Punch House – Cobain & Garcia Architects

The landlord imposed two assumptions: an indoor pool and kitchen occupy an important place as a cook by profession.

Propose the distribution of housing around the ‘pool’: pool articulates creating a vacuum stays lit and ventilated by two large skylights. The rest of the plant is split into ‘squares’. In quadrant perpendicular to the pool, at the end of the ground floor is the kitchen, whose fires are located in the heart of the home topping the pool view as we crossed the threshold.

The other rooms are a series of indoor and outdoor spaces, thus generating a complex volume in which all rooms are connected directly to stay outdoors.

This is a permanent family home and is also the professional study of one of the owners. For this reason thermal comfort must be ensured during all hours of the day.

No less important when the needs mentioning is the heated indoor pool.
It is therefore a house with high energy requirements, higher during the colder months in the warm and stable demand throughout the week.

The effect of thermal inertia in a home with these needs is always favorable, and the use of the pool as a stabilizer and heat storage seemed from the outset bioclimatic the most interesting idea of ??the project.

Decided to locate the pool in the center of the house, and use it from a thermal point of view as a large radiator heat in colder months and cool in the warmer months. Given that the ideal temperature to use a pool cover is between 21-26 º C, we can consider the beneficial effects of thermal balance of housing in both winter and summer.

Heating a home with a high thermal inertia is initially more expensive, but once you reach the desired levels to maintain a stable temperature requires very little energy. Moreover, the high inertia allows the use of external heat to our advantage. In winter, the solar energy that capture the windows in the middle of the day accumulates on floors, walls and water of the pool and when the sun wears off, soil and water walls back to the apartment above the heat captured . In summer quite the opposite, ie floors, walls and accumulate water cool during the night that will gradually giving way to housing during the day.

For use in this way the thermal inertia is necessary to insulate the exterior walls on his face. So not only have the momentum we get inside the house, but also eliminate the thermal bridges in songs of slabs and stone blocks. The insulation system is 8cm. density expanded polystyrene 20 anchored to the outer face of the wall through a polyethylene pins and epoxy resin. On polystyrene plaster is applied with epoxy fiberglass mesh that is guaranteed waterproofing and finishing system.

The house is oriented taking into account the North-South axis. In South facades are arranged as many windows as large as possible. And even skylights has been used to capture solar radiation in the pool room. South orientation, to capture maximum sunlight in winter, while in summer the sun’s altitude is so high that only radiation incident on the glass. In addition, fiberglass blinds domotic controlled intercept solar radiation when it is not favorable. In northern facade, the number and size of the holes is lower, although some are needed to ensure cross ventilation and natural lighting. The only opening in a wall This is twice the U-glass with curtains on the outside to intercept solar radiation.

We used glass with air chamber and differential treatment as low-emission direction. In the north facade have been placed with surface emissivity glass on the inside to prevent the transmission of heat to the outside. In the south-facing windows have not been applied to low-emission treatment to facilitate solar gain in winter.

The windows have shutters to prevent thermal bridges characteristic of the stone blocks, but they are all protected by a curtain of fabric and polystyrene core that prevent heat loss in colder months and control the light intensity inside the housing.

The house is heated by underfloor heating to be the most effective method to heat a home with these needs. As the water inside the underfloor heating circuit is no more than 50 º and hot water 60 º C is enough, it was decided to use a condensing boiler, maximum
efficiency and low temperature. This form is not necessary to use an intercooler, as with diesel boilers to lower the water temperature results in a superior performance.

The solar panels are fully justified and that will work both winter and summer. Generally, solar panels for hot water have to dissipate heat in summer, but in this case we dimensioned to ensure that the temperature of pool water in summer will not fall below 21 º C and is not necessary to dissipate heat when radiation sun is high.