumps or whatever.)
Increase in usage of certain types of energy and resources allows our population to grow, which pushes the tech forward, which allows population to grow even more eventually forcing us to think of new energy sources and other resources etc. It's all about population growth.
You can't handle the truth.
He used to live in a 7,100 square foot home. It was up for sale a year ago - I don't know if he's sold it.
I get a little tired of rich, jet setting, mansion owners going on about the environment, even when I agree with them or approve of the work they do.
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.
I think the better idea is to start first by thinking about build quality of houses. My house has had several repairs - things which were minor things to do right the first time end up costing thousands of dollars. The quality could easily extend to Woz's (Woz'z ? ;) ) analogy of the computer.
If the goal of the energy efficient house is to save money on heating and cooling, my thought is we have to look at the expenditure of a house across its lifetime. The materials needed costs something in energy to manufacture, transport, etc - nails, screws, tiles, 2x4, shingles, etc. When these things are thrown away due to shoddy construction* - it leads to more energy demand and wastage to replace it.
*Its usually not the materials that fail except in natural disasters. In disasters. better construction practices, building to code or better codes would help. Again quality the issue.
Whenever I hear about wealthy people talking about the environment I always have to wonder if they are serious about improving it, or just seeking acclimation from the public
has this guy built? i mean, just staying in the same house forever will save far more energy than building X number of new ones, regardless of how energy efficient they are. seems a bit self-inconsistent to me, dare I say hypocritical.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I helped build one of those once in Larkspur CO. Stryrofoam forms, reinforced with rebar, shockcrete... Not sure if the architecture maximizes or minimizes available space. One thing is for sure, the damn thing is bomb proof.
I find shipping container homes (and other modular designs) to be intriguing. I am glad a genious like Woz has a new creative outlet.
an ill wind that blows no good
After reading this article it dawned on me - Steve Wozniak is a real-life Howard Roark. Woz matches pretty closely with the fictional character: they both have uncompromising principles, they are both creative geniuses, they both use the materials and techniques of their craft to achieve creations far beyond their peers.
I wonder how Woz would feel about the comparison.
Sapere aude!
Although I think Woz was talking about end-to-end efficiency, it's not too much of a challenge to build an energy-efficient house in someplace where the average temp varies between 42 and 82 (nasty flash). How about a more challenging location with a wider range? How about someplace at altitude? Talk to me about energy efficiency when it's butt-cold in the winter, with no sun, and triple-glazed windows are the standard. When summertime is unbearable heat, oppressive humidity, intense solar UV, or giant brain-sucking mosquitos. It's easy to build a show home in paradise.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Woz can help remove CO2 from the atmosphere by using lots of wood or plant fiber (from local sustainably-managed plantations, of course). If each person on the planet used about 30 tons of wood or plant fiber for their house, it would return the Earth's atmosphere to it's pre-industrial level of CO2 (1 ton of wood sequesters roughly 1.2 tons of CO2). The only challenge (aside from growing enough wood) is termites which have a nasty habit of converting wood into CO2 and methane.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
While I can't solve all your problems, I have a few ideas that might be worth trying.
For windows, during the summer months, you want high reflectivity. During the winter months, you want low reflectivity to let more radiant energy in. Solution: double windows. The outer panes swing open like shutters. The main window can behave however you want. The outer pane basically consists of a two-way mirror, and closes during the summer heat. It opens in winter to let more radiant energy in. Make it electronically controlled based on the output of a photocell on that particular window. Alternatively, use shades in the same fashion.
For added thermal conversion factor, use the most dirt cheap black and white passive matrix LCD panels you can find as shingles. During the winter months, set them to black so that they absorb energy and convert it to heat (and disable the vent fan in your attic). During the summer months, set them to transparent (with a foil back) so that your roof reflects the sun's energy back out. Alternatively, use a crawler robot to stretch out a reflective Mylar sheet over your roof during the summer and retract it during the winter.
To warm yourself further in the winter, you'd ideally like a solar concentrator. Use an array of mirrors that track the sun and focus light on your house. During the summer months, point them instead at a solar collector to produce electricity. Alternatively, during the summer, burn the house down with the solar concentrator (due to a "technical glitch"), collect the insurance money, and buy a beach house in Florida. :-D (Kidding!)
Mosquitoes like standing water. Drain and fill the lake. Alternatively, pour alcohol on the surface of the lake and ignite it during breeding season. Alternatively, turn it into a salt water lake.
Other issues? :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If he actually cared, it would be more like this:
1. Use as little space as possible, so as to reduce unnecessary energy use.
2. Realize that the more space you devote to a garage, the larger the number of inefficient automobiles you will buy to fill it.
3. Spend all money saved in replacing inefficient corporate jets with green jets that use half the fuel to carry the same passenger load - or ride coach.
But that would be efficient design of an energy-efficient house.
Now, maybe he'll get a plug-in hybrid for the garage, that gets more than 100 mpg, that might help a bit.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Hard to believe the Woz can be taken in by this whole "southern yellow pine" bullshit. Energy efficiency is much more than using the same wood we us by the million board-feet here in the southeast. I happen to be an engineer who workes in the residential market, and I can pretty much guarantee that there is no miracle in S. Pine.
... and the best way to save energy...
There is a certain amount of value to thermal mass, but it's not a panacea. You see, if your diurnal cycle lies outside of your comfort zone, it's going to take a massive amount of energy to keep those walls at your comfort temperature, and solid substances used in building are all very conductive. Want R-19 walls? Great - go build your walls 15 inches thick! Getting that temp cycle to work for you requires that your average temp is your indoor desired temp (Lisa, in this house...).
When thermal mass houses are subjected to extended cold (like we have here, even in Virginia), they suck - heat that is.
