Ask Kevin: Steel and radiant floor heating qualms

Kevin,

I stumbled across your show and the claims made of building green with the home. The partial episode I saw was mostly about the flooring (concrete) and the radiant in-floor heating.

Are you including the enormous amount of energy required to manufacture steel? Not to mention the energy used to mine the ore? Or the fossil fuels burned by the heavy equipment to set the structural steel columns and beams? Your straw bale house is no longer looking so green. I have another question regarding the savings claim in regard to the in-floor radiant heat. I agree on the benefits of the more even temperature dispersion with radiant heat, but ductwork and blowers still need to be installed for the air condtioning system. Good luck convincing today's buyers that the house is so well insulated you don’t need A/C. A good dehumidification system is at least needed in most parts of the country during the summer. So you have the cost and energy consumption of ductwork and blowers for A/C and the cost and energy consumption for the boiler and tubes for the heating system. At least some of these costs are shared with a more conventional system, which I am by no means advocating as the best set up. Just my two cents.

I am curious as to how the show will unfold. I’ll try to catch more episodes.

Jamie

Jamie,

You make many good points.

Mother Nature and our building codes require us to do extraordinary things. I could have built this house in New Mexico without any steel. It’s a trade off. Straw requires very little embodied energy and steel requires a lot. Lumber harvesting and transportation requires quite a bit, too.

Regarding the heating question: We don’t have any A/C, as we are near the ocean and never need it. Your point is well made about that system requiring venting and such. Something that must be considered elsewhere. There are, however, some great alternatives to A/C, like the solar chimney. A solar chimney often referred to as thermal chimney is a way of improving the natural ventilation of buildings by using convection of air heated by passive solar energy. A simple description of a solar chimney is that of a vertical shaft utilizing solar energy to enhance the natural stack ventilation through a building.

Thanks for writing,
Kevin