From Guest Blogger Lana Hawkins: Sustainable Homes: Ways to Bring Natural and Organic Elements into Your Interiors

Sustainable Homes: Ways to Bring Natural and Organic Elements into Your InteriorsAdvanced technology, smartphones and lots of artificial products have made us feel that the future is here. Everybody forgot the importance of nature and that we need to cherish it. Do not be such a person, reunite with nature again and welcome it into your home by introducing some organic and natural elements. Not only will these look great in your home, but will provide you with a healthier atmosphere.

Sustainable Home

Use Natural and Durable Materials

You have probably noticed that some of your parent’s furniture have been in the family for years, and are still in a good shape. The reason for that is reliance on natural ingredients and quality, contrary to today’s commercial ones. Consider investing in more quality pieces of furniture that are mostly made out of natural materials. For example, you can make your kitchen countertops out of marble or stone which will last forever; for your flooring, choose hardwood or bamboo instead of laminate and you will not have to worry about replacing it soon. Incorporate natural materials into your living room by setting up dressers and closet made out of oak or teak, and opt for tables and chairs that are hand crafted out of natural wood.

Incorporate Bamboo

There are numerous ways of incorporating bamboo into your home design, and this durable and quirky material will make your home appeal more natural, sophisticated and elegant at the same time. You can have furniture made out of bamboo and have a lifetime guarantee for its quality and strength. Arrange a few bamboo kitchen stools and bring elegance into your kitchen, or have your own outdoor furniture made out of this strong material and enjoy numerous summers relaxing on your patio. Also, bamboo can easily be turned into wall art; you just have to paint it into some vibrant colors, and your home will have artistic and natural touch.

Give your Bathroom a Natural Look

There is no better place for relaxation and rejuvenation than your peaceful bathroom. In there you get to free your mind and reconnect with your true self. That is why you should bring more nature in your bathroom. Get rid of cold tiles and white walls, and install wood walls that will make your bathroom even more warm and inviting. Provide more daylight and set up a stone sink that goes well with wooden walls and your bathroom will look a bit wild but more relaxing. To make it more organic, you can even arrange a few air plants and enjoy your spa-like experience.

Decorate with Plants

Various house plants can be beneficial for your home design, and the overall health of your home, too. Every room in your house should have this kind of touch of nature, so arrange few potted plants everywhere. Not only do they bring you closer to the nature, but they also filter the air providing you with a healthier ambiance and lifestyle. Also, they can teach you how to be more responsible towards the nature and because of them you will provide more natural light into your home. Maintaining house plants is never expensive, and you can even contribute to the nature more by composting and making your own organic soil.

Let there be Day Light

Daylight is the source of light you should rely on the most. Invest in big windows that will open up the whole interior design and let more sunlight into your house. This way you are creating a better and warmer atmosphere in your home, and you are not wasting any energy. Daylight will improve the mood of your whole family and will benefit your bills, too.

Make best out of resources the nature offers you, and you will make a healthy and sustainable home for your family. Follow this few tips and make your interior more organic, and the nature will be thankful.

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16 comments on “From Guest Blogger Lana Hawkins: Sustainable Homes: Ways to Bring Natural and Organic Elements into Your Interiors
  1. Frank Eggers says:

    The advice to have big windows to maximize natural light is contrary to advice to limit the glass area to maximize energy efficiency. Heavy fenestration obviously lets in more light but unfortunately even the most efficient windows insulate far less well than well insulated walls. There is a tradeoff and there will never be complete agreement on the proper balance which may be OK.

  2. Breath on the Wind says:

    The article might have been better titled “sustainable decoration.” “Sustainable homes” most often deals with making the resources of energy and water sustainable.

    Frank, the passive energy gained or lost from windows is somewhat complex. Southern windows will tend to energy additive. Northern windows (in the Northern hemisphere) tend to be energy negative. It is possible to put too much glazing in a home and it should be balanced with thermal mass. Usually the glazing area is compared to the floor area with a ratio I don’t recall at the moment, then additional factors are then taken into consideration.

    Removable insulated panels for windows can increase the thermal resistance without additional layers of glazing. This is another interesting and big subject. The most unusual glazing treatment I have seen is a bead wall that has two layers of glazing. Insulating beads are actively blown into the space at night or for cloudy days and removed to storage for daylight hours.

