When I had my 2.3GHz DP Power Mac G5, it kept my room nice and toasty (especially in summer).![]()
And news headline: "Excessive computer energy consumption in 'eco-friendly' homes turns them into environmental nightmares."
When I had my 2.3GHz DP Power Mac G5, it kept my room nice and toasty (especially in summer).![]()
I wonder... one thing about this design is that it takes the local needs into consideration very carefully, making it well suited to our kind of climate up here. I mean, for that matter, these houses have basements, I think, right? That itself would eliminate them from implementation in much of the South of the US. I really wonder if it would be better to take a design platform like this and re-engineer it for humid, warm climates, or if it would be smarter to start over in a place like Florida or Georgia or Greece and design a house that was suited to the climate in the first place?
how much of rain/water do you have per year in mm in georgia ? i hardly can think that having a wet + hot climate can be a problem .. after all insulation also keeps heat outside of a building
I don't know if these numbers are accurate, but according to them, the variance between our driest places (about 7 inches / year = 180mm) and our wettest places (Louisiana is much worse than Georgia... nearly 60 in/yr = about 1500mm) is a factor of more than eight. Per this, that would also be somewhere around 2.5x the rainfall in Frankfurt.
But I am not sure by any means... more my wondering was just the general idea that these homes seem well engineered for the local environment, and there is always the question of whether the same philosophy applies everywhere, or whether environmentally friendly homes should be built in harmony with the local climate. (For that matter, issues of hurricane safety, flood / monsoon safety, tornado safety, earthquake safety, etc, are all variably applicable to different locales).
1400 sqft/person is a LOT of space.
in cities, it apts are way smaller than that, at least in the US.
a typical NYC 2 bedroom apartment (for a family of 3/4) is usually less than 1000 sq ft.
2000 sqft for a family of 4 is plenty of space; something along 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, living room, kitchen and studio, all of reasonable size.
I wonder what the average space per person is for the US?
I know here in Japan, it's sub 500 square feet. If I had to guess, I would say that the average in Japan is around 300 square feet.
Average US (1950): 292
Average US (1970): 483
Average US (2000): 872
Average US (2006): 900