User Behavior

There are several sublimated themes in the history of the solar house that apply to the practice of architecture and green building today.  The first and most important, which I sought to bring to the foreground in The Solar House, is the 'schism' between architecture and engineering.  (Credit, of course, to Sigfried Giedion, who first appropriated that powerful term from religious history.)  The answer to the schism---integrated practice---is a central theme of our time and, in my opinion, essential to the path forward.

Another major issue which surfaces from time to time in the book, and applies to green builders working now, is User Behavior.  The point is this: an efficient structure, by itself, will not guarantee low energy use; the users’ behavior matters considerably.  The most successful energy-saving buildings are invariably a product of both technology and culture.  

How about Hugh Duncan?  He was one of the first important patrons of the solar house (and a rhetorical champion of the concept).  In 1941 he hired Fred Keck to design a house in the Chicago suburb of Flossmoor, which then became the site of scientific study.  Keck and the Libbey-Owens-Ford glass company wanted to quantify how much energy would be saved by Keck's passive solar heating techniques.  Engineers from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) were engaged to instrument the Duncan house and analyze the data.  The experiment was inconclusive, however, in part because Duncan insisted on setting the thermostat at 73˚F and then left the door open---in winter!  The researchers understood they had bad data, and Keck was left supremely frustrated.  (A bit more on the Duncan House here: Keck's Duncan house: a new look)

And User Behavior can mislead historians.  Take Frank Lloyd Wright's "solar hemicycle" for Herbert Jacobs and his family (Madison, 1944).  Wright's structure was brilliant for its poetic expression of the solar path, and properly designed in cross-section, but it had serious thermal problems.  As I explain in the book, the house was essentially uninsulated, and required a tremendous amount of heating in addition to the passive solar gains.  The mezzanine-level bedrooms were essentially unheated, and the family would dress together each morning in the large bathroom, which contained a radiator.  The fascinating aspect of User Behavior, in this case, was that the Jacobses were so tolerant of discomfort.  Despite the fact that their dwelling had major flaws, they became solar house advocates and (perhaps unwittingly) helped hide those flaws from the historical record.

Today, User Behavior beguiles architects and engineers, most notably in the form of plug loads.  (The term 'plug loads' describes the energy use in a building as a result of equipment that is plugged-in, not really part of the permanent architecture and not controlled by the building design.  Plug loads account for roughly 25% of total electricity consumed within office buildings, according to the GSA.)  In Sustainable Construction: Green Building Design and Delivery, Charles Kibert says the modeling of plug loads is "inaccurate because the behavior of the building users is unpredictable."  Space-heaters and fans are notorious offenders because the building's permanent equipment is supposed to be designed to keep people comfortable.

How profound is User Behavior?  A 2012 study found that, in office spaces, "austere" occupants can achieve 50% energy savings compared to "regular" occupants, and "wasteful" occupants may use up to 89% more energy than regular (Hong & Lin, "Occupant Behavior: Impact on Energy Use of Private Offices," 2012).

New York City's Bank of America Tower, completed in 2010, is now the canonical example of User Behavior undermining good design.  The building, which has several commendable green features, became the subject of scandal due to exorbitant electricity use.  (The scandalizing article is here.)  It turned out not to be a scandal at all---the tenants have extremely high computer use and enormous server farms; it's almost more akin to a data center than an office building.  You can't blame the building designers for that, although it would have been better if they could have anticipated the demand.

Fred Keck's unfinished book

In The Solar House I call George Fred Keck “The First Solar Architect,” and I argue that his work is “generally overlooked; his place in history does not seem to match his true importance.” He might have built a more secure legacy if he had written more.

In a footnote to Chapter 2, I mentioned that Keck wrote a book manuscript in 1944, which was never published. This is news, I think. I don't recall Keck's book having been mentioned in anything that has been written about him, including the monograph Keck & Keck by Robert Boyce. (Too little has been written about him!)

So I was surprised when I found that Keck planned a book, and produced an incomplete draft. Several chapters are in his papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society. He thought it would be a “high class how to book.” Here is the list of chapters he outlined in a 1944 letter to Ken Reid, the editor of Pencil Points magazine:

1. General Information and Introduction
2. Fitting the House to the Climate
3. Orientation and Solar Principles Applications
4. The Use of Glass and Its Possibilities
5. Heating of the House
6. Structural Changes and Inventions
7. A Discussion in the Use of Materials, Both Old and New
8. Artificial Lighting
9. Possibilities of Manufactured Housing or Prefabrication
10. A Discussion about Obsolete Ideas and Tendencies in Planning which might be broken down into a discussion of Basements, Attics, and Multiple Story Houses.
11. A Discussion of Physical Safety and Well-being in the Contemporary House broken down into such items as Accidents, Eye Sight and such problems.
12. Furniture and Its Possibilities
13. Discussion of Aesthetics
     a. Stylism
     b. Rationalism
14. Sociological, Psychological or Human Relationship Problems in Planning
15. A Discussion on Planning - Neighborhood Planning and Regional Planning - and How an Individual Family Unit Fits Into Such a Scheme

Keck completed drafts of most of these, although it is not clear the full work was ever finished because the archive is a bit disorganized. He never followed through or found a publisher.

