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One of the coolest “inventions” I’ve seen in the past few years is the Enertia house. The Enertia house is a log home that is built to create its own environment inside the house.  This is done by building double walls of a certain type of wood that allows geothermal energy to circulate throughout the house while the wood regulates the temperature of the air by holding in heat and then releasing it at night.

Part of the design of the house is a bevy of windows on the south side of the house that capture heat in the morning when the Sun is low in the sky. As the day progresses, the heat of the Sun is reflected off of the roof, keeping the heat away from the house. What heat does get into the house rises up and out through vents in the roof, pulling cooler air from the basement along with it and into the house (three feet down, the Earth is a constant 50 degrees Fahrenheit). In the winter, the Sun is always lower in the sky, so the house captures more of the heat and it is circulated at night.

Another part of the thermal “envelope” is the building material itself. Southern Yellow Pine is used as the primary building material because the wood has amazing thermal properties. It is able to absorb an enormous amount of heat, which allows it to regulate the temperature in the “envelope” by absorbing or releasing heat as necessary to regulate the temperature.

The builder claims that houses built properly will not need heating or cooling, just an open Southern sky and tree cover on the other sides of the house (furnaces will need to be put in, however, because insurers won’t insure a house without a heat source). A backup heat source may be recommended for colder climates and those with heavy snow cover.

The Enertia house was named 2007’s Modern Marvel in a contest sponsored by the History Channel.  The Enertia website has plans for sale (it’s DIY, but they provide the outside building materials). They’re not exactly cheap, but they’re not hugely expensive either. The cheapest kits are available from $60,000 and the website says most houses are built for 3-4x the price of the kit (the house would be less than $250,000 under these conditions). That plan is a one story home that is about 1900 sq ft including basement. It only includes two bedrooms, but the basement is available to add more bedrooms as it is largely unfinished.

It’s an interesting concept, and I’d love to see how one of these homes work. It may be more expensive to build than a traditional “stick” home, but you’ll save money in heating/cooling bills and it is built with a much more hardy material than the lumber and siding you’ll see in new homes, lowering maintenance costs as well. It’s probably not a solution for urban areas due to space requirements, but for those living in rural areas it’s a great way to save money and lower pollution.