    • Frank Eggers says:

      Breath,

      With the help of a house designer, I designed my new house, which was completed in 2009. Some of the things I would have liked to do, such as using insulated concrete forms to increase thermal mass, were simply too expensive. Also, to get a good view of the mountains, I had the living room area heavily fenestrated; it has a northern and eastern exposure. So sometimes energy efficiency, although important, is not the ONLY consideration.

      I’ve heard of double glazed windows into which beads of polystyrene can be blown to improve insulation, but so far as I know they are not a marketed item and I don’t know how practical they would be although it sounds like a good idea.

      My house has 6″ studs for the outside walls instead of the code minimum of 4″; that improves efficiency somewhat. Also, it has radiant floor heat which I like even though on the first floor the entire slab has to be heated which means that the high thermal mass means that the heating system cannot track demand very well. If I had been able to use insulated concrete forms for the outside walls then demand would change more slowly enabling the heating system to track demand better. The tracking problem on the second floor is less because there isn’t a thick concrete slab.

      There are barriers to building more efficient homes. Typically a contractor will build a few dozen homes in a new area with the intention of maximizing profits. Many, or perhaps most, home buyers give little or no consideration to energy efficiency when buying a house so there is no incentive for contractors to make houses more efficient than the code requires. It is very difficult to change codes to require higher energy efficiency because the public objects to the higher prices. Because every house is eventually sold, even people who have custom built homes have to consider resale value and whether the selling price of the house would be higher if more were spent to make it more energy efficient. Then too many contractors are not familiar with construction methods and techniques to maximize efficiency.

      Perhaps a way to improve energy efficiency would be to reduce the income tax considerably and have a heavy tax on energy instead in such a way that net tax revenue would remain unchanged.

  3. Breath on the Wind says:

    Frank, I am aware of the compromises we are forced to make. I didn’t mean to imply that the bead wall was presently a commercial product, only that it was an interesting concept. Mostly I have seen it now billed as a DIY project and I am sure the patents on the concept have now expired. Though with several generations in construction, real estate and building I may tend to see more projects as potentially DIY.

    It sounds like you have planned and constructed a wonderful home with some very good elements. I like the concept of radiant heating over convection and so appreciate the advantages of masonry stoves and radiant floor heating. But such systems are like electric cars. They seem like the same thing but operate in some different ways.

    Radiant heating is not generally billed as something that is for a weekend cabin or would use a setback thermostat. I would guess that more thermal mass would give the home a more even temperature rather than allow you to “follow demand.” One person who has a radiant floor system also has heat pump ductless split system for air conditioning. They use the heat pump system to follow heating demand and the radiant floor system to provide a base level of heating.

    There have also been some tragic results with radiant systems that are poorly built by contractors with little understanding of the system. It is unfortunate when compromises detract from efficiency but doubly so when this is compounded by lack of knowledge or avarice.

    I also thing your tax proposals would make an interesting plan, but I would guess that switching from a tax on income to a tax on energy would dis-proportionally affect those with less income.

    • Frank Eggers says:

      Breath,

      I think that some radiant floor heating systems could work well with an automatic setback thermostat, but not mine. There is a product called warmboard. One version of it takes the place of a subfloor. Basically it is grooved plywood with a covering of aluminum (aluminum?) to spread the heat evenly thereby making a lower water temperature possible. The pex tubing fits into the grooves. Because it has low thermal mass it can change temperature quickly. I considered using it upstairs but thought that it was too expensive even though it is a good idea. So, my second floor uses gyp-crete. Another version of warmboard is thinner and goes over either a concrete slab or a subfloor. It may be somewhat over-promoted, but I still think that it is a good product. It is necessary to use pex-Al-Pex tubing else the difference in expansion between the tubing and the Al covering of the warmboard would sound like crackling Rice Crispies as the water temperature changes.

      http://www.warmboard.com/why-warmboard

      I looked into chilled ceiling cooling but there were no contractors here who had experience with it. Chilling the ceiling is supposed to be more efficient than moving air because when the ceiling is chilled it re-radiates less heat to the room occupants so they feel comfortable at a higher temperature. Also it takes less power to circulate water than air. However, even in an excessively dry climate like this one, provision has to be made to deal with the latent heat otherwise condensation could occur on the ceiling. With a google search on “chilled ceiling” you can get plenty of information.

