Solar House, Bárdudvarnok

Architect: Péter Medgyasszay
Text: Eszter Götz
Photos: János Páli

Architect Péter Medgyasszay and his colleagues were commissioned to design a solar house for a family with seven children moving from the Budapest agglomeration to the countryside. As this is the first house of its kind in the country, they turned to models made in Switzerland and Germany, but every detail was integrated in the new design in a unique way. Architects used dynamic building simulation calculations to analyse how much energy the house would consume in a given location and orientation, how much heat it would dissipate into its surroundings, its ventilation rate and how much condensation would be trapped on the surfaces of te structure. These calculations showed that the primary heating energy demand of the proposed dwelling was lower than that of a passive house without heat recovery ventilation, due to its ability to store and use significantly more solar energy than an average building. The structure is built on a foundation of reinforced sheet steel. The walls are made up of 15,000 adobe bricks, all locally manufactured. The finished walls are insulated with 1050 straw bales, used as double-layered, with 70 cm thickness. The key to the house is its perfect southern orientation: there are almost exclusively south-facing windows wrapping it. The adobe built into the walls and slabs is able to store the sunlight for long periods during the heating season. The active solar use is ensured by a 6 kW photovoltaic panel system on the roof of the house which covers 100% of the heating and hot water energy needs of the building from renewable energy sources on a yearly basis.

Architect: Péter Medgyasszay
Fellow architects: Vivien Sárkány, Ádám Czapek
Dynamic building simulation: Péter Medgyasszay
Structure: Dávid Antalóczy
Fire protection: Tibor Garabics