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Swishing Switchgrass
11/25/2009
I couldn't resist a little tongue twisting alliteration with this post, Swishing Switchgrass. The picture (and video) are from one extremely windy day just about the time our field of warm season grass slowed its growth at the conclusion of the summer season. What a season it's been too. Not only for our switchgrass, which has done a pretty good job furthering its establishment in its second year, but also for us with activity galore revolving around the earthwork and building plans for the farm.
Outside of attending a number of biomass meetings, and even being the co-host of one in Central PA, our primary “indoor” activity this summer and early fall has been to figure out what kind of home we will build and where it would go on our property. It turned out “where” would end up being the easier decision. As we continued to thin out miscellaneous slash and cull trees left over from when our woods were previously logged, the “right location” became self evident. That placement seems obvious now, but credit is due to Messrs. bulldozer, chainsaw, and woodchipper as they certainly did their part with the unveiling. What wasn't so obvious was what kind of home we would build and who would build it.
We started the year thinking that a modular home would make sense, considering one of the nation's premier manufactured housing vendors was only about ten miles away. No such luck. Restructuring of that firm's operations due to the slow economy had crippled their sales effort. After multiple conversations and emails, we never got even a sample quotation. So then it was on to discussions with custom builders. Surprise-surprise, some of them had gone out of business, and the others, well they had scaled back so far that they could only handle one project at a time and they were booked solid. OK, we said, let's look at other options like kit log or timber frame homes. Hell we had acres of woods and spent time with wood biomass people, wouldn't it be grand if our new home was “wood themed”.
Now from the tone of my writing you probably already suspect that we didn't end up going with a log or timber framed home either. Yes, we looked at these very seriously, and studied up on things like the impact of thermal mass on heating and cooling for log homes, and Structural Insulated Panels (SIPS) for the shell of timber frames. Unfortunately we never got entirely comfortable going this route. Why? Well with a few notable exceptions it often seemed like these vendors were doing their absolute best to sell the lifestyle, but without much discussion of the details. It was kind of like signing up to buy a wonderful luxury car that you would then have to go negotiate with others for the engine, transmission, and wheels. So what have we done? Well in the end my countless hours researching home plans and construction techniques did pay off.
One day while doing further investigation on the Internet into homes built with SIPs and ICFs (Insulated Concrete Forms) I stumbled upon a home almost tailor made for our site and needs. It turned out to be a Passive Solar design to boot, and one from an architect who as a matter of course provides a litany of associated details as part of her typical construction documents package. Be still my engineer heart!
Passive Solar home design fundamentals revolve around capturing and storing the sun's energy on cold winter days, and shading that same solar heat gain out during the hot summer. This is done with proper placement of windows and overhangs, and interior thermal mass storage (vs. the exterior thermal mass of a log home). Consequently our home, which the designer at Sun Plans Inc (SunPlans.com) is now finishing up the drawings for, would still incorporate “green” elements, but they wouldn't be biomass based, they would be solar. So our switchgrass (and trees) will capture the sun's energy during the summer, and our future home will benefit from that same solar gain during the winter, year round renewable energy!
Now if we could just capture the power of that swishing wind...
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