In article ,
"Jen" wrote:

You've mentioned house de4sign before, how would a change of design help in
an area where the weather is constantly changing. We have droughts and
floods and very hot weather and very cold weather all in the same month.
There was snow inVictoria this summer.

Have a look at Warm House, Cool House by Nick Hollo. Most permaculture books
cover general principles as well.

First thing is that you design for CLIMATE, not WEATHER. That is, you design
for what typically happens in your area, not for the rare times when it snows
in summer (assuming that it is indeed rare where you live!). So in a
Mediterranean climate (cool wet winters, warm dry summers) you design
differently from say tropical (cool dry winters, hot wet summers). Sydney is
in-between. Our wetter seasons are summer and winter. Summer tends to be
humid, and spring and autumn are dryish but have very comfortable temps.

Secondly, a house that is sensibly designed should cope with unusual extremes
reasonably well anyway. If it doesn't, well, you save on your energy bill the
rest of the year!

Traditional housing often gives clues as to sensible ways to build houses. In
arid regions (hot in the day and down to freezing at night), you find the use
of materials with high thermal mass, like stone and adobe. They absorb heat
during the day but radiate it out (and in) in the evenings, so the house is
warm at night and cool by day. Compare that with the airy, shady structures
you find in tropical areas.

Lastly, there are a few commonalities across most of Australia. Most of us
don't need late afternoon sun beating into the house in summer, so we need to
minimise west-facing windows and shade them with awnings or trees. In winter,
we like the sun coming in, so we need windows that face north. In summer,
however, we don't want that direct sun, so the windows should be shaded with
wide eaves. As the sun is lower in winter, the eaves can (and should) be
designed so they don't shade winter sun. And most of us need roof and wall
insulation to keep heat in in winter and out in summer.

Just a few thoughts to kick around. Of course, if you are retrofitting a
house, the current house's good and bad points come into play. For example,
my house has all its big windows facing south, which is nice during a summer
southerly. It's a pretty cool house in winter, however, so we are about to
add a family room on the north, which will have windows to pick up the winter
sun and a concrete floor to store the heat in.

See what I mean?

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue