Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Biomimicry in House Temperature Control

I was reading about endotherms and ectotherms in an ecology textbook yesterday and the idea struck me that houses themselves can be looked at as either 'endotherms' or 'ectotherms' with regards to how temperature was being controlled in them.
Earth building
Earth building

Endothermic Houses

A house that uses an air conditioner would be considered an endothermic house, since it uses internal means to regulate its temperature. Like endothermic organisms, which consume a lot of energy (and food) to regulate their internal body temperature, an endothermic house would be using a lot of energy (electricity) to regulate the temperature inside it as the air conditioner works. Endotherms also consume even larger amounts of energy to regulate their internal temperate when the external temperature is more extreme. This is the case too with 'endothermic' houses, which consume growing amounts of energy as the temperature outside the house becomes more and more extreme.

Ectothermic Houses

Ectotherms, on the other hand, use external means to regulate their body temperature. Ectothermic houses thus would be the ones that do not have an internal heating or cooling system but rather use external means to regulate their 'body' temperature. Ectothermic houses can use angle to the sun, angle to wind, air vents and a number of other strategies in order to help regulate their internal temperature without consuming too much energy to do so.

Insulation

Organism also make use of insulation in the form of fur, feathers, skin and fat to help reduce undesired body temperature loss or gain. Similarly, houses can make use of such powerful strategy in order to help regulate internal temperature without need for expending energy. This could be for instance in the form of thick walls that slowly absorb and store heat to name just one insulation strategy.

Conclusion

By employing techniques used by ectotherms rather than endotherms as well as insulation, houses can be designed to consume much less energy than ones that are much more energy hungry as endotherms.

1 comment:

  1. Learning from termites how to create sustainable buildings
    We generally think of termites as destroying buildings, not helping design them. But the Eastgate Building, an office complex in Harare, Zimbabwe, has an air conditioning system modeled on the self-cooling mounds of termites that maintain the temperature inside their nest to within one degree, day and night (while the temperatures outside swing from 42 °C to 3 °C).
    The operation of buildings represents 40% of all the energy used by humanity, so learning how to design them to be more sustainable is vitally important. Architect Mick Pearce collaborated with engineers at Arup Associates to design Eastgate, which uses 90% percent less energy for ventilation than conventional buildings its size, and has already saved the building owners over $3.5 million dollars in air conditioning costs.


    http://inhabitat.com/building-modelled-on-termites-eastgate-centre-in-zimbabwe/

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