Nauhaus Blog

Cordwood Hobbit Style House with round door and living roof in Wisconsin 2 weeks, 2 days ago

Nauhaus Prototype Gets Plastered 1 month, 3 weeks ago

Nauhaus Radio Interview 2 months, 3 weeks ago

Nauhaus Primer: Talking Head About Carbon Neutrality and the Nauhaus Prototype 3 months ago

We've Got Windows 3 months, 2 weeks ago

Legalize Industrial Hemp Nau 3 months, 2 weeks ago

Interning with the Nauhaus 4 months, 1 week ago

Catherine Mohr Talks About the Energy Used to Build Her House 4 months, 2 weeks ago

Building Fundamentals: Energy Efficiency Geekout - Anatomy of Windows and Doors Part I 4 months, 2 weeks ago

Building Fundamentals: Energy Efficiency Geekout - Anatomy of Windows and Doors Part 2 4 months, 2 weeks ago



Posts Tagged ‘prototype’

Nauhaus Prototype: Hemcrete®, Eco-Panels®, and Lightning Bug

Monday, November 16th, 2009 by Billy Schweig
Left to Right: Clarke Snell (Managing Director, Nauhaus Institute), Mario Machnicki (Managing Director, American Lime Technology), Ian Pritchett (Chairman and Technical Director, Lime Technology)

Left to Right: Clarke Snell (Managing Director, Nauhaus Institute), Mario Machnicki (Managing Director, American Lime Technology), Ian Pritchett (Chairman and Technical Director, Lime Technology)

There’s been a lot of the “sexier” components being put together in the Nauhaus Prototype as of late. Ian Pritchett of Lime Technology flew in from the UK to oversee the installation of the first Tradical® Hemcrete® wall on a home in the US and what he says will be the first Passive Hemcrete® home in the world. Ian and his US partner Mario Machnicki trained Asheville builder extraordinaire Matt Schillig of WNC ProBuilt in Hemcrete® installation.

Left to Right: Clarke Snell, Chris Cashman, Matt Schillig, and Elisha Brinton in front of the hours-old first Hemcrete® wall in the US.

Left to Right: Clarke Snell, Chris Cashman, Matt Schillig, and Elisha Brinton in front of the hours-old first Hemcrete® wall in the US.

At about the same time, we’ve had Mark Prudowski of Lightning Bug Electric (more info here) finishing up the electric on the prototype home. Mark and his team, including a graduate from Asheville GO (the awesome non-profit we mentioned in our previous post), fitted the home with “smurf tubing,” ideal for wiring through bio-cretes and other cellulose-based walls. The design will allow for (more…)

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Asheville GO and the Nauhaus Institute Join Forces for a Day-Long Work Session

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 by Billy Schweig

The Asheville Green Opportunities (Asheville GO) Training Program came down to the site today to learn about the project and get their hands dirty with a work day. Managing Director Clarke Snell toured the team around the prototype site while Mike Figura toured them around Gaia, our sister urban ecovillage project, just across the creek. The rest of the day was spent building scaffolding to erect the roof structure and a box to help weigh waste material for LEED certification. See pictures after the break.

The Asheville GO co-founders and supporters.

The Asheville GO co-founders and supporters.

Tony Beurskens and Asheville GO members plan out a construction project.

Tony Beurskens and Asheville GO members plan out a construction project.

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Press Release: Nauhaus Group Breaks Ground on Historic Prototype Home

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 by Billy Schweig

house-constructed-front

Asheville, NC–The Nauhaus Group has officially broken ground on its historic prototype home. The Nauhaus Prototype, or NHP, is pushing the envelope for sustainable construction in the US. The design for the NHP boasts a unique combination of energy efficiency, traditional (or “natural”) building materials and aesthetic appeal.

Members of the Nauhaus Group believe that the NHP is on track to be one of the first ten Passive House certified homes in the US, garner a LEED Platinum rating with points to spare, and be the first house in the US to utilize Tradical® Hemcrete® (an insulation material made from industrial hemp fiber) as its wall system.

