RE: A Clearification of Earthship performance in northern climates
It's so great to read such detailed info on Earthships that far up North, in such extreme climates (especially on the Steem blockchain!) At the Earthship academy we kept hearing about special designs for an Earthship in Sweden, which in the end never got built, which included an additional greenhouse. Is this what your 'atrium'is?
I suppose you must get a lot of sun in Alberta. My friends' Earthship I've been helping out with on Vancouver Island has just the opposite challenge: moderate temps, but mostly cloudy skies in the Winter. Also, for reasons of the rain curtain, the windows have to be fully vertical, with a considerable overhang of the roof. That may seem counterproductive for an Earthship, but once again, the solar gain is already compromised by the weather, so it may not make a huge difference... We'll see. What I find super exciting, though, is to see that these amazing structures do perform in so many different climates.
How does your latitude influence your windows? Are they really slanted? Does the snow ever have to be wiped of externally?
Thanks again for sharing all this cool information!
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Our windows stand about 16 degree off vertical, so they have a slight angle to them. The sun is so low in the sky in the winter time, that is what it worked out to be. We build our roof to over hang the windows of the atrium to help keep the rain and hail off of them. But in the winter, we do have to sweep the snow off of them. Yes, the atrium is the greenhouse in the front of the earthship. When they are done, I anticipate the performance to improve. We have many months of cloud during the late fall and early winter. But the earthship stores so much heat through the summer that we don't start burning wood until most other people have turned on their furnaces for the season. I hope this helps. Thanks for dropping by and participating in the conversation. Peace to you.