[Part 2] Heating and Cooling for Free Using Thermal Mass

If you want a sustainable or off-grid home, then your first design consideration is how you are going to heat and cool your home.Show more

In this video, I’m going to show you how you can use thermal mass along with the heat from the sun to create a home that will heat and cool itself - without pumps, fans, or switches. That means that there is no need for an expensive heating or cooling system.

Depending on your location, and your determination, you can create a home that will completely eliminate or at least drastically reduce your heating and cooling bills.

Thermal Mass Options

💻Compressed Earth Block
https://www.earthblockinternational.com/

🎬 Building with Earth Block
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca4dVjwPvQo

Rammed-Earth Tire
🎬 How Long Does it Take to Build a Tire Wall?
https://youtu.be/PWwro_0PwXM

📘Earth Bag - Earthbag Building
by Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer

Grab your free guides to Sustainable Homes at these links!

🌻 FREE PDF Download: The Six Essentials of a Sustainable Home Plus Bonus - the Before You Buy Property Checklist:
https://www.sustainablehomeresource.com/SixEssentials

🌻 FREE PDF Download: The Seven-Step Quick-Start Guide to Creating a Sustainable Home You’ll Love
https://www.sustainablehomeresource.com/7-steps-quick-start-guide

More stuff to help you build a sustainable home of your dreams:

📘 BOOK Twisted Oak: A Journey to Create a Self-Sustaining Life and Home by Kristina Munroe PE
https://www.sustainablehomeresource.com/book

💻 Our Workshops & Online Courses:
https://www.sustainablehomeresource.com/

Bio (more on my YouTube channel - Sustainable Home Resource)
I’m Kristina Munroe. I’m a structural engineer, author, and consultant. My passion is guiding you step-by-step through designing and building a sustainable home you’ll love without the typical frustration, overwhelm, and costly mistakes.

In 2010 I moved my two young sons back to my hometown of Durango, Colorado to build an off-grid home and to start a new life. Along with a talented carpenter, and a couple of helpers, we built a small solar-powered home we lovingly named Twisted Oak. This magical home is not only beautiful, whimsical, and fun, but it heats and cools itself, generates its power, collects and heats its household water, and manages its waste in an environmentally responsible way.

I believe we can all live more abundant lives by lessening our impact on this precious planet and living more connected to cycles of nature. This is not about living in lack, but rather embracing the abundance we have by consuming and throwing away less.

I raised my two young sons in our home we lovingly named Twisted Oak. And in all those years, I've never regretted creating a small, simple, and affordable home without needing a lot of electrical devices that would have driven up the cost of our solar PV system.

We love living closer to nature and reducing (not eliminating) electrical devices or modern conveniences.

I carefully and consciously designed our home so that we do not rely on electricity for our comfort or safety. If we lose power, it's only a minor inconvenience.