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Can you convert a traditional home into a wofati-lite?

 
pioneer
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I realize the Reverend Dr. Wheaton might demur to call it a full-on Wofati, but could a traditional home be converted into Wofati-lite? I've got a traditional 4-walled house from 1860. It sits on a tiny artifical hill created, I think, to encourage water to run away from the foundation rather than into it. Just curious if anybody has undertaken converting a house in this manner and if it was worth the effort. Did it help heating and cooling costs in the winter? What's been your experience?
 
pollinator
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Can I ask why?
 
pollinator
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Most homes are not built to turned into earth sheltered. I would be very worried of a house built in the 1800's.

Think about how much earth weighs. A lot! Not counting snow load. So berming the sides or worse putting on the roof can be dangerous.

Earth sheltered homes need to be especially designed to take heavy loads. Most homes designed to stand without earth are not made to take such weight.
 
D.W. Stratton
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Devin Lavign wrote:Most homes are not built to turned into earth sheltered. I would be very worried of a house built in the 1800's.

Think about how much earth weighs. A lot! Not counting snow load. So berming the sides or worse putting on the roof can be dangerous.

Earth sheltered homes need to be especially designed to take heavy loads. Most homes designed to stand without earth are not made to take such weight.



This house is built from solid timber. Whole roof is solid as a brick, but I take your meaning.
 
D.W. Stratton
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John C Daley wrote:Can I ask why?



Because I cannot sell and want to reduce heating, cooling, etc needs insofar as possible. Wondering if it's been done.
 
John C Daley
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Is it possible to retrofit insulation?
 
pollinator
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Lets break this down into it's components.

Green Roof
Could your 1800's house support a green roof. I highly recommend that you hire a structural engineer to take a look, at your house in person.

Earth Bermed Walls
What if you just placed some haybales, against the walls, then shape them to be a curvy hill vs boxy step hill, followed by just liner, with a thin layer of dirt on top, growing some sedge?
 
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Green roof: Unless your house is one of the very rare flat-roofed ones, old houses outside of built-up cities will most likely have roofs too steep to hold a green roof, not to mention that a completely new roof membrane would be required to stay waterproof in this use.

No matter how strong the timber frame, the joints are not intended to carry huge sideways loads from outside. The walls between timbers would need to be reinforced. Also, you would need insulation and waterproofing added to the outside walls to minimize vapor travel, trapping, and condensation near the outer face of the original wall, which would lead to hidden rot and possible sudden collapse later on. Hay bales piled against the walls in winter (tarped over on the outside) and then used as mulch to improve a garden would be a reasonable approach. My father collected leaf bags from curbs and piled them against the walls of the converted barn he moved into. This made excellent soil when eventually removed to the garden.

But the practical approach to reducing heating costs for an old house, especially if maintaining historical appearance is not important, would be to add insulation to the walls, either outside followed by new siding of whatever sort, or inside covered with sheetrock. Tightening doors and windows would also be critical, improving joint seals and adding a second pane of glass. Old windows can be improved to be quite good without tearing out and replacing, which would be permie as waste and large new plastic material is avoided. You can probably put a lot of cheap insulation in the attic of an old house to improve its warmth.
 
pollinator
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Air sealing, insulation, rehabilitating old windows and doors, modern heating/cooling equipment (or rocket-mass-heater) are all "low hanging fruit" for conservation and comfort at low cost/high return on investment.

"This Old House" has some good episodes about rehabilitating old windows, and done well they can be as good as newer windows, especially considering cost of replacing old, non-standardized size windows (custom order, or reframing/trim to use new).

Anecdotally, a friend air sealed and insulated his attic, he began by removing ALL the old insulation to get access for air sealing. When he was only halfway done with the air sealing his wife remarked "the house feels warmer, and what a difference the insulation was making!" He informed her that he "hadn't even put any insulation in yet!"
 
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D.W. Stratton wrote:Wondering if it's been done.

I'm pretty sure the answer is no, it hasn't been done.

Significantly modifying a house from its original design poses all sorts of risks that are often hidden.  Even adding insulation to a 1960s house can introduce issues with breathability and condensation.  

There are experts in energy improvements for old houses but I'm guessing they aren't cheap.  I'm not sure if this is a Wisconsin thing but we have Focus on Energy which will do an audit of your house for free or cheap.  If you do the recommendations they pay for a portion of them.  Maybe your state has something similar?
 
Kenneth Elwell
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Mike Haasl wrote:

D.W. Stratton wrote:Wondering if it's been done.

I'm pretty sure the answer is no, it hasn't been done.

Significantly modifying a house from its original design poses all sorts of risks that are often hidden.  Even adding insulation to a 1960s house can introduce issues with breathability and condensation.  

There are experts in energy improvements for old houses but I'm guessing they aren't cheap.  I'm not sure if this is a Wisconsin thing but we have Focus on Energy which will do an audit of your house for free or cheap.  If you do the recommendations they pay for a portion of them.  Maybe your state has something similar?



In Massachusetts it is MassSave. It is sponsored by utility companies, and often they are looking to identify and replace old/inefficient equipment with newer equipment, often with rebates or other incentives (while also switching to using their commodity, the benefit to them is gaining/retaining a customer for *presumably* the lifetime of the new equipment)
 
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Well, I have a 1870's house that at some point in the 50's had been extended into it's barn and that part of the barn was dug back into the hill. so our computer room had walls sunk into the earth around 1m up, it is a brick built double skinned house with 140 years of whitewash on the outside. Originaly it was built with a thatched roof but it now has metal. We did not get any problems in the house part from it being dug in. I think they had painted the walls with bitumen or something similar to stop the water, but in the barn part where nothing had been done then water would actually flow through the brick walls in winter.

The back room that was half underground was MUCH easier to heat than the rest of the house that was "Normal" two people, two computers. 2 dogs and 2 cats kept the room at 18C even when it dropped to -15 C outside.
 
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