Appropriate strategies for rural houses in northwest China

Abstract

To avoid the conventional urban development with high consumption and high pollution, this paper took the houses in a village near Yinchuan (a typical city of Northwest China) as an exemplary project to explore the appropriate strategies in the arid cold climate for the sustainable development in rural undeveloped areas Northwest China. Firstly, all houses were designed according to the principles of passive solar heating. Secondly, optimized biomass energy technologies such as biogas pit and straw gasification stove were utilized for cooking or heating. Last but not the least important, the ecological building materials such as earth, straw bale, fly ash were used to construct houses, which improves the indoor thermal comfort and meanwhile lowers the negative impact on the environment. Low costs, easy accessibility and habitants' inclination were taken into account in the process of design.