Silas and Daniel,
Thought it was a very productive meeting last night. Glad we have such a workable design.
There are a few things that didn't quite gel for me last night so have put them down in drawings attached.
1. I'm really concerned that a large part of our site is left iunprotected from the northern sun. It is almost quarter of the site that is rendered unusable. I know Daniel said that that part of the site will still be used but I stronly disagree. For most of the year the temperatures are in high 30s and 40s. Humans need shelter and protection from those conditions.
The alternative is to move the bedroom building to the northern boundary. It will shade the rest of the site. We then can feed grey water into that space and plant vegetation to encourage evaporative cooling effects with the south breezes passing over the vegetation and into the bedrooms.
2. I am really concerned the roof is getting too monumental. I think an overhang over the courtyard of 5m creates unnecessary structural issues. See drawings for suggestions.
3. I prefer the under buildings to be flat roofed. Remember all the discussions we had at the beginning of the meeting about air flow under the tarpolin roof. I think the current arrangement prevents good air flow. Also I think the elevations loose their nice horizontality under the current plan.
These ideas are not radical departures from what we did last night. Essentially they just involve move the buildings already existing in the plan. I think they help us meet more of the requirements for passive cooling.
What do you think?
2 comments:
Good work Vicki, some good rational thinking. I agree that perhaps the ceilings might be better flat, especially if they have some sort of cool ventilation louvre type thing in them. I'd like to discuss the pros and cons more of swapping the plan around though... Your proposal makes sense, but we do lose some aspects of the plan we'd agreed on that i quite liked. The new roof would not allow any sun into the kitchen area even in winter. And having the bedroom on the south side and three roofs meant the buildings could be staggered, giving a clear entry on the north of the work building and increased air flow between buildings. But the 5m roof may be a problem. Having a garden on the north of the bedrooms would also protect them from the north sun and provide a more pleasant view. Anyway, some things to think about and i'm not sold either way. We can model them and work out the best solution tomorrow night.
Yeah there are pros and cons with both options. See you tomorrow night to talk about them all.
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