Having a very slow Monday so was taking a look at a project I was working on during the pandemic and mentioned in the Hurricane thread. This is a design for a prototype house for Houston to address flooding and also uses some concept from SE Asian house design for passive cooling. The house has the living space up higher to deal with flooding but also to allow for air circulation below and around the house. The roof of the house is built up to allow for hot air to rise up and vent out. This creates a thermal stack for passive cooling. Unfortunately this project is only schematic so not close to being built or have an actual site. It was just to explore some ideas to deal with the Houston climate and using some construction methods that could be employed by standard American home builders.
This is pretty cool. I have a friend who is working with Panasonic on some sort of modern POC house in Houston. I'll see if I can dig up the info for you. Also, reminds me the 1995 Brady Bunch movie where Mike Brady, who is an architect, always demos his house for every project.
I remember that in the movie. Also for a house with 8 people and a live in housekeeper only had one bathroom.
@rocketsjudoka not sure how long it's been since you've been back, but I'm still taken back by the way houses are built out on the west side of town where I grew up and still live. Especially near the bayou when people found out their properties and all improvements were the flood plan for the Corps of Engineers in the event of potential dam break. They look like houses I saw in other cities before...with steps up to the entry ways.
You can either elevate existing homes (then build around the elevated portion) or build new pre-elevated homes and either build around the piers (to add something like a garage) or just go with a tall crawl space + slab garage combo. Tall crawl space option is pretty simple.
Hydraulic garage floor to elevate the vehicles, or the junk that's in the garage instead of the vehicles.
I was in Houston last year and looked at some houses on the west side including a friend who is remodeling a house off of Bellaire just west of Beltway 8. I didn't notice too many houses built up. It looks like a lot of the houses were either still ranch style or blocky looking modern houses still built on grade.
Part of the idea here isn't just building up off of the ground for a big crawl space but also creating a thermal stack. That is the why there is a central staircase going up to a roof a stacked dormer for venting.
In the homes in the neighborhoods around me that are on the south side of Memorial closer to the bayou, most of the new builds I see are elevated. Not like a beach house…but definitely built up higher.
I have a 4-post lift. Probably cheaper. And can be air-operated in case of power loss. Cheaper than a hydraulic floor. More practical. You need a tall garage though.
The cost to elevate those homes starts at $100,000. That might be why. Or they are waiting for grant money that may or may not ever come.
Completely passive? The efficiency hounds right now are doing conditioned attic space with spray foam. That helps with ducts efficiency, increases conditioned storage space, and in home comfort.
Wouldn't be completely passive as to get to comfort levels here in the US would still need some conditioning. Haven't done energy calculations but would expect things like ceiling fans to speed up air circulation. Probably some other zonal conditioning. The idea behind this is going the opposite way than sealing up the house with insulation but increasing air circulation around and through the house.
How do you deal with Houston's humidity in an aggressively vented space. I know someone who just built a house here and desperately wanted to go passive but it was not workable. Even with geothermal cooling. He ended up with a spray foam attic and vented roof deck that he plans to condition at a later date.
Nottingham Forest…Wilchester…Yorkshire…Nottingham 8…those are the neighborhoods I grew up in on the mean streets of West Houston Not exactly like being from Southie as an Irish American kid lol….most of my friends and girlfriends were of English or German descent!! But those are the neighborhoods I’m talking about really.
I was driving down Toddville road in Seabrook over the weekend and people are building houses there like crazy. They're at least 20 feet off the ground. Same with anything being built on the water in Galveston. ****ing high. I mean, i don't have a problem with a house being on stilts or the bottom level having breakaway walls and the contents not being insured. It's like having a basement.
This is why using design ideas from places like Malaysia that has a similar climate to Houston. Their traditional designs have been dealing with hot humid climates for centuries. This was a schematic to look at applying some of those ideas to Houston.
