Ken Kern citations (48 citations) | Citations célèbres

“It costs three to five times as much to remove a BTU of heat from a house in the summer as it does to add one BTU of heat in the winter.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“Trellises for leafy vines, which will lose their foilage in the fall, should be set up over southern windows so that sunlight will penetrate into the house through the winter months.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“If no attempt is made to control excessive heat loss through glass… a solar house may require as much as 20 percent more fuel than an orthodox house during December and January… Wendell Thomas recognized and solved this problem… by burying the house in the ground, except for the south and east window areas. …at night… windows are covered with from inside by insulation boards and drapes…”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“The first principle of good barn design is flexibility of space.”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)

“It must have been in Iran that Frank Lloyd Wright got his brilliant idea for cooling a house… During the summer months, the sunken fireplace hearth was filled with water. Down-draft air movement from the chimney circulates over this pool to cool… This unusual fireplace has a summer-cooling as well as winter-heating function.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“You can make any whole and dried bean, pea, or grain sprout in several days, without purchasing a seed sprouter to do the job. Use the common, wide-mouthed quart canning jar…”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)

“A few centuries ago… the indigenous and often primitive architectural forms of that time had become suited to local climate through a long process of trial and error.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“Aquaculture is an important aspect of homestead polyculture, for it facilitates the management of a variety of crops in a single production area.”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)

“Enough is known today about natural ventilation for summer cooling to warrant the entire replacement of artificial air-conditioning devices. …prevailing breezes enter small, louvered openings at the lower section… circulate across the "living zone," rise and then exit through larger, higher openings in the opposite wall.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“Heavy, clayey soils hold more water with less nutrient-leaching. The structural aggregates of heavy soils retain nutrients but allow water to drain around them. Light soils are extremely sensitive to excess water.”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)

“A perfectly flat roof permits up to 50 percent more heat gain that a pitched roof… This illustrates the failure of the flat-roof construction to get natural, hot air flow out from under the eaves.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“It is no mystery that clay cook pots perform as they do or that clay ovens are considered healthy devices for us to use. In prehistoric times, baking ovens were built of clay and sand. Later these stoves were placed inside shelters where they could deliver some of their accumulated heat to the household…”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
Ken Kern's Masonry Stove (1983)

“Convected air heating requires 70° air temperatures, whereas 65° are required using a radiative means of heating. The result is a 30% savings in fuel consumption.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“Cooling systems… need only supply a drop of from 10 to 20 degrees below that of the outside temperature. …greater cooling differentials… are a real injury to health.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“The design of a house around a massive, central fireplace has, somehow, always felt right to this writer-builder.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“The Arab's tent… actually consists of two separate tents. The outer tent is white and acts as a heat-reflective layer. The lower-inner tent additionally protects… by providing a blanket of moving air between the two tent layers. …this tent system also illustrates the two, most basic principles of summer cooling: reflective insulation and ventilation. …One system must supplement and reinforce the other.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“Glass… is not required for the collection of solar heat. The National Physical Laboratory of Israel… has perfected a highly polished metal surface coated with a molecular-thin black layer of special paint, which absorbs more than 90 percent sunlight. The polished metal radiates very little of the heat it receives. …A south-facing wall fitted out with these plates would really "drink in" solar heat, windows, or no windows.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“The mere technical problems of building a home are insignificant when compared to an understanding and an interpretation of one's innermost feelings and thoughts concerning his shelter needs.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“Most houses grossly violate the basic principles of natural summer cooling and sound winter heating.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“An adequately designed spillway is critical to pond management. The purpose of the spillway is to carry surplus water from the pond, away from the face of the dam. It may consist of a mechanical control, such as an exit pipe installed in the base of the dam where it will empty below the dam site.”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)

“As far back as 1624… Louis Savot invented the first heat-circulating fireplace. His unit was installed in the Louvre, Paris, and became the prototype for Ben Franklin's 1742 Pennsylvania stove. The 1624 French fireplace achieved 30 to 45 percent more efficiency than do most American tract home fireplaces of today! Savot surrounded the grate of his creation with a metal chamber, which had warm air outlets above the fire opening. He also supplied the fire with air from under the floor. Thus, room drafts were reduced and combustion efficiency was further improved. Few people are aware that practically all of the technical features of Franklin's Pennsylvania stove were copied from earlier inventors.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“Bedroom insulation is unnecessary and restrictive of optimum summer sleeping comfort.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“Around 1800 American-born, expatriate Benjamin Rumford discovered that once heated, a firebox built of masonry materials did not cool the fire. Instead, it slowly built up the heat that kept the fuel in the firebox burning hotly. He joined the growing debate between builders of metal and masonry stoves, contributing considerable support to the latter.”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
Ken Kern's Masonry Stove (1983)

“It is claimed that the Russian stove is seldom plagued with creosote build-up. If this is so, the reason may have more to do with the stove's operation than with its large ducts. Any masonry stove operates best when its fire is hot, and when fuel burns rapidly in a single, intense conflagration.”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
Ken Kern's Masonry Stove (1983)

“This process has suggested some workable alternatives as solutions to personal housing needs. Here they are in the form of seven axioms… 1. When building your home, pay as you go. 2. Supply your own labor. 3. Build according to your best judgement. 4. Use native materials whenever possible. 5. Design and plan your own home. 6. Use minimum but quality grade hand tools. 7. Assume responsibility for your building construction.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“In medieval Europe, monks grew vegetables, herbs, flowers, berries, and fruit trees together for mutual benefit. You should plan plant populations relative to the root level each species occupies in the soil relative to the feeding capacity of each species.”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)

“As much as 70 percent of the sun's heat rays can be reflected from one's house by the installation of a white or light-colored roof.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“Heat from a centrally located masonry stove is transferred to all parts of the living space by steady radiation. Therefore, stove operating temperatures never fluctuate erratically, causing harmful air-turbulance. This makes for a more healthful indoor climate.”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
Ken Kern's Masonry Stove (1983)

“Supplies of wood fuel may be a byproduct of thinning, pruning, and harvesting homestead tree crops. These trees also provide the homestead with groundwater [for natural evaporative cooling and fruit], with protection from the sun, wind, and erosion, and with fodder, fruit, and nuts for animal and human consumption. Tree crops also furnish shelter and forage for the wild birds…”

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Ken Kern

p, 125
Ken Kern's Masonry Stove (1983)

“When replacement or repair is required due either to accident or deterioration by age, the materials are readily at hand, and the householder himself can do the work.”

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Ken Kern

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

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