Chile Forum

Hi Erik

First you have to consider than weather in Chile is not so extreme as most of the US, I spent 4 years living in Chiloe, which we consider a very extreme bad weather, but it never snows there, and temperature is seldom below zero. Most of populated areas here have temperature easy to stand without calefaction or air conditioner, except for few weeks a year. It is VERY diferent situation than snow season, lets say in Buffalo or hot weather in Arizona.

That is why heating or air conditioners are not as important as in the USA, this explain also the loose construction standards. In Arica by example, you may live in a tent with a sleeping bag at the beach during all the year, homes has flat roof, sometimes with holes because it NEVER rains here, etc.

There are a lot of enviromentally friendly construction here in Chile, most of those has diferent priorities than in highly poluted countries, well there are also many, many unfriendly enviromentally construtions, specially in south of the country where the wood to fire is cheap and abundant. From Santiago to soutj you can find all kind of construction materials but the more yo go south, more wooden homes, because is cheap and constructors are accustomed to build with wood for centuries. Heavy rain tends to ruin other materials like bricks or such. in recent years PVC is replacing wood in south in many cities.

From Santiago to north, as long as the rain is very few, the nost used material is a brick made from sand and very few cement called "bloqueta" it is very cheap and works fine provided it doesnt rain. A very popular and traditional method is called "barro y caña" a network of bamboo like wood with clay, it is excellent also for dry weather.

Anyway, ecologic construction here is more for philosofical reasons than practical, because you need not much energy to heat of cool in Chile. At least this is my opinion which many may differ

I would also like to chime back in on this one; first let me say I care about the environment and the state of our planet as a whole. But with that said I also care about my own personal comfort. Also a bit about me, I work as an Architectural Technologist (an architect makes it look nice, and engineer makes it stand, and AT’s make it work) for one of the largest home builder (by units sold) in Calgary. I am on the companies Green Building committee and am in the process of getting my MasterBuilder certification. I don’t claim to know everything, but I do consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable.

With that being said this is what I have to say about some of the posts I have recently read.

To Eric & Tom,

It is true that Ground Source Heat Pumps are not needed in the majority of Chile. But as a person choice it is something I am considering for my house. Due to the relatively mild temperatures in most parts of Chile it is my belief that you could get away with a fairly small unit/field. And when efficiency is compared to other heating systems available it is defiantly one of the best.

It is my understanding that Thermal Massing works best in climates with consistent year round temperatures and hot days and cool nights (desserts and such). It is my opinion that “wet construction” (stone, brick, concrete, and earth berms), is the wrong method for Santiago or anywhere this actual seasons and I would almost go as far to say that I would prefer a wood framed structure in most parts of Chile. In Santiago you get hot days and warm nights in the summer and cool days and “cold” nights in the winter. So in the first 2 weeks of the season you loose all heat that was stored in you walls. And it doesn’t have a chance to heat up (or cool down) again until the next season. So after those first 2 weeks you walls become the same as the surrounding air and you might as well be sleeping outside. Of course you can use insulated forms on XPS insulation (Extruded polystyrene) on the walls of your house but you are still going to need to heat it some how.

In my opinion wood is an easier material to work with, if properly constructed performs better in earthquakes (when compared to a concrete structure of similar cost, because you could build a bunker of some sort with 2 foot walls reinforced with titanium or something that would perform way better… but would also cost you considerably more), give you better finish, and you can get a considerably higher R-value.

So to finish, Ground Source Heat Pumps for most of the country may be over kill, and Chileans seem to get by just fine with brick houses and no insulation. But remember, Chile has very little gas… it might as well be none. So that little natural gas stove in the living room heating the air above the house more than it actually heats the house and are people wondering if they are going to be able to afford gas next week because there is a shortage because Argentina decided they don’t want to share this month. In my opinion a heat pump and wood framed house solve both these problems (heat loss and dependency on foreign gas), and if you space to set up a couple solar panels or a wind turbine all the better.

