Thoughts on Architecture and Energy from My Crawlspace
posted by Nate Oman
I am happy to say that I live in one of the more beautiful spots in the United States. There are few things as good for the soul as an early morning walk through the tidewater of the Chesapeake with a large, friendly dog. The climate, however, can make comfortable living difficult; our summers are deadly muggy and the winters are just cold enough that you care whether your furnace and insulation work.
I was thinking all these thoughts recently while slithering through the crawl space beneath my house to repair a broken heating duct. I find do-it-yourself home repair depressing, not because I necessarily dislike it or because I am bad at it (although I often am), but rather because it always brings home to me how crappily built my house is. It is a nice enough looking house and I love our neighborhood, but the construction sucks. My walls consist of framing, plaster board, and siding over cardboard covered insulation. You could literally break your way through the exterior walls of my house with your bare hands. (Well maybe you might want a pair of gloves.) My unfinished attic is insulated with piles of foam insulation. My roof needs to be replaced. And so on…
In addition to late-night ulcers about roofing and siding replacement, my house consumes a lot of energy. In the winter I need to burn lots of gas to keep it warm and in the summer it will rapidly turn into an inferno without air conditioning. My built world thus carries within itself a set of assumptions about commodity prices and consumption habits. What follows from this, however, is not a rant in favor of new eco-friendly technology. Rather, what I want is a return to the past.
Now admittedly, one of the ways that Virginians of old dealt with the heat was to die like flies while enduring extreme discomfort. However, there were other strategies, most notably architecture. A few years ago I visited The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s home outside of Nashville, a spot that can vie with Williamsburg for oppressively hot and humid summers. (Although, I still think that we win.) We arrived at mid-day in July. There are few things as good as a hot, muggy, southern day to bring home the horror of slavery. I suspect that I lack the imagination to really “get” what it would be like to be whipped and abused, but I can imagine day after day of backbreaking and unrequited toil in the Virginian sun. Hellish. The interior of Jackson’s plantation house, however, was remarkably pleasant.
The effect was achieved without air conditioning. High ceilings and transom windows gathered hot interior air high above our heads and created circulation from room to room. Thick (2-3 feet) stone exterior walls further lowered the interior temperature, and the walls themselves were protected from direct exposure to the sun by broad porches running the length of the house. The cumulative effect was not entirely unlike what my card-board-and-siding castle achieves by sucking up huge amounts of electricity.
I don’t necessarily draw a regulatory conclusion from these musings. I don’t know enough about the costs of substitutes, etc. to know if the James City County zoning board ought to require stone walls and porches. I suspect that as energy prices stay high, the housing market will gradually respond, but the response will necessarily be slow. Still, it strikes me as a bit irrational to do with energy consumption what one can do with architecture. Stone houses also look cooler.
February 21, 2008 at 11:58 am
Posted in: Uncategorized
Print This Post
Responses (1)
SusanS - February 23, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I agree.
Leave a Reply