Principles And Construction 6:
Walls And Temperature

As mentioned before, the walls and floor of the Potters' house are the main heat storage and temperature buffering system for the house.

The walls are insulated on the outside. This, together with earth berming, isolates them from external temperatures, especially the cold of winter.

A desired room temperature is 15 to 20 degrees Celsius (a little cool relative to some homes, but still quite comfortable). Temperatures at the house site range from -40C in midwinter to +35C in midsummer.

Winter low temperatures can reach -40C. During winter, the house must therefore deal with a maximum temperature difference from inside to outside of 55-60 Celsius degrees towards the cold in midwinter. Furthermore, daily winter high temperatures are often as low as -20C, which imples a minimum temperature difference of 35-40 degrees even during the warmest part of the day.

Summer high temperatures can reach +35C. During summer, the house must deal with a maximum temperature difference from inside to outside of 15-20 degrees towards warmth. Daily summer low temperatures are rarely above 25 C, and are often below 20, which means that the minimum termpature difference during summer is often zero, and can be a few degrees towards warmth or cold.

During spring and fall, the location of the house is more often than not colder than the desired room temperature.

For these reasons, the house must first be designed to handle cold temperatures, by trapping heat and prevent it from escaping, and only secondarily be designed to moderate warm temperatures.

Previous construction page | Construction intro page | Next construction page

To the main Potter house page.
To the intro page.
To the sunspace.org home page.