Instead of a groundbreaking ceremony at that beginning of construction when there is little to see, organizers of the project decided to hold a “Carbon Capture Ceremony” later in the process of building.

“We thought it would be more appropriate because our building’s paradigm is constructive, not destructive. Considering the unique features of the home we decided to hold a public event at a time in the construction process when people could view and experience some of the more exciting highlights of the prototype,” said Michael Figura, one of the organizers of the event.

Whereas a normal groundbreaking ceremony might involve a commemorative shoveling of soil, organizers at the Nauhaus Group hope to time their November 6th Carbon Capture Ceremony to coincide with the actual installation of the hemp wall system so attendees can participate.

After years of planning, the NHP is slated to mark a prominent shift in the way people think about homes and building in general. “The strength of our approach,” says managing director Clarke Snell, “is that we draw from a variety of methodologies and perspectives. We’ve got high-tech systems working with low-tech materials. Art in league with science.”

It’s no secret that the Nauhaus Group is out to save the world.

“The Nauhaus prototype is only part of a growing movement in the US to act responsibly when it comes to our carbon footprint,” said Snell. “The result of our approach is not only the most efficient, low-impact, durable, healthy, beautiful and affordable housing system we can muster, but a system that will continue to change, improve and grow.”

The house is owned by the Nauhaus Group itself and will be open for regular tours, workshops and other visits upon completion. It will, in the meantime, be occupied by chief engineer Jeff Buscher and his family to allow for energy efficiency analysis, systems testing and other research before it is sold.

The Nauhaus Group is a newly formed organization composed of designers, engineers, and builders at the top of their respective fields in Asheville and beyond. The group engages in for-profit activities ranging from design to sales but is also in the process of founding the non-profit Nauhaus Institute to house research and educational activities such as the NHP. For more information on attending or sponsoring the Carbon Capture Ceremony or for information on volunteering for community workdays at the NHP, contact Billy Schweig (billy@thenauhaus.com).

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Hemp Insulation: Nauhaus Prototype to Be First House Using Tradical®Hemcrete® In US

Friday, May 8th, 2009 by mandible

Tradical®Hemcrete® is an insulation material made from industrial hemp chips (shiv) in a lime-based binder. We are VERY excited about helping to introduce this wonderful material to the US housing market. As a design group that comes out of the world of low-embodied energy materials (often called “natural building”), we have been in a quandry as to how to acheive the highest energy performance and durability in a wet, humid climate while staying true to our “natural building” roots. We love vapor permeable wall systems like cob and adobe, but don’t like the low insulation values. We like straw bales, but find them impractical in our wet climate, as well as finding their clunky, bulky form difficult to work with practically. Our favorite “natural” wall material is clay-slip straw, but find a number of practical difficulties in working with the material in the field. We think that materials like Hemcrete are a great fit for practical, high-performance, low-embodied energy building systems like ours, the Nauhaus.

Tradical®Hemcrete® is manufactured by the UK company Lime Technologies, LTD and distributed on the east coast by Hemp Technologies, LLC in Asheville, NC. Though we understand the inherent unsustainability of shipping a bulky building material from England, we have chosen Hemcrete as part of a long-term commitment to find and promote the best building materials for  sustainable design. It is our belief that it is time to advocate for the production of industrial hemp products in the United States.

Okay, let’s get the “pot” jokes out to the way. Industrial hemp doesn’t have the drug properties of its cousin, marijuana…so don’t smoke it, Holmes. Hemp used to be a mainstay of the US economy. There was a time when you HAD to grow it if you had a certain amount of land. It grows quickly, is a nitrogen fixer, and is the source of a huge variety of useful products including fabrics, oils, ropes, and a variety of building and automobile related products. US consumers purchase more hemp-based products than anyone else in the world, but it is currently almost impossible to grow industrial hemp in this country. Clearly this makes no sense. In the US our friends at Hemp Technologies, and our suppliers of Tradical®Hemcrete® are hard at working changing this. They are lobbying policy makers to change regulations and are planning to manufacture Tradical®Hemcrete® in the coming years. Hemp Technologies is also a partner with us on the Nauhaus prototype project.