There are lots of great things you can do, but energy efficiency can be helped most by doing the following:
1) Don't build a new house - buy an existing one.
2) If you build, don't do the code minimums - they are there so production builders can make 25% while giving you a Wal-Mart quality product (excuse me, "affordable" housing is what they call it)
3) Move somewhere where you don't need to heat or cool your house to be comfortable.
Now, if you're still dead set to build something energy efficient, give me a call and we can talk about my fees. The last house I built from scratch - about 52,000 conditioned cubic feet with several hundered square feet of windows in a 6500HDD environment cost me just about $40/mo to heat and cool, on averge, throughout the year.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
I am looking for sites but haven't had enough time to narrow one down yet. I'm mostly interested in areas of the California coast, like Half Moon Bay or San Luis Obispo. ... I have always had an interest in my own self-sacrifice to help the environment.
Oh yeah, because living around the California coast is such a self sacrifice. I mean Half Moon Bay? Who could think of living there? Only savages.
The energy of conversion is the energy it takes to change a matter's state from a solid to a liquid, or back again. The temperature of the matter remains the same, be it liquid or solid, only it's state changes. The energy of conversion for water from a liquid to a solid is about 1,050 Btu/pound of water.
I don't know what the energy of conversion for the resin at 71F is, but that house can store and release thousands of BTUs over the course of a day and night.
I've always been impressed with the Dilbert Ultimate House http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/duh/index.ht ml as an example of a cool looking and functionally efficient dwelling. If anybody could lay down the cash for one, Woz could.
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
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
Yes, a private jet is the most hoggish, environmentally unfriendly way to travel. But if the functional advantage afforded by a private jet was really just "30 minutes waiting in the security line," I doubt near so many people would use them. Having a direct flight available from any airport to any other, able to depart at a moment's notice, is a big deal, especially for someone who is trying to hold meetings with lots of high level people with very tight schedules. If a private jet brings business advantages to an oil exec, should environmentalists be denied those advantages?
Here's a rather contrived example: The president of Flotsjetzistan is trying to decide what to do with a million acres of virgin timber. The CEO of Pollutocorp has a plan for cutting down the timber to build giant novelty toothpicks. Al Gore has a plan to keep most of the forest intact while bringing in the same amount of revenue. The secret? Cheese!
Anyhow, Prez sez, "These are both great plans. Drop by my office tomorrow, and explain them in further detail."
Pollutocorp says, "I'll be there."
Gore says, "For the sake of rigorous ethical consistency, I'm heeding fredmosby's advice and taking the public airline. I'll have to take a transcontinental flight to Beijing, with a five hour layover, then a flight to Jakarta. Then there's an eight hour flight to Saudi Arabia, because they're the one country you've managed to keep diplomatic relations with. In other words, I can be there on Thursday at the latest. Could we do a teleconference?"
"What is this... teleconference?"
"Well, we each have a camera..."
"No good. Cameras capture mens souls."
In the end, Pollutocorp wins. Had Al used a private jet, he might have spared a million acres of trees, enough to cover centuries of constantly running his jet.
The example is contrived, but the point is clear: If Al has even one huge success to show for his flagrant gulfstreaming, if he gets a few million more people trying to lower their energy bills, or gets an important piece of legislation passed, or gets a few coal plants in China replaced with renewable energy or energy conservation efforts, then by comparison his own personal CO2 emissions are but a fart in a hurricane. If using a private jet makes him more able to make his case to the movers and shakers who decide energy policy and research priorities, then shaming Gore into giving the jet up could be a net loss for the climate change movement as a whole.
The counterargument is that appearances matter, and the accusations of hypocrisy are causing problems for other environmentalists. But in my mind, if you took this issue away, the right wing would just find some other issue to blow out of proportion. Gore isn't going to win over the Hannitys of the world, and it's a waste of time for him to try.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Another way of dealing with radiant energy is careful design of eaves. The sun is higher in the summer and lower in the winter, so by extending the eaves, they largely shade the windows in the summer but leave them open in the winter. Lots of people put up sails (essentially) in the summer to shade the side of the house.
What I've done is use mylar-coated bubblepack, that claims to be 99% reflective for heat, on swinging frames, in the attic. In the summer, the frames are swung up against magnetic catches perpendicular to the sunlight, so the heat radiating in from the roof is reflected right back, while in the winter the frames are parallel to the sunlight and all that radiated heat hits the ceiling of the house itself. You wouldn't think, with 75 cm or so of insulation on top of the ceiling, that it'd matter so much, but it makes a 15 degree C difference in attic temp, which definitely affects the temp inside the house.
Tracking mirrors are very expensive, take enormous amounts of maintenance, and take up a lot of space. It's much better to just dig the house down into the ground as far as you can and rely on the ground heat. Some clever people have been doing stuff with digging a very deep hole, filling it with sand and embedded tubing, then building their house on top, and spending the whole summer pumping heat from the house down into the sand, and relying on it throughout much of the winter. A physicist named Ted Thompson, who was involved with early atomic bomb design, was doing later work with having crawl spaces open to the outside during winter and spraying fine mist into them, forming immense ice piles, then using that for cooling for the early part of the summer. (ice lasts a long time with just a little insulation, if there's enough of it.)
Lakes aren't the problem with mosquitoes: puddles are. Lakes have fish, which eat larvae. Plus, in most locales, salting a lake would probably be illegal and certainly would piss off your neighbors. Turning wetlands into lakes is much more effective, but screws all the wildlife that was living there. And, for the record, alcohol is 100% miscible with water, so in order to burn a lake you'd have to pour roughly 45% of the volume of the lake worth of alcohol in there and burn it. If you're convinced you need to burn a lake, what you want to do is pour oil on the lake and light that up: it floats and doesn't mix.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.