BTW...

"This is a pretty house, yes? But there's more than just style here. There’s substance. Tons of it. This bit of Architecture, with it’s 12” solid brick walls, is literally 3x the weight of a standard bldg of the same scale. All of that material creates an insulative property called thermal mass which simply means, once those thick walls assume a particular temp, changing that temp is an extremely slow process. During the Summer months, as the walls take on solar gain in the day, heat begins to reach into the outer walls. When the sun goes down, that heat retreats back out of the walls before fully penetrating. This 24 hour cycle is referred to as ‘diurnal swing.’ It works best in arid regions with a lot of disparity between day & night tempsーsuch as the Southwest US. But it works quite well in other regions as well. The same diurnal process happens in reverse during Winter; cold nights are blanketed by the solar gain of day. In addition, a building’s contact with the ground is constantly conducting a naturally human friendly, subterranean temperature directly to the walls yr round. The take home is if the power goes out indefinitely, the residents of such a dwelling would neither swelter unbearably in the dog days of Summer nor freeze in the depths of Winter; compared to a conventional sheetrock house which would be untenable during seasonal extremes w/out mechanical assistance. Among the other attributes extending beyond a pretty face, this cottage has the unusual ability to stand the test of time.. for a very long time. You might call it ‘artifact ready.’ And this is in no way speculation; on almost every corner of England & France stands a 600 year old citizen built the same way. Which begs the question: what does it mean to a community and a culture when the local Architecture keeps them so practically connected to their ancestors via centuries old echos of essential utility and aesthetics? And what does it mean if those tangible connections were never established to begin with? I’ll close with this: what is the metric for valuing a home that one’s great, great grandchildren might inherit; that ages gracefully & becomes richer with time, for everyone?"