The topic list is immensely interesting, of course. It reflects both Keck's own creative agenda and the general priorities of modern architecture in the 40s. (For instance, I’m certain that if Gregory Ain had made such a list it would have been quite similar, except for the emphasis on heating and solar heating.)

The overall character of the manuscript was straightforward, but a bit timid or meek in tone. I’m afraid it might have been a somewhat dull book; it was certainly not a ‘manifesto’ in the modernist tradition. A good editor might have helped immensely. Had it been finished and published, it would have clearly broadcast Keck’s specific insights, which were significant, and he surely would have secured greater level of historical importance for himself.

Wolfgang Langewiesche and Climate Control

A fascinating 'supporting character' in the history of climate-responsive architecture in the Midcentury period is Wolfgang Langewiesche.

Langewiesche wrote for House Beautiful, working with editor Elizabeth Gordon.  He was a key contributor to the Climate Control Project that the magazine created in concert with the AIA, a seminal effort to educate architects about heating & cooling, and other environmental issues.*  As I wrote in the book: "No publication in America or elsewhere gave more positive attention to the solar house."

I've created the following Bibliography of articles written by Langewiesche for House Beautiful.  It's an impressive list.

"So You Think You're Comfortable" (October 1949)
"How to Fix your Private Climate" (October 1949)
"How to Pick your Private Climate" (November 1949)
"Don't You See?" (December 1949)
"Your House in Florida" (January 1950)
"Why You Feel Hot or Cold" (February 1950)
"How to Control the Sun" (March 1950)
"How to Live Comfortably in the Southwest Desert" (April 1950)
"Wind Control in Hot Weather" (June 1950)
“Can you Control the Wind?” (June 1950)
"How to Get Wind Control" (June 1950)
"How to Manipulate Sun and Shade" (July 1950)
"There's a Gold Mine under Your House" (August 1950)
"Why Does Insulation Insulate?" (September 1950)
"A Quickie Course in Climate Control" (November 1950)
"Different Places Need Different Houses" (January 1951)
"Your House in the Fall" (October 1951)
"The Next American House by a Man who’s Going to Build One" (April 1953)
"The Pace Setter Heat Pump" (February 1955)
"Summer Heat is Man-made" (June 1955)
"The Builder House: What Kind of House Is it?" (November 1956)
"Everybody Can Own a House" (November 1956)

I'm not sure this is full and complete.  Please comment if I'm missing any!

Langewiesche is more noted as an aviation writer.  His book Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying (1944), is considered a classic and is still in print.

---

Other articles of significance from House Beautiful (not by Langewiesche):

By Elizabeth Gordon:
    "Did You Know that the Heat of the Sun Can Help Heat your House in Winter?" (September 1943)
    "Summer Protector against Solar Heat is the Roof Overhang" (September 1943)
    "The First of the Postwar Prefabricated Houses" on Green's solar homes by Keck (November 1945)
    "What Climate Does to YOU and What You Can Do to CLIMATE" (October 1949)
    "Report on the Climate Control Project" (October 1950)
By James Marston Fitch:
    "How You Can Use House Beautiful's Climate Control Project" (October 1949)
    "The Scientists Behind Climate Control" (October 1949)
By others:
    "What a Big Difference a Little Re-Orienting Makes" (September 1943)
    "Facts I Wager You Don’t Know About Solar Mechanics" (September 1943)
    "Can an Old House be Remodeled for Solar Heating?" (June 1945)
    Jedd S. Reimer, "You Can So Have a Solar House in a Cold Climate" (June 1948)
    W.W. Ward, "Keep the Sun Off Your Windows and You’ll Be Up to 20% Cooler" (June 1948)
    Henry N. Wright, "How to Put a Harness on the Sun" (October 1949)
    Miles Colean, "Climate Control Can Save You Money" (October 1949)
    "Climate Control Goes to the National Academy" (January 1950)

*For more on the Climate Control Project, here's an excellent site created sometime ago by MIT.

