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I came across a blogg in my country, where somebody is building a house inside a greenhouse. They are building it in the 67 parrallel, where Alaska also lies.
I have run it through Google translate, so not everything is translated correctly, but you will get the idea.
Very interesting project. I'm a bit confused about why they've decided to built a heavy timber-framed cob home inside the greenhouse dome though. Seems to me that the thick cob walls would provide plenty of insulation to keep the house warm with minimal woodheat even outside of the greenhouse, and the greenhouse dome would be better reserved for food production.
I can't help wondering if the high insulation factor of the thick cob walls will prevent the solar gain from warming the inside of the house, while also preventing the waste heat from the home from warming the inside of the greenhouse. Wouldn't a thinner-walled structure (simply for privacy) make more sense from a heat and fuel perspective if you wanted the home and small garden inside the greenhouse out of the cold weather.
Perhaps this was explained in one of the earlier posts, or has been lost in translation.
However, if I had the opportunity of building a large greenhouse like this here in Alaska, I think it would be wonderful for gardening and keeping small livestock through our long winters. Especially if it were attached to our cabin so it could serve as our yard when we're under 4 feet of snow
Interesting concept but I am not a big fan of cob. I would rather alter an existing building. I agree with Missing in that wisdom was discarded in place of a trend.
150 years ago, in the Upper Midwest of the United States, they called these Soddies. Soddies were built out of necessity, not because it was cool. And they were inexpensive, rather than outrageously expensive - which is what this "house in a greenhouse" had to be.
Everyone is certainly welcome to do whatever they want, but I'll pass.
I love cob and it's a wonderful building material if it's available locally. Mud & Daub and Cob can be wonderfully insulating, both to keep heat in or out, and it's literally "dirt cheap" if you have the right soil on site and ready access to good straw.
But, yeah, putting a heavy cob building inside a greenhouse doesn't quite make sense to me.
The greenhouse is vented, so I doubt there is all that much humidity and condensation to worry about. Plus, since it's too cold for moisture to remain in the air, most sub-arctic/arctic regions are fairly arid so maybe the slight increase in humidity inside the greenhouse actually makes it more comfortable. I know that many people run humidifiers or keep a kettle on their woodstove here in the winter when the relative humidity is usually less than 10%.
Lots of natives (like Inupiaq) on the tundra built sod houses because there aren't that many trees, and the Aleuts lived in partially subterranean huts (barabara) with a sod roof over logs or whalebone.
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