      There is also a chilled valance system which is supposed to work for both heating and cooling. However, my experience with electrically heated ceilings was not good; the temperature stratification is excessive. I think that the same problem would exist with any system that heats the ceiling.

      http://www.edwardsvalance.com

      In other countries ductless split A / C systems are very common but they are practically unknown here in the U.S. although that seems to be changing.

      In earlier times radiant floor heating used copper tubing in the slab. It had a life of perhaps 50 years after which the CU became sufficiently corroded and leaky that conversion to another heating system had to be done. With modern pex tubing the life is supposed to be at least 100 years.

      With radiant floor heating where the floor has a high thermal mass, walls with a high thermal mass would greatly reduce the need for the heating system to do heating load following.

      Before my house was built I spent countless hours researching heating systems, boilers, construction methods, windows, etc. etc.

      My proposal to replace part of the income tax with an energy tax would have to be phased in gradually to avoid excessive disruptions. And, as you point out, it could be regressive but I think that ways could be found to deal with that problem.

  4. Breath on the Wind says:

    You certainly seem to have a passion for these home energy systems. Thanks for taking the time to review some of the available options.

    European construction has generally taken a thermal mass approach. I was able to get a very close look at a Roman style heated floor as I explored some of the classical ruins of Turkey. Most of this is historical, and some of that is changing today. In the US, no doubt due to the presence of more forests we used a much lighter construction. These two construction “philosophies” are evident on the East Coast where you have some buildings that are over 400 years old.

    Because of the construction philosophy in the US I am not surprised at the idea of heated floors that are not designed to retain heat, but I do wonder at the wisdom and advantages of the approach. As with all techniques it will have its applications. In a climate with large temperature variations from day to day it would have a “home.” (shameless)

    The market penetration of ductless Split AC systems in most of the world that I have visited is very extensive and there are no window AC units. Living near a major port it is then not surprising that the systems have been present here from the early 90’s and are quite common now.

    Copper does not work well with concrete. In this article if seems to be included in the “Faulty Design and Workmanship” section and is attributed to different thermal expansion rates: http://www.copper.org/resources/properties/protection/underground.html This was not entirely understood with the early radiant floor systems. The contractors who installed those systems also did not have the pex alternative we have today.

    What I don’t understand is your feeling that your well insulated walls are inferior to a heavier thermal mass and your need for load following? Certainly your conditions are different than mine and that is probably the reason. Do you live in a desert with large day to night temperature fluctuations?

    • Frank Eggers says:

      In this part of the country, the night-time temperature is much lower than the day-time temperature. And, as you apparently guessed, this is basically a desert although with irrigation (which is depleting the aquifer) it doesn’t appear to be so. Also, the heat from the sun makes a big difference. The result is that the heating requirements at night are significantly greater than the heating requirements during the day. With a heated concrete slab which is very heavy, the heat delivered in the first (ground) floor cannot be quickly changed. Changing the water temperature will not make a noticeable difference for several hours. Thus radiant heat in a concrete slab cannot follow the changing demand for heat with wood construction. There are two solutions: 1) Reduce the mass of the heated floor, or 2) Have walls with a large thermal mass to reduce the need for load following.

      Upstairs the floor is not concrete. Instead, there is a wood subfloor with gyp-crete poured around the pex (my spelling checker always wants to change pex to sex) tubing. The gyp-crete is only thick enough to cover the 0.5″ pex tubing so it is much thinner than the 4″ concrete slab for the first floor. Thus, on the second floor the heating system is able to do load following to a considerable degree although it does overshoot slightly. If warmboard had not been so expensive I would have used it, for both floors, for its reduced thermal mass and the elimination of temperature striping. The water temperature is controlled according to the outside temperature.

      My previous house, which was built in about 1950, had Cu tubing in the concrete slab for heating. The former owner ended up abandoning the system because of constant leaks and putting in baseboard heating which was probably the most reasonable solution. That house was entirely of masonry construction with a concrete roof so probably load following was never an issue. It had evaporative cooling which is common in this part of the country. I saw another house in which the owner had abandoned the radiant floor heat and put in hot air heat; I do not like hot air heat.

