The success of an innovative new home in Alaska's Anaktuvuk Pass - which uses a wind power, solar panels and design features of traditional Nunamiut sod housing - is changing the way houses will be designed and built on the North Slope, reports the Arctic Sounder.
"This is a huge leap forward - I hope it has tremendous impact," Daryl Kooley, of the Tagiugmiullu Nunamiullu Housing Authority, told the newspaper.
The house used just 87 gallons of heating fuel from November to June. Other homes typically use about 100 gallons of fuel per month.
It also cost a lot less to build - just $220,000, compared to a normal three-bedroom home in Anaktuvuk Pass, which runs upwards of $570,000.
A modest, three-bedroom home in Nuiqsut constructed in the usual way, for example, can cost over $1 million to build.
That is a real problem in North Slope villages, which suffer over-crowded, crumbling homes in desperate need of replacement. To find a solution, TNHA teamed up with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, a nonprofit that works on developing housing designs for the circumpolar north.
The Anaktuvuk Pass prototype house was the first structure built as part of CCHRC's Sustainable Northern Communities project, a program begun in 2008 to engineer housing solutions for rural northern communities.
When CCHRC consulted Anaktuvuk Pass residents about what they needed, the message was clear.
The Nunamiut people of Anaktuvuk Pass used to live in sod houses, or semi-subterranean homes built with earth for parts of the year.
Designers tired to incorporate the elements of traditional housing that made it successful.
Like the sod houses, the prototype house was built low to the ground with earth berms up the sides to shelter it from the wind. The rooms were arranged to reflect customary patterns of use - there aren't hallways, but the bedrooms open directly onto a large main room were residents can work and interact. A qanitchaq, or transitional room, was placed between the house and the outdoors for cool storage and to keep out the cold, and a traditional qingok was included to ventilate living spaces.
CCHRC combined these features with new, in some cases almost experimental, technology. Seven inches of soy-based spray foam insulates the walls, which were waterproofed with an elastomeric coating - a substance normally used for truck bed-liners and fighter jets because it is impervious to water and air. Solar panels and a wind turbine were installed to offset energy costs.
The house also has its own, self-contained sewage treatment, an important feature in places where extending water and sewage lines to new houses is prohibitively expensive. A $20,000 Lifewater system from Fairbanks processes wastewater so it can be drained into a nearby river.
The construction materials were transported in a single plane load, reducing transportation cost of building by 66 per cent. Much of the labor on the 1,198 square-foot home was supplied by Ilisagvik College students.
Since the house was completed in July 2009, CCHRC, with some help from local students, has been heavily monitoring the conditions of the house - from carbon dioxide levels and temperature to relative humidity and soil conditions. A family of five has lived there since January.
The Anaktuvuk Pass design will be modified to suit each community and to take into account the environment of each village. A big issue for many Alaska communities is how to build on permafrost. Typically houses are built "stilts" or pilings, which keep the house from melting the ground it sits on.
A new design will use thick insulating foam as the foundation, so insulating that it will not only protect the permafrost from the heat of the house, it will actually keep it colder than ground that is exposed to open air.
CCHRC is also working on a prototype for Quinhagak, a community buffeted by strong winds that struggles with rot- and mold-ridden houses.
The Quinhagak house will be also be customized to the community - it will be octagonal rather than rectangular to minimize its exposure to the cold and will feature an Iaturaq, or Arctic entry, wrapped around the side of the building to buffer it from the wind. The house is expected to use about a fifth of the fuel other homes need for heating and cost under $200,000 to build, or less than half of what other new houses in the community cost, says the Sounder.
