Earth bermed buildings
Earth bermed buildings, often called earth shelters or earth sheltered buildings are a design approach that connects a building more significantly to the ground and landscape around it than simply sitting upon it. This typology is normally built slightly below ground or at ground level with an earth burm around that covers most of the external walls and potentially also the roof, creating a sunken or earth sheltered appearance.
Depending on the detail design approach, the building will, to differing degrees benefit from an earth coupling effect, where by the thermal mass, insulative and protective qualities of the surrounding earth benefit the thermal performance of the building. Below around three metres earth tends to have a relatively constant ground temperature, which means in the summer it is cooler than the outside temperature and in winter it is warmer than the outside temperature, this effect lessens gradually as the depth decreases. An earth coupled building does not insulate between the internal space and the earth and as such benefits from the decreased fluctuation of the earths temperature, it will however have insulation and normally high internal mass or glazing on any walls exposed externally.
One well known example of an earth bermed housing scheme is the Hockerton Housing Project, which is a linear cluster of five self-sufficient houses built in Nottinghamshire in 1997 by Brenda Vale. Theses houses are earth coupled and as such require zero to minimal heating and have lower-than-normal energy consumption, which is supplied by onsite renewable energy generation from two 6 kW turbines and 7.6 kW solar panels.
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