      One reason that radiant floor heating is not common is that it cannot provide for cooling. Hot air heating can use the same ducts as the cooling uses but in my opinion that never works very well. Cool air settles and warm air rises so a duct system designed for cooling doesn’t work well for heating and vice versa. That approach is little more than tolerable. For a few years, when I lived In San Diego, I had a condo which had electric ceiling heat. Fortunately that is no longer legal.

      I like heating and cooling to be completely unobtrusive so they are not even noticed; that is not easy to achieve.

  5. Breath on the Wind says:

    You seem to have a unique set of circumstances. I once stayed in a very expensive adobe home located in Phoenix that used evaporative cooling. This type of home would never work in the NYC area where it is too humid and wet but it seemed perfect for that environment.

    I also once wrote about solar shading. It discussed the effect of shading on a home that resulted from putting solar panels on a roof. As an academic discussion, I wonder if shading a desert home would allow it to achieve a more even temperature. If thermal panels are used the loss of day time heat could help to offset the loss. Thermal panels also seem to work well with radiant floor systems as the temperature range is compatible. They have also been used to supply the energy for air conditioning systems, but mostly for commercial situations.

    Along the same lines shades over windows were once very popular although then used to keep interior fabrics from fading in sunlight. Some passive solar homes now have large overhangs to keep high summer sun from entering while allowing the lower winter sun to heat up the home.

    Another consideration is at the thermostat. Before digital thermostats, mechanical ones contained a “heat anticipator” which is intended to be set for the type of heating system. http://homerepair.about.com/od/heatingcoolingrepair/ss/adj_anticipator.htm Most people installed the thermostat without making the proper adjustment. A similar system or a creative use of a setback thermostat may work better for the desert home.

    Along similar lines I know of one home that tried multiple thermostat types and locations before an external sensing thermostat was installed that resolved all of the issues. Here is one with an external sensor: http://www.warmfloor.com/download/us/datasheets/controls/Step-Touch-Installation-and-User-Manual.pdf But such units are usually not designed for night-time setbacks.

    I am sure you have considered many if not most of these options. It sounds like you have an interesting home with a great view.

  6. Frank Eggers says:

    Breath,

    I am very familiar with thermostats which have heat anticipators. Generally adjusting them required a bit of experimentation. A system using an outside heat sensor is “called outdoor temperature reset” which is a somewhat strange sounding name. Modern electronic systems are fully adjustable but it takes some experimentation to get it just right. They simply control the boiler temperature. I don’t understand why a hot water furnace is called a boiler considering that no boiling occurs. Operating the boiler at the lowest temperature that will enable the inside thermostats to be satisfied results in the greatest efficiency and most steady inside temperature.

    Zoning is a good idea because it enables all rooms to get just the right amount of heat. Zoning is easily done with hot water heat of any kind. Although it is available with hot air heat that doesn’t work quite so well.

    I would have liked zoned cooling but from reading about how it is done, i.e., by a system of dampers in the ducts, I felt that its performance would have left much to be desired. To work well it would be necessary to control the A / C compressor speed and the blower speed but none of the systems I researched at the time did that. There may have been improvements since then since I have checked into it since 2008. It may be that split systems with multiple evaporator units would be more efficient than central A / C because they make zoning easy.

  7. Breath on the Wind says:

    I have to agree that zoned forced air systems using dampers are complex, subject to imbalance and maintenance issues. This is one of the many reasons why ductless splits are becoming so popular. One condensing unit, possibly a remote manifold, and then numerous heads that can be set individually. For more than 15 years units are DC-inverters that adjust the condenser speed to the load. I am not sure if they also change the compressor speed. The blower in the evaporator units are as wide as the unit, sometimes as much as 5 feet and operate much slower than what you find in a window unit. This results in such quiet air conditioning that on the lowest speed the only clue to its operation is an indicator LED.

    BTW the name “boiler” certainly referred to a “steam boiler” and the name stuck even when the controls limit the temperature to less than 100C. As I previously mentioned here on the East Coast we have examples of every sort of thing. One of the strangest I saw was a working example of a gravity fed hot water system. IE no pumping, the water circulated by convection and thermosyphoning. Seeing the large pipes of such systems it is easy to imagine the adaptation from steam systems which are not entirely uncommon here today.