Passive Solar Heating: Do's and Don't's

My colleague Jon Gardzelewski & I were asked to write an introductory-level article on Passive Solar Heating for a magazine for rural homeowners.  It's a short article with very basic information.  In fact, most of it is basically identical to what you'd find in books and magazines of the 1970s.  Anyway, I thought I'd share it:

"Keep on the Sunny Side" (pdf)

Update: The follow-on article is here: An Active Solar Primer

The Roman Baths and Solar Heating

Anybody interested in this website will also be interested in John Perlin's new book Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy.  The book is an impressive work and a rewarding read.  Among the many interesting topics that Perlin surveys in the book, one section that caught my attention concerns the ancient Romans' use of solar heating in the monumental bath structures (p.27-33).

Perlin wrote: "the Romans usually glazed the whole south wall of their bathhouses."

Baths of Caracalla model (Rome, 212-216 CE), showing large, southwest-facing window glass.
From http://blog.tostevin.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130911-224017.jpg

Perlin also noted: "Seneca wrote that these giant windows trapped so much solar heat that by the late afternoon, bathers would 'broil' inside the baths."  Here is where Seneca writes about the baths:

Source

To show the Romans' facility for solar heating, Perlin points to a 1996 study, "Windows, baths, and solar energy in the Roman empire," by physicist James W. Ring (American Journal of Archaeology).  I tracked down and read the original article.

Ring concluded: "the Romans deserve high praise for their use of solar energy."  His numbers showed, however, that at noon on the winter solstice, a typical 'solar room' in a Roman bath would lose slightly more heat than it would gain---not very good.  He made a low assumption of a 30˚F outdoor temperature and a high assumption of 100˚F inside.  We may infer that at more moderate temps, or on days with stronger sun, the windows would likely offer enough solar gains to outweigh the losses. 

Ring also wrote: "The sun alone on sunny days could provide most of the energy to maintain the 100˚F temperatures.  Indeed, even with fires reduced on sunny days, there would probably be some thermal energy [from the sun] stored in the doors and walls that would maintain the temperature as the sun [went] down.  On days where the sun [was] obscured by clouds, the hypocaust with reduced fire, or turned on only part of the time, could by itself easily maintain the temperature [100˚F inside] even with the temperature at 30˚F [outside]."

I find the Ring study to be well-done and informative.  The paper's calculations are good and the assumptions are sound, although he did not take into account thermal mass lagtime effects apart from the comment above, and he did not discuss daily or yearly totals of gains & losses.  He also did not discuss one of the biggest problems that modern solar architects discovered, as I emphasize in my book, the potential for summer overheating.  (A curious point is that Ring gave a lot of attention to the question of whether solar heating would have worked in the baths with unglazed openings---obviously not!) 

In the Roman baths, the solar heat assisted the hypocaust system of 'mechanical' heating.  The technology of the hypocaust is fascinating.  The baths included boiling rooms with tanks where hot and warm water was produced by burning wood.  The heated rooms within the baths had raised floors and hollow walls, so that hot water and hot air were circulated in these cavities to create radiant heating in the rooms.  This is conceptually the same as today's technology of radiant floor heating, which of course works well in combination with passive solar.  (Interestingly, a 1956 scholar quoted in Ring's paper said of the Roman baths: "the principles of radiant heating ... made the open rooms possible and, to date, we have not matched them in a modern building.")

And if you're thinking 'they must have burned a LOT of wood', you're right.  In fact, the Romans probably turned to solar heat out of economic necessity---they were running out of wood, and prices rose steeply.  (Which of course brings to mind the famous quote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.")  A link below has more on the importance of wood, and the scarcity of it, in ancient Rome.  And Perlin, in another book (A Forest Journey: Wood and Civilization), said that heating the caldarium of one bath consumed 114 tons of wood per year.

I like words, so all of this prompted me to look up the etymology of the word hypocaust, which is usually translated as "heat from below."  The Ancient Greek hypo- means "under," although in medicine it connotes "deficient" and in chemistry it means low-in-oxygen.  And caust- means "burnt," as in caustic.

Also to note: the large divided arch windows seen above are known as "Diocletian Windows".  Ring noted that Romans made window frames from both wood and metal.

Finally, I'll mention that a quick look at Google Earth shows that the two most 'important' Roman baths, those of Caracalla and Diocletian, were not oriented orthogonally to the cardinal directions.  Instead, they were built so that the major glass walls face southwest.  (Which brings to mind the fact that Villa Rotonda and Chiswick house were later oriented diagonally, as was Villa Savoye.)

Related:
Roman Baths – Precursor for Modern Temperature Control at UrbanEmergence
Deforestation of Italy in Roman times discussed at Environmental History Resources
Diocletian Window at Wikipedia