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Comment by metalman | Hacker News Reader

there are much simpler and more reliable ways to significantly reduce indoor air contaminents. one is a building method that produces a "floating" slab floor, that has a small gap around most of the walls, and the underfloor space is vented upwards with a chimney, this creates a small but continious air current that removes most dust and other things in the air.

And then the simple expedient of useing radiant heat sources, that while not as lethal as UV, are in fact quite deadly to bacteria and anything tiny with a high water content, but completly harmless to humans and ,animals,plants. Couple this with hard, smooth ,surfaces that are designed so that there no crevices or areas filth can acumulate, useing hard woods,glass,tile,metal,leather/vinyl l,high gloss paint,for surfaces. No cloth, no carpet.While not exactly cosy or friendly, it makes getting home that much nicer. Cheap, reliable, low maintenence, implimentable at scale, now.

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Your first paragraph is advocating for ventilation, which is great but there's been so much incentive to reduce building energy consumption (heating/cooling) that recirculating, filtration and other technologies have resulted in offices becoming almost sealed off. We are now moving towards more balanced models as people don't feel comfortable in such offices e.g. sick building syndrome.

my description is a bare outline, actusl instalation could easily include a heat exchanger, and by going to radiant heat, it's surfaces that provide the heat,ie: floors (warm/cool feet) and walls, cielings, with humidity controll bieng done in air HCAC is decidedly unsexy engineering, but it can effect, all of every day so worth a bit of attention

Since you seem to have a bit of knowledge here, are there any terms or links you would recommend for a novice to learn more about this floating concept? Really liking everything about this post

Apologies for my weak google-fu

The whole idea, along with complete construction techniques was given to me verbaly, and would be stumpted as to where to send you, as my local , venerable {c:1980} passive solar organisation has gone darth, and is somewhat captured by industry, though if prompted still might publish there off grid solar design manual ,which had been adopted by many other organisations worldwide. https://solarns.ca/ The whole idea is based on thermal loops, which is powered, as everything is, by the fact that heat rises, and that internal cavitys/rooms tend to be cooler at the walls, causing a down draft there,and that energy can be put to work.

I know of other instalations in service for decades useing similar methods, but theses ideas and the floating slab are just physics. People are building houses here with double exterior walls acting as thermal breaks, which have no home heating installed, or ever needed, just air/heat exchange,normal domestic activity providing excess heat even @-25°c. Straw bale houses have proven to be the same. Luckily we have a long tradition of challenging building codes and getting engineers behind different ideas, but the full stack of passive technologies is still not bieng implimented at scale.

I can't help picturing the dymaxion house

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