    • Frank Eggers says:

      Some split A / C systems do have variable speed compressors. They use a variable frequency inverter to control the compressor speed over a speed range of about five. That works especially well when several evaporator units are connected to one condensing unit. I considered that for my new house when it was in the design stages in 2008 but ended up having two separate central ducted units, one for upstairs and one for downstairs. Ones with variable speed compressors existed but were not available here in Albuquerque NM as far as I could tell. Whether I made the right decision I don’t know.

      Oddly the Consumer Reports, which test and rate many items, including through the wall and central air conditioners, didn’t even mention mini split systems until very recently. Even though they are common in other countries, most people here in the U.S. don’t even know they exist. However, recently I saw them at Home Depot so that seems to be changing.

      When I lived in Fiji (1994 – 2004) I had a Daikin mini split A / C in my master bedroom. The evaporator had a variable speed blower but the condensing unit had a one-speed compressor. Such systems were common in Fiji including in homes, offices, hotels, etc. When TV news covers other countries, one can see the condensing units for split A / Cs hanging on the outside of buildings.

      Considering the amount of energy used by A / C systems, it is important to provide people with up to date information about what is available.

      The house in which I grew up had gravity hot water heating. That was very common at one time probably because electric motors and pumps used to be very expensive. Now it is less expensive to use smaller pipes and use pumps to force the water through.

  8. Breath on the Wind says:

    I think the gravity HW systems did not initially use motors may have had many factors, history…an adaptation from steam systems, cost and availability of motors but also the electric service. I have seen a few homes which had the original 60amp 110 service.

    I spent time all over SE Asia, NZ, AU, China, but never for more than 3 months at a time although there were many places I would have enjoyed staying for longer. It is a great experience and I have fond comparisons of Bagan, Ankor Wat, and Borobudur among other sites. And of course the splits have been there for decades.

    When I did travel around the US, I was left with the impression that the middle of the country was about 10 years behind NY. It is a gross overgeneralizing but it may be the case with the market penetration of split AC units. I also know people in the fields of selling and installing the units so I may have seen them locally before many.

    • Frank Eggers says:

      I doubt that the limitations of electric service had much to do with the fact that gravity hot water systems were common. The pumps for hot water systems require very little power. I think that it was because at one time the industry did not know how to make electric motors cheaply so they used as few as possible. That’s why the power windows on antique cars were hydraulic and used only one motor to operate all the windows, the power seats, and the convertible top; there was one hydraulic pump under the hood. My 1953 Packard had hydraulic windows. Reliability may also have been a factor with gravity hot water heat since with it there is very little that can fail. Some steam heating systems also did not require a motor.

      My grandmother’s house used the vapor steam heat system. Because the whole system operated at considerably less than atmospheric pressure it could deliver heat at much less than 100 C. I don’t know how it maintained the vacuum.

  9. Breath on the Wind says:

    We have a lot of steam systems here. The working pressure is less than 5 psi. Usually 1 to 2 psi is actually best. They are designed to boil twice. The first time is as a result of the applied heat. Steam goes up to the radiators and heats the radiators with sensible heat of steam vapor. The steam radiator valve releases the air in the system until heated by the steam and then they close. The system is now closed and steam releases its latent heat of condensation to the radiator. The condensing steam produces a vacuum in the system and the lower pressure with a still high boiler temperature causes to boiler to begin boiling again producing more steam at the lower temperature. A “vapor steam heating system” may be just another name for a steam heating system. There are single pipe and double pipe steam systems. The double pipe systems have what is called a “wet return.”

    If it is something different then I am not familiar with its operation. I found this: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2011/0198406.html which seems to describe what I know as a single pipe steam heating system.

  10. Breath on the Wind says:

    But the steam systems I know tend to have very hot radiators. Radiator covers are then often employed to protect people from burns and sometimes also incorporate water trays to humidify the air.

    • Frank Eggers says:

      At my grandmother’s house the radiators never got dangerously hot. The type of vapor system in that house would begin heating way before the water reached 100 C because the vacuum caused the water to boil at a much lower temperature. However, that is not the most common type of system and with many systems the radiators can become dangerously hot.

      I remember being in houses where there water trays on top of radiators. How effective they were to humidify the air I don’t know. In one place where I lived it was usually too hot. I found that by wrapping a towel around the radiator I could reduce the heat output.

      From the efficiency and comfort standpoint probably radiant floor heat is best.