Publications
Technical articles on design decisions, methodology, and lessons from our projects.
Cooling a building that almost never needs cooling
Our mountain climate needs 87 times more heating than cooling, yet the first summer calculation showed a cooling peak four times the heating peak. How shutters, a dew point, and one honest reversal replaced a chiller
What kept changing our mind about heating a Carpathian eco-community
How site logistics killed our first idea, a ground loop almost brought it back, and forest ecology pulled us toward a fourth answer
Designing a winter-optimized PV system for a Carpathian eco-community
Why the standard approach to solar fails in the mountains, and what the physics of diffuse light and snow albedo suggests instead
Designing autonomous water supply for a Carpathian eco-community
How an inventory of five water sources, two research dead ends, and a rainfall calculation changed our approach to water autonomy
Designing autonomous sanitation for a remote eco-community
How a sanitation debate for one building turned into three design iterations and a community-scale infrastructure plan