900 square foot earth bermed house upstate ny | Page 5 | Construction and DIY projects | Forums

Sounds like depth of the berm up against the house is more important. Speedfunk you're in the side of the hill whereas KVR is on flat ground with a berm built up to the house. If the ideal is to have the thermal mass constant temperature year round I would imagine that the deeper you can get it, the less auxiliary climate control necessary.

I'm just speaking from reading and thermodynamics but it's nice to hear real world findings. 

http://www.homeinthe.....xperiment/

@icanreachit I looked at the website you posted.  man and i feel like my project is epic! its nothing!!  Its so tough to say what matters and how much. There are so many details that add up.  I had this though of adding an umbrella/skirting to an above ground trailer just to see what would happen and If could make a trailer fully temp stable year round, just a thought lol.

ON the site you posted It was interesting that he did a umbrella test. Never seen that before.  All though 7' doesn't really seem fair to the whole concept ( I have 24' around entire house, so 79'x92 including dry area under house) .  It was interesting reading his test results though.  There's very little on the passive annual heat storage stuff online..any real examples anyway.  The theory made complete sense, before that I wanted to build an insulated box under the house to "lock in" thermal mass for heat storage.

I'm not sure how great the benefit will be BUT it really does help keep house dry.  I feel like before we did umbrella /skirting the rainy days would eventually get to the inside because of the wet earth around house.  Humidity as well as temp was affected...it does feel different now , like super dry..like 3 consecutive rainy days and we can still keep a stable low humidity while outside humidity is close to 100 percent, before humidity would climb and a wet cold is not a nice environment a seiroes  bridge to remove heat from dwelling..being additionally isolated from that has been really nice. 32 outside today interior temp 58 with no heat (no fires yet).  Sitting next to double pain window and I can feel cold coing through them.  Nice view though...ahh the tradeoff's.

Its 2:50pm its pretty nice out.  Been mostly sunny all day except random pollution/chemtrails from airplanes. Our interior temp has climbed to 64 all on passive solar so that is 6 degrees since this morning.  Outside temp say mid 40ish low 50ish? Im getting different readings from different spots and different thermometers.  I should standardize on one kind so it least they would be relative to each other.

@homesteading-boards That is a really good point man.  Your right almost no one talks about snow insulation. There is also the gain in solar radition from reflection of light on the snow into windows, so maybe an increase of 50% seems plausible? I have noticed the umbrella/skirting around house seems to hold the snow longer which makes sense really  So there is another benefit b/c instead of freeze thaw cycles that rob the ground of heat it instead stays in its insulative state longer increasing R value.  I bet this depends on how deep the earth is though ontop of insulation/rubber membrane.

@gravel-road That does seem like a wise thing to do for such a little cost.  My moms house She put radiant in slab like your talking about, and even though she uses a natural gas water heater, I thought the same thing as you for an eventual upgrade!