There are problems with the way houses are being built in Chile, and the Chileans are in the mind set this is the way it has always been done so why does it need to change. There is heavy resistance to insulation and central heating. Instead (especially in Santiago) they continue to poison themselves by burning natural gas heaters in their bedrooms as they sleep. I could go on even longer but I really should get back to work.

Good post, Jason. While I agree about Thermal Mass being much more useful for daily temperature-swing mitigation, it can also be useful to use on the wall of main sun exposure during the Winter (Northern Wall "down" in Chile) to help absorb and radiate heat from the sun. But I would also have to point out that using thermal massing techniques in addition to something like a ground source heat pump would make sense because of the slow steady state rate at which systems like that work, versus something like a forced air system which can do a lot of cycling.

Another thing for those with access to a body of water is the fact that you can also making a fairly inexpensive system by using the water instead of having to dig.

Bravo. Good post.

More than a few things I have not considered, but more would avoid out of instinct or habit. I grew up in MN, worked construction in both South Dakota and Nevada. So, just more my building instincts are to lean towards things and techniques that where common in those extrema climates. I can not remember ever even seeing a house in MN or South Dakota, with a concrete slab floor that was not a basement and most houses are wood frame even today. MN is fundamentally a swamp, but we rarely had mold or other humidity related problems or issues with settling foundations. Heating, well, it is MN. You don't insulate in MN, you either die or go bankrupt heating. Many many houses are well over a 100 years old. Tried and true building techniques that I see no reason why they should not work in Southern Chile. Most are also fairly simple. Nothing too space age required.

The central regions are more like southern/central California or Nevada. I see no reason why those building techniques would not work in those regions for the most part, and perhaps even better in the North. Lots of Brick, stucco, and so on, with still some reliance on limited wood framing to metal stud mix as they do have termite issues.

Lots of metal everywhere because of earthquakes.

What I do see however all over the south are houses designed for the central region. It makes no sense to use so much concrete and brick for example in Temuco, that rains and gets fairly cold in the winter and is sunny and hot the other half of the year. It is humid almost all the time in the south. Every house, no matter how new I have seen, has one half or the other half of the house that is nearly unusable for part of the year. Our house is cold downstairs during the winter, and almost too hot upstairs. In the summer it is the other way around. Concrete and brick first floor, wood on the second floor, with a metal black roof that reminds me of one of those solar ovens you cook with with while camping (I can hear the tiles popping their nails when the heat hits them in the summer). So, heat regulation is a serious issue in the designs. Which, at the end of the day, is kind of the fundamental point of a dwelling: control the climate to be comfortable for a human to live. If a house does not do that in a consistent way, it fails as a house.

Fascinating thread. My thanks to all.

If anyone is interested I have a friend here in Chile who is a geologist and she is currently working with a group to properly attempt to establish geothermal energy as a vialble energy source....

An interesting article about geothermal projects in Chile

SANTIAGO (Dow Jones)--Chile's Mining Ministry launched a tender for 20 geothermal exploration concessions Monday and will receive bids through July 31.

Bidding rules are available until June 30, Mining Minister Santiago Gonzalez said in a statement.

The Ministry expects investments of up to $3 million in each of the concessions spread throughout the country from north to south, covering a total area of 766,800 hectares.

The largest block on offer - Tuyajto 1 - is 92,400 hectares near the town of San Pedro de Atacama in the northern Second Region.

The government wants to tap Chile's 2,000 megawatts of geothermal potential to improve energy security going forward and reduce dependence on imported hydrocarbons.

"Given the interest that the development of geothermal energy has generated in our country...we could reach a much greater number [of concessions] in the near future," said Gonzalez.

Although initial geothermal exploration work is relatively inexpensive, deep wildcat wells required to determine the commercially viability of a reservoir can cost several million dollars each.

