Living wall in a passive house

[MikeSharp01]

Just got inspired by seeing some living walls at the SFMOMA and wondered if, assuming you could get the light about right, whether you could get the rest of the environment sorted and maintainable in a passive or near passive house?

[Simplysimon]

it would certainly increase the humidity

[lizzie]

I’m looking at doing one but an external one.  You can get some fantastic artificial ones I have seen them used in commercial applications, very lifelike.

[willbish]

A living wall is on my wish list, i'd like one in the stairwell opposite the stairs.

 

I think the idea is to chose plant species that match the environment rather than the other way around.

 

My cousin is a florist and general botanical guru. She'll be deciding what's most suitable.

 

I have considered making provision for an irrigation system if it becomes too much effort to water the highest plants... That might be on the list for after BC sign off.

 

 

[MikeSharp01]

2 minutes ago, willbish said:

My cousin is a florist and general botanical guru. She'll be deciding what's most suitable

 

Yes its interesting how the planting mix will effect the whole scheme. They also have interesting acoustic properties so might bugger up your listening pleasure! 

 

Auto watering feels like a must with some sort of feed doing system as well.

 

 

[Ferdinand]

I'll watch this with great interest, as I have always been quite skeptical about Living Walls. 

 

I can see benefits such as increasing humidity, cooking ingredients, mint to drive insects away, or creating smells - but it seems like quite an overhead to keep it thriving. So, agreed on auto-watering.

 

Looking forward to being convinced.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited May 8, 2019 by Ferdinand

[Onoff]

The sci-fi author Harry Harrison depicted literal living walls in his Eden books series. The dominant species on Earth being bipedal reptiles, they grow their buildings (and even transport) from genetically modified plants and animals.

 

Very carbon neutral I imagine.

 

No, I've not taken anything this morning!

Edited May 8, 2019 by Onoff

[vivienz]

Nice idea. I guess that if you want to autowatet, you would need plants with similar water requirements, too, as some are far thirstier than others.

 

We're going for large specimen plants that have outgrown us at our old house but will be good in the new one.

 

This yucca started out as a very small one in a trough - several years in a stairwell dormer window and occasional TLC did this to it.

 

[Ferdinand]

16 minutes ago, vivienz said:

I guess that if you want to autowatet, you would need plants with similar water requirements, too, as some are far thirstier than others.

 

I think that depends on eg volume of water - if you have thirsty ones at the top, then lower down it could be less damp,

 

Also, I am sure that anyone here .. even me .. could rig up a level by level system with different effective pipe capacities. Washers, restrictors or even clothes' pegs.

 

F

[ProDave]

I think that would be disallowed here, on the basis there would be too many bugs, particularly spiders.

[vivienz]

15 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I think that would be disallowed here, on the basis there would be too many bugs, particularly spiders.

 

If you have enough spiders, you won't get many other bugs. Spiders are a plant's friend!

[ToughButterCup]

10 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

[...] in a passive ... house?

 

Not sure.

But, what an excellent idea for our Winter Garden ( a covered, sheltered ' breeze corridor ' ? ) outside the house.

Thanks @MikeSharp01

[ProDave]

11 minutes ago, vivienz said:

 

If you have enough spiders, you won't get many other bugs. Spiders are a plant's friend!

But not SWMBO's friend.

[Conor]

Following with interest...

 

We will have a 6m long, 2.7m tall concrete wall in our house. Will be south facing in a large open plan living area with lots of sun. I'm trying to minimise wet trades and traditional finishes in this build so plan to have this as a shuttered concrete wall or block on flat. Neither of us are a fan of raw concrete finish so wall would be clad with something, like stick on stone, brick or timber.

 

I'd love to have it a "tropical" living wall instead. No idea what species I'd plant but I'd love to have a large evergreen tropical fruit type plant (orange?), with "pockets" of smaller varieties below the trained canopy. Anybody know if this is possible in our climate?

[lizzie]

@Conor I think you have to be careful with something that size indoors.  Humidity rise would be a factor and so that would impact on comfort levels in the house. Would need an indoor greenhouse atmosphere for tropical plants to thrive......living walls in some instances are like hydroponic growing (think illegal cannabis farms) for tropical plants to thrive you need heat, light and water.

 

I am looking at doing an external living wall (south facing) 8m long x 2.5 high, its a lot of wall!

 

[Conor]

38 minutes ago, lizzie said:

@Conor I think you have to be careful with something that size indoors.  Humidity rise would be a factor and so that would impact on comfort levels in the house. Would need an indoor greenhouse atmosphere for tropical plants to thrive......living walls in some instances are like hydroponic growing (think illegal cannabis farms) for tropical plants to thrive you need heat, light and water.

 

I am looking at doing an external living wall (south facing) 8m long x 2.5 high, its a lot of wall!

 

Yeah, since posting I did a quick google and got similar information. I'd maybe see about having a few small citrus trees instead, they seem to be possible indoors.

 

I think I will have a mini herb wall in the kitchen or sure tho - we will be putting up a partial walled in area for a pantry at one end of the kitchen - a few herb trays will soften it up nicely.