> That gets you houses in the New Mexico desert that need no air conditioning (air cooling) and churches and office buildings in the northeast that need no additional heating.
Do you have a source for your NM desert example? I'm doubtful you can keep a desert home cool with just airflow.
It's a dream of mine to build an earthship-like house some day. But before that I would like to figure out how far I much I can cost-effectively retrofit my existing conventional house to be more passively heated and cooled.
I'm surprised that architects don't propose passive heating/cooling on new builds and major renovations. I guess clients typically don't demand it.
To my original comment on this, the economics are generally not visible to people. If you tell someone "We can build it one way and it will cost $200 sq/ft that will be energy efficient, or another way at $100 sq/ft that will require 25% more energy to keep warm/cool" and the person will make the false comparison of "wow it would cost 100% more to build and I would only get an improvement of 25% in my power costs?"
(those are all made up numbers but I have had the exact discussion with a builder when I added on a room and insisted it was at least as insulated as the rest of the house, the builder thought it a waste of money, I knew that I expected to have the room for 25 years or more and that the lower energy costs would be a net win.)
Do you have a source for your NM desert example? I'm doubtful you can keep a desert home cool with just airflow.