Mass/ Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

...massive assemblies offers a new type of structure (for floors, walls and roofs), with significant advantages over steel or concrete options. There are two products in that general family that have attracted our attention, as they enable longer spans than the traditional CLT, while requiring less wood:Massplywoo...

...massin it, any such savings pretty much cease to exist because it might take the entire day to drop even a full degree. The disadvantages of thermalmassin homes: Let's speak to the potential downsides of thermalmass首先，如果一个房子经常有几天空着，或者如果你有一间小屋，他……

Gabion walls are retaining walls built by stacking stone in a gabion cage or gabion basket that can serve many purposes but are most often used to create tiered or leveled ground in gardens. They are rectangular baskets of metallic lattice filled with stones and their origin dates back to war times when they were er...

...massbench which then radiates heat at night. On the roof are photovoltaic cells that charge batteries which then powers interior lights and the outdoor LED display . © Raphaël Thibodeau Us: Is this shelter a first in Québec? L. McC : There are buildings that are heated with solar power in Q...

What is a thermal battery? Thermalmassof any kind can by definition be called a thermal battery, as it has the ability to store heat. In the context of a house, that means dense materials like bricks, masonry and concrete. Even a jug of water sitting in a sunny window is a thermal battery of sorts as it captures a...

...massby keeping it inside the building envelope can help regulate interior temperatures. There is also an increasing use of precast concrete in the building industry, which offers advantages in terms of environmental impact, cost and speed of construction - especially if choosing carbon negative concrete CMU blocks usi...

...masslike concrete, stone or brick will absorb the most heat. For walls you can simply add a second layer of drywall (or more), if you want to keep a traditional look. A high quality window choice is important, and to truly invest in this concept you are best to install at least triple pane gas-filled windows with lo...

...massto absorb heat. A slab is a great place to bury electrical work, plumbing, central vacuum tubes, phone and internet lines, speaker wires, and most importantly, tubing for radiant floor heat . A slab-on-grade means no basement, no basement walls, just one slab of concrete on which you build your house. They aren’...

...massand fossil fuels for supplimentary heat and power; it is insulated with foam panels on the walls (we found no mention of floors) and includes thermalmassinside of the building envelope. I'm not here to criticize the fossil fuel use or foam insulation, but it's no more a 'natural phenomenon' or 'living breathin...

...massincluded for heat storage, you will likely need an additional heat source like high efficiency wood-burning stoves or fireplaces , or if off-grid an electric-free wood pellet stove . Storing solar heat (thermal batteries): If you incorporate thermalmassinto a home to store and release heat , you can distribu...

This article was inspired by a podcast I heard at Positive Energy, where I have yet to hear a podcast that I didn't want to listen to a second time, so check them out if you're like me and you think listening to building science makes mundane tasks like folding laundry a joy. This particular episode was about phase ...