Construction techniques for housing and bioclimatic houses
Popular wisdom must be recovered and bioclimatic houses treasure that architecture and centenary experience that we must rescue both for the benefit of reducing environmental impacts, energy saving and rescuing the general culture.
Bioclimatic solutions applied in houses provide great value; thermal comfort, energy savings, sustainable construction and ecological materials, respect for the environment, etc. We can not ask for more!
But first, let’s remember what a bioclimatic house is…. “It is a house that is adapted to the environment and its surroundings, sensitive to the impact it produces on nature, which tries to minimize energy consumption and with it, reduce environmental pollution.”
Construction system bioclimatic houses
This is where a high-quality technical manual on bioclimatic construction comes into play, called “Practical Manual of Bioclimatic Construction Solutions for Contemporary Architecture”, whose focus is on incorporating bioconstruction into housing.
The manual develops the construction details in plans using natural and ecological materials to build a bioclimatic house through simple processes and low environmental impact, by means of “technical data sheets” (In total 38).
For each technical sheet we find different sections which are:
- The bioclimatic constructive detail resolved and graphed, as a plan. Example…
- The description of the element on which action is taken.
- The description of the components that make up the construction detail.
- The possible recommendations in the execution.
- The coefficients of thermal transmittance, thickness of the wall… etc.
- An approximate estimate of the cost.
The manual describes the following chapters (each chapter has its own explanatory sheet) that we will list and see some technical example of the same document before the bioclimatic system used in the constructive resolution:
Geothermal
In this section we will see different constructive solutions in geothermal energy. The subsoil has the peculiarity of presenting a temperature practically incessant throughout the year, being this of more or less fourteen degrees from 3 meters deep.
This is where we can take advantage of geothermal air conditioning (see article also on how aerothermal energy works and its advantages) that thanks to the physical properties of the ground, constant temperatures, can and should be used for spaces built underground or semi-buried, getting in summer cooling, and in winter, using geothermal heating for bio-constructions improving thermal comfort.
- Buried construction by means of basement
- Construction on reconformed ground (buried above ground level).
- Semi-buried construction
- Canadian well (with buried air conductor using geothermal energy). Click on the image below to enlarge it.
- Exchanger ducts in foundations
🟧 Note: Of interest the extensive article on deep and shallow foundations, types and their pathologies, there are 9 very interesting and practical manuals – guides.
Inertia wall
The mass of constructed and built elements plays an essential role in the thermal comfort of the users who live in the buildings, especially when there are large thermal changes and contrasts during the day.
The high thickness of the walls with high thermal inertia, the inertia wall, has a high capacity to store heat and diffuse its transmission over time. The process of heat storage and remission can last for several days depending on the climate, so we must take advantage of this perfect insulation.
- Inertia wall
- Inertia wall are SATE
- Double inertia wall with ventilated air chamber
Collector roof
The traditional bioclimatic house has a pitched roof with the larger plane facing south and the smaller plane facing north (Europe). This circumstance responds to a natural approach, since facing south the larger plane allows to maximize solar gains while reducing the surface facing north and therefore the consequent losses according to climatology.
🟧 Note: See article on how to fix roofs and rehabilitate roofs with coherence, which will also have several manuals of interest.
In the collector roof, clay tile and slate have been the most used bioclimatic building materials in traditional coverings, presenting; light structure, low weight, high durability, good behavior against thermal amplitudes with significant variations between cold or heat, impermeability and high mechanical strength.
- Roof with attic and practicable openings.
- Ventilated roof. Click on the following image to enlarge it.
- Double ventilated roof
- Ducted collector cover
Attached greenhouse
A greenhouse or gallery attached to a building is a partially enclosed, partially or fully glazed volume that shares one or multiple vertical enclosures of the building.
The lean-to greenhouse is an eco-friendly solution based on solar gain through the greenhouse effect. This physical phenomenon consists in the heating of glass by the sun, which emits radiation at each and every wavelength. Most of them are in the range of perceptible light passing into the glass greenhouse.
- Greenhouse without protection
- Greenhouse with awning
- Greenhouse with louver
- Greenhouse with upper louvers
Glazed gallery
In contrast to the semi-detached greenhouse, in this manual a glazed gallery is considered to be that glazed space in the building whose covering is exactly the same as the building envelope.
- Unprotected gallery
- Gallery with overhang
- Gallery with awning
- Gallery with horizontal slats oriented
Trombe wall
The name Trombe Wall is given to those bioclimatic techniques that incorporate an opaque vertical enclosure in the project, with variable thickness and transmittance, on its inner face and a single or multiple glazed enclosure on its outer face. The space between the opaque enclosure and the glazing is partially small (<0.8 m).
- Trombe wall
- Trombe wall with external ventilation
- Trombe wall with ventilation and solar protection
Eaves and arcades
Their main function in buildings is to act as a transition space between the exterior and the interior of bioclimatic constructions; they facilitate the integration of the building with the environment, softening the climatic differences between the two.
For the sizing of eaves and arcades, it is essential to know the annual path of the sun (see more in eaves design – sunlighting); through its study, the eaves or arcade is configured so that its behavior against solar radiation in the different seasons is as effective and efficient as possible.
- Eaves separated from the wall
- Eaves with lateral closure according to orientation
- Balcony
- Balcony
Green roofs
One of the most evolving features in ecological housing is the green roof, although it is not as common in the popular architecture of the area as other techniques for bioclimatic housing, thanks to advances in technology produced in recent times, is a system with enormous potential (More information also in green roofs).
- Extensive green roof in continuation with the ground.
- Extensive isolated vegetation cover
- Intensive cover
- Cistern vegetation cover
Vegetation wall
The vegetal wall is any element of this type close to an exterior building enclosure that totally or partially interposes itself between solar irradiation and the bioclimatic building enclosure itself, avoiding an essential part of the radiation that falls on it and reducing the heat input.
- Extensive double skin vegetal wall
- Direct modular vegetal wall
- Modular vegetal wall with air chamber
- Substrate-free vegetal wall
Evaporative cooling
The evaporative cooling system uses part of the sensible energy of the air and walls to evaporate the water, energy that is kept in the environment in the heat of vaporization necessary for this process and that is recovered when the phenomenon is reversed.
- Water sheet – Floodable roof
- Wetted ceramic trellis in a cavity
- Trellis – Trellis with water diffuser
What we have just listed is only a small part of the relevant information in the manual published within the scope of the European BIOURB Project (Cross-border Bioconstructive Diversity, Bioclimatic Building and its adaptation to Modern Architecture and Urbanism).
➡️ Access to the bioclimatic building manual referenced from this PDF. It is also highly recommended to access to the article of house plans where the plans of 28 ecological houses of great architecture firms are provided.
Other recommendations and documents on bioclimatic solutions in architecture:
- From IVE the manual “Guide to passive design strategies”. We register and download the PDF for free.
- From CTE in Chile the manual on Damage Assessment and Solutions for Raw Earth Construction, a must!
- From OVACEN for Solar Analysis: 8 free and very useful tools, they are excellent.
- The ICARO design manuals in PDF are extensive documents that propose different comfort techniques in heat, lighting, air or noise:
Other points of interest of this portal:
- Urban bioclimatic design.
- More than 20 manuals in earth and adobe for architecture.
- The shape of the The interactive map in 3D.
- Urban design, more than 30 manuals… HERE.
- Bio-sustainable architecture (22 Documents)
- The concept of bioclimatic architecture.
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