To learn more about industrial hemp and everything Hemp Technologies is doing, visit their website: www.hemtecusa.com

To learn more about why we’ve chosen Tradical®Hemcrete®, read this.

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Nauhaus Prototype Seeks Passive House Certification

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 by mandible

Passive House certification is perhaps the most rigorous and thorough building energy performance standard in the world. Though thousands of buildings have been built to this standard in Europe,  there are less than 10 certified Passive House buildings in the US. We have designed the Nauhaus prototype to Passive House standards and are in the process of seeking certification.

Okay, yes, it’s a major hassle. Why do it? Oh, let me count the ways:

1. Climate Change. Unless all the climate science eggheads are oxygen starved from too much time in high altitude weather balloons, it seems clear that we need to drastically cut climate change linked carbon emissions to prevent a climate change rollercoaster that we will be helpless to control. Since our buildings are responsible for 50% of our carbon footprint, the best approach would be to make them carbon neutral, in other words, design, build, and run them so that they are responsible for no carbon emissions.  Since carbon is emitted through combustion of fossil fuels, the best thing to do would be to burn no fuels to heat, cool, or power a house. The only way to do that is to drastically reduce building energy requirements so that expensive “clean” renewable energy (solar electric, wind, and hydro) systems can be made small enough to be affordable. The Passive House approach reduces heating and cooling loads in our climate by 90% and overall energy requirements by 70%. With this level of performance, carbon neutrality comes within reach.

2. Indoor Air Quality. Since most buildings loose heat quickly through their envelope (exterior walls, floor, and roof), heating equipment needs to warm air to high temperatures to make up for this quick loss. Often, this means that the air is heated to a temperature that will burn dust. Do you want to breathe burnt dust? I don’t. In a Passive House, we dont’ need much heat, so we don’t need to burn dust to create comfortable temperatures. This fact in combination with air-tight construction and very efficient energy recovery ventilation allows a Passive House to create the best indoor air you’ll ever experience.

3. Money. Okay, enough flowery stuff about saving the world and breathing better. What’s the cost? Yes, a Passive House will cost more up front, but that’s the price for the speculator, flipper, and sub-prime mortgage weilding sleeze ball. If you actually intend to live there, you know make it a home, then the cost equation is more complicated. Since Passive Houses cost almost nothing to run and make renewable energy much cheaper by reducing system size, they are without a doubt less expensive for the owner. Save all of your “What’s the payback period” and “How much more do they cost up front” questions for the time being. We don’t know because we are designing our first Passive House now. There’s a lot of info out there on costs, but it is all tied to the European market so we can’t draw clear conclusions from it. Those people eat Bratwurst and have health care for god’s sake! It’s like a whole different planet. Rest assured that cost is of paramount concern for us, so we’ll keep you posted.

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What’s New: Nauhaus Prototype Almost Ready to Break Ground

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 by mandible


This humble...okay messed up...lot will be the site of our Nauhaus prototype project. Watch us transform it into a beautiful model of urban sustainability

Plans for permitting have been submitted for our prototype project, slated to start construction late this spring.  We’ve been working on developing a practical approach to carbon neutral, healthy built residential construction for several years. The result is a building system, for lack of a better word, that we’ve dubbed “The Nauhaus” (pronounced “now house”). Though we’ve designed a number of projects in the interim, this is our “prototype” because it is the first to combine all aspects of the Nauhaus vision: the highest possible level of energy efficiency, low-embodied energy non-toxic (“natural”) materials, impeccable indoor air quality, sustainable water management, indoor and outdoor living, urban infill, on-site energy production, and an abundant edible landscape brought together to create a model of urban sustainability. In addition, this project will provide valuable data for others in the green building movement because we will performance monitor the home for several years to compare theoretical to actual performance.

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