Hacker News Reader

Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

I have zero knowledge about the topic but I wonder how NA specific is this thing? As far as I’m aware houses built with thin wood walls are more prevalent there, like in the original example. I live in a similar aged house (maybe a bit older) in Europe but we have 1 meter thick stone walls. We don’t have AC or ceiling fan but house always keeps cold in the summer and warm in the winter. I like the topic but curious how would that work with stone wall houses, especially like my example old style ones with thick walls

View on HN

Stone walls are terrible for heat insolation. They have inertia but no insolation. So they are good in the Mediterranean coast where you want inertia in summer as some sort of natural climate control to keep it cool during the day. But they are terrible in winter when what you want is insolation to keep the heat in during months. A 1m stone wall doesn't even insolate as good than 5cm of dedicated insolation panels. It happens very frequently now that old houses are renovated by adding insolation to those old stone walls, but of course you lose the charm of stone on one side of the wall. This is why you have basically no stone houses in Scandinavia, because in winter it would just be impossible to heat.

Stone houses (in the modern times they're made from concrete or brick, sometimes with insulation) exist in Scandinavia and they have good insulating properties. A modern stone house is even better than stick built houses when it comes to insulation.

insolation is not insulation. Insolation comes from the sun. You want stuff that rejects insolation for the summer, and you want stuff that allows the sun to heat the mass of the house in the winter.

One meter! Those are quite thick walls. Is it solid?

Yes of course. There is an outside insulation layer applied some years ago but otherwise it is as built in the 19th century

Indeed, that seems absolutely insane. Like a castle that would need to survive some sort of siege. Land is expensive where I am and I cannot imagine wasting that much on such insanely thick walls.

I want a picture. Walking through the front door must feel like going through a tunnel.

I’ve seen some that are basically build as two concrete block or brick walls, and the center are was filled with rubble stone and dirt.

This is similar to an “earth house” and is very comfortable where the average (or basement) temperature is comfortable. The walls make an insane amount of thermal mass and the temperature inside changes very slowly.

It's not insane. I currently live in a house where some older rooms have 0.9 meter adobe brick walls. These were built in mid-XX century, when this was normal. Now we have better materials and don't need that much width.

My family house was expanded so it had a thick wall like that between kitchen and the new part of the house. It was so thick it barely got wifi thru

When you are building your most expensive purchase of lifetime everyone needs to pragmatic and cheap. Each area have their own climate, cost of materials, cost of labour, building code (safety, efficiency, style) and tradition.

Europe spans 40 degrees of latitude - not listing yours is dishonest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com