More pictures

Little by little we're finishing the structure of the ground floor.

Builders have finished the exterior wall, including the "zuncho" (kind of concrete beam with steel reinforcement built all around the perimeter on the upper part of the wall). They've also done part of the interior wall, as well as the filling of the chamber in between with exfoliated vermiculite, a kind of clay with very good thermal isolation properties.










Detail of the drainage piping and the geotextile fabric on the retaining wall.


Detail of the vermiculite filling in the double wall insolation space.




Sus and Donnou in our future sauna room.


View form our future bedroom.

Some more comments on bio-architecture

We already presented you the general idea behind bio-architecture. But what else is going to be there in Barajuen? Let's talk about the heating and hot water production system. What's special about it?

We'll be using a renewable energy that is quite common in many central european countries, but that still hasn't made it's way through here in the Basque Country: the Geothermal energy.




The system that we'll be using is the so called Ground source heat pump. It makes use of the heat stored on the surface of the earth, mainly coming from the sun but also from the wind and the rain. All this heat, that is endless, that keeps constant all through the year and that is available for free, is absorved by an horizontal collector buried in the garden, some 70 cm deep, and taken to a compressor to force the transfer of heat. From the compressor it goes into the house to the under-floor heating system and to the 300 liter thermo for the hot water.


Works basically as an air conditiong device or as a refrigerator. Simple, efficient, enviromentally friendly and with very low operational costs. It just consumes 1 kW for every 3 to 5 kW produced, that is the electricity needed to run the compressor, being the total energy output much greater than the input.