[Greenbuilding] Fwd: BuildingGreen.com LIVE / Stupid GreenBuildings

[njh]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2009, Bob Korves wrote:

> The topic was about insulating the floor of a low thermal mass sunspace. This 
> winter I contemplated adding a low mass, low cost, and low environmental 
> impact sunspace to the south side of my house.  My concept for insulating 
> about two feet of the top of my patio deck, which is made of 'urbanite' 
> (recycled broken up sidewalk chunks set in sand) was to use a 6" layer of 
> straw on the deck.  I think it would have worked quite well.  I never was 
> able to figure a reasonable way to make my stucco walls low thermal mass, so 
> I abandoned the project -- for now...

Straw is a great idea.  My house sitter used some of my reed bed reeds to 
form a 'paving' for the paths through my garden:
http://flickr.com/photos/pfh/3175373495/sizes/l/

The nice thing is that this is a resource which otherwise is hard to 
compost, and also feels nice underfoot.  And if the cat takes a dump, you 
can chuck it in the compost and add some more.

What a great idea!

njh