Green Home at Medicine Bluff
LEED-H Platinum
What the Owners Say
I have lived in Texas my entire life (over 60 years), with air conditioning for over 40 of those years. Our new home, which relies on thermal mass and natural ventilation for cooling, with the addition of passive solar for heating, is far more comfortable than any other home I have owned. In prior homes with forced air HVAC, the temperature varied every few minutes as the chilled or dry heated air blew forcefully, and then shut off to wait for the thermostat to tell it to come on again. Our new home has a consistent temperature throughout. The air feels the same from one room to the next. The temperature in the home gradually increases a few degrees in the daytime. Even on very hot days, the highest temperature is typically 20 degrees below the outside temperature. Once the sun goes down, we are able to open our high windows to vent the warmer air that has risen to the tops of the silos and high ceilings, and allow the cooler breeze that prevails from the southeast to bring us fresh air through open casement windows. Sleeping with gently moving fresh air is heavenly. In an unusually hot and dry June when record highs exceeded 100 degrees, the interior temperature has ranged from 75 to 82 degrees.
Although we have systems for venting humid air, and can use an outdoor shower and outdoor kitchen sink, we have not needed to use them. The relative humidity in the home has stayed right around 50%, well within the comfortable range. We are very happy that we do not have to rely on an HVAC system to be comfortable.
We had some nights below freezing last March when we first moved in, but the temperature in the home never went below 68 degrees. There are no drafts or cold spots in the house. We never had a chance to try out our wood stoves for heating.
Stephanie Ertel