The idea of ​​shelter loyal to the natural environment, comfortable for humans, probably worried people in all ages, but now it has become extremely important for the life of the population on all continents.

The first half of the 1970s  defected  by an energy crisis that stimulated  creation of energy-saving, and then energy-efficient houses.

Over time, as these projects have been successfully implemented, it has become increasingly clear that improving the design of the house should not only be in terms of energy consumption, but also in terms of rationalizing water consumption, reducing household waste, improving living conditions, etc. So, in a natural way By now, many designers have “matured” the idea of ​​eco-friendly housing (although it existed a long time, but it was the lot of singles).

Of course, the main thing in the idea of ​​eco-house is not good reasoning, but implementation. Unquestionably, this is a revolution in construction and urban planning, which can significantly affect our future. This fact is so extraordinary, that until now it is not fully realized by the developers .

If you give a short definition, the eco house is a separated  or a blocked house with a piece of land that is radically resource-saving and low-waste, healthy and well-maintained, non-aggressive to the natural environment.

These qualities are achieved by autonomous or collective engineering life support systems in construction with the rational construction of the house. What is especially important, these qualities are not only a single eco-house, but also the residential environment created by the eco houses and the engineering and production infrastructure that service it.

Own house with an adjacent piece of land always was attractive and served as a symbol of well-being. In this man is like a bird that has a certain space around its nest.

The eco-house is highly autonomous, it does not need, unlike ordinary  city, giant engineering systems and networks and the industry serving them, it is friendly to nature and man, thereby combining the positive qualities of the earlier types of housing.

Since the properties of the eco house are much different from the properties of mass modern housing – they will inevitably give a new character and a living environment in general. Therefore, the eco -house is not just an unusual house, but a new type of housing.

Outwardly, it can be very different in different physical, geographical and social conditions, but its main characteristics will remain:

availability of autonomous resource-saving life support systems,

low waste through recycling and disposal of all types of waste,

comfortable living conditions proper to the nature of a person.

 

The character of housing, as noted at the beginning, affects all aspects of life, including social life. In the eco-house, the person will be largely returned to independence and personal responsibility for their own material well-being and the condition of the surrounding natural landscapes.Eco- house will need the residents living in it to have certain skills, skills, knowledge, having an ecological character. Thus, he will still fulfill both the educational and educational role.

As already noted, an energy house is a direct predecessor of the eco house. The energy efficiency factor plays a leading role in the eco-house, so it deserves to be considered first.

With a small exception of energy losses, the houses are of a thermal nature.

Thermal energy is lost by the house along three main channels:

through opaque enclosing structures (walls, floor, ceiling),through translucent fences (windows, lanterns)due to air exchange.

Losses through these channels in existing homes are about the same order. If one of these channels is blocked, the losses for others will increase and almost lose the efforte.

Two or three decades ago there was no point in seriously insulating the walls of the house, because there were no heat-saving windows and the saved heat would still escape through the windows. Since then, the situation has changed markedly: windows have become the subject of serious engineering developments and the object of high technology applications. There were windows, the thermal resistance of which is 5-6 times higher than that of conventional ones. Nevertheless, even more advanced ones continue to be developed.

The high thermal protection characteristics of the new windows were obtained due to the thin reflective layers of the film on the glasses, which do not let thermal radiation out, thanks to hermetically sealed vacuüm, gas-filled or helium-filled double-glazed windows, as well as good joint sealing and thermal protection of the frames.

There were designs with automatic filling of the inter-glass space with a heat-insulating substance, light transparent curtains serving as  thermal screen, etc. Thus, the modern designer of an energy-efficient house has a large choice of means of thermal protection of translucent fences.

Recently, many companies in Russia also offer a variety of new window designs, but their heat-saving characteristics, although better than the old ones, still do not reach the best Western European designs, so setting up windows with really high heat-shielding performance is an urgent task worthy state support.

The third major channel of heat loss at home is venting with air. To solve this problem there are now dozens of different technical solutions – from improving the quality of indoor air without exchanging with the external environment before the use of heat pumps.

One of the simplest and most effective solutions is the use of air-to-air heat exchangers specially designed for these purposes. Heat loss through the entrance doors can also be much reduced by improving their design and device tambours as more thermal buffers.

Heat losses depend on the ratio of the area of ​​the external surface of the building and its volume.The lower this ratio, the less loss. For multi-storey buildings, the coefficient of compactness is 0.2-0.3, and for low-rise buildings -0.5-0.6.

Thus, in an apartment building, other things being equal, due to the difference in the compactness coefficients, the heat losses will be about 2 times less than for a one-room apartment. It follows that to make the same degree of specific heat efficiency, a low-rise building needs to be insulated more thoroughly. Nevertheless,  modern means of thermal insulation allow us to warm a low-rise house well enough.

Approximately 30-40 years ago there were many cheap heat-insulating materials with heat-insulating properties ten times better than those used earlier. These are materials such as mineral wool and glass wool, foam plastic, polyurethane foam and others. At present, new materials with improved ecological and hygienic properties continue to appear and with even higher thermal insulation capacity.

Calculations show that when using for the insulation of walls and ceiling layers of even the most effective but widely used modern thermal insulation materials 30-40 cm thick while maintaining the standard size of the glazing area and using heat recovery devices in the ventilation system can be achieved for a cottage in the average Russian conditions of specific annual heat consumption in 30-40 kWh / m 2.

And this is not the limit values: annual consumption in the amount of 30-40 kWh / m 2 is exactly the indicator at which it is possible to abandon the house heating system in general. Thus, it becomes real the slogan “it is better to warm the house once than to heat it all your life”.

In conclusion, it should be emphasized that the eco-house is not only the way of energy-saving, but also the care ofthe health of the nation, so the future is for ecological house-building!

xpended. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce heat loss in all three directions simultaneously.