To encourage investment in geothermal energy, the government's National Energy Commission has proposed a mechanism by which the state would share risk in the final exploration stage through a subsidy or insurance plan if the wells do not produce.

Moreover, the National Geology and Mining Service implemented a program in 2007, financed by the Chilean and German governments, to identify areas with geothermal potential....

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-200 ... 13746.html

This article about a solar power plant:

“We have the obligation to lead the renewable energies development here in Chile. Currently we own 50 percent of the electric market and we want to keep this number also for the renewable energies,” said Rafel Mateo, the Chilean manager from Endesa. Endesa Chile, an Endesa Spain subsidiary, will invest 40 million dollars in the first solar power plant in Chile.

The chosen location for the plant is the northern part of Chile, possibly Tarapacá or Antofagasta. The northside of Chile is warm and desert, with sunlight almost all year long. Those attributes make the place ideal for a solar energy plant...

http://ecoworldly.com/2008/07/16/chile- ... lar-power/

There are many more "green" articles there if you look around.

And finally, I found this article from 2001 that was interesting:

Cooking with the sun
Chilean village's experiment with solar ovens offers alternative to widespread deforestation

(07-26) 04:00 PDT Villaseca, Chile -- Lucila Rojas remembers the days when she and her neighbors risked their lives to cook a hot meal over a wood-burning stove. "We had to steal firewood, because there was no longer any left in the places where you could freely look," she said. "Sometimes we were chased (by landowners), even by gunshots. I was fed up. I didn't want any more war."

So in 1989, Rojas, who lives in the arid and deforested Elqui Valley, agreed to become one of four women in this northern village of 300 residents to allow researchers from the University of Chile to place a solar oven in her home. "We were guinea pigs," she said.

When the project coordinators returned after four months to take the ovens back, Rojas protested and organized local women to raise funds for a workshop to make solar ovens. With $700 they earned selling everything from empanadas (meat pastry) to used clothing, they built 33 solar ovens and have been using them ever since...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... N33373.DTL

yea, I am suspicious of solar as a fad technology unless efficiency increases dramatically. I really do not think it is that "green" from start to finish, and relatively expensive still. Geothermal I am on board with because I believe it has the least impact all the way around, and is relatively cost efficient considering it makes use of almost nothing new in terms of technology that we do not already use for say oil well production. It is real ready to go green technology, not some sort of 10 year pipe dream where we might get the cost back.

I have not bought any stocks of companies yet that are working in Chile (looking at few though), but I am buying geothermal companies in other parts of the World.

To make small home based solar work the power companies need to set up “Net Metering Interconnection” ability for home owners. I will be installing 5Kw of solar on the coast in the next year, and don’t need it all during the mid day when it is producing its max, I would also prefer to not need a battery storage system for night use. The ideal is a grid tie in with me selling at the max production times and buying back at night. I do this in BC and come out about even on an annualized basis. If every house in Santiago and the 5th Region had several solar panels, they would sell the energy on sunny days to the grid for use in the Air Con of the office towers and then use the credit for the TV and lights in the evening. When California started this system many home owners put up 5-10Kw systems on their roofs. The amortization was 20 years it is now down under 10 and many enjoy the satisfaction of not getting electricity bills. In BC the extra electricity is sold to the western grid, probably for Air Con in California. I only know 2 friends in Santiago out of several hundred who have solar panels, with sunny skies for 7 months of the year I would think many more would use solar electric and solar hot water. It will come as Chileans become more aware of their net energy needs, or electrical costs jump up 100% over the next few years.

I read somewhere( but don't remember where) that the government was offering incentives for solar water heaters as well as solar panels.

yea, there is some sort of subsidy in the works for solar water heaters. Those make more sense to me than solar panels.

I wonder if they will give you the subsidy if you build your own.

I think so. It seems like the bill(it was an article about a bill that was likely to pass) appealed to everyone because it gave new home builders incentives as well as helping the poor-better have your wife check it out!