Evolving said:

poke smot! said:

... you use water to power your house then you can sell electricity back to the power company.

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Can you please elaborate on what you mean by 'use water to power your house'?

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Probably the same thing we're looking at as a main source of electricity: a stream or spring on a hill. Some pipes and a simple turbine...and you have your own hydroelectric plant

Quote:

The only problem I have with wood heating is the possible environmental impact (I know it will be small...) involved with burning anything. I'm also confident that I could come up with a much more efficient way of producing heat with electricity and passive solar heating.

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For the pollution aspect, I think masonry stoves, made from either brick, stone, or cob, are efficient, reduce overall pollution due to their design, and are extremely pleasant to have in a structure (radiant heat feels soooo nice).

They don't pollute as much because after you get the inner mass warmed up (to about 1200 F.), very little CO escapes from your wood fuel without becoming further oxidized. The walls on masonry stoves are extremely thick, which means you build one large fire during the evening (and morning in the winter) and the heat slowly leaches out through the walls throughout the day. Do a search for masonry stoves on the net to get a better explanation than I'm doing here.

As for the structure itself, whatever's in it I'd advise making it out of either cob (which enjoys a bit more popularity in Canada due to the fact that there are less bureacratic crackheads in Canada than in the states) or strawbale, both of which hold the temperature of a structure constant much better than 'modern' framing and design. This is going to help you out when it comes to overall energy consumption in your structure.

Here's an example of cob (I built my dog's house out of it):

-nearly completed-



-roof in place-



-complete-



This stuff is easy to work with because you can sculpt it. And if you have enough rubber or waterproofing materials(I used a waterbed mattress cut in half to shield the roof from moisture there on the dogs house), the upside is you can make a single story with a flat or only slightly slanted roof covered with sod or even a small garden. This helps with temperature retention even more. Be sure to install radon detectors in any such structure due to the lack of massive air circulation you'd have in a 'normal' house that kicks you in the balls in the heating dept every month. Radon sucks.


Ok, that's all I have.