Heating

 

The piano zone (original state). Marking the heater with a red arrow.

Isolation was first used in the House 20, by Walter Gropius, in 1927. Being the Casa sobre el Arroyo built between 1943-1946, Amancio Williams could have copied Gropius' idea. But, seeing that in the plans he mostly focused in the structure, looks, texture, or geometry, it could be possible that he did not think much about the installations or the efficiency of the building.

Mar del Plata is a city with neither very high nor very low temperatures, a little bit rainy but not too much either. Also, having the trees protecting the building with their shade in the summer, and letting the light and warmth from the sun in the cold season, Amancio may have thought that the house did not need isolation to be a more comfortable place.

To heat the building during the winter, he installed two firewood fireplaces, one directed to the bedroom zone, and another one in the living room, colloquially called the fire room, and many heaters all around the perimeter of the interior, powered by hot water (specifically for heating, a network separated from the sanitation hot water).

In the original pictures there is seen that the heating tubes emerge from the floor to the heaters. The heating tubes may have been continuous, what means that the installation would be emmiting less warmth in the last heater (the farthest from the boiler), and more warmth in the first heater (the nearest to the boiler).

In the other hand, in the virtual tour we can suppose that the heating water network goes around the house attached to the facade, and there are two tubes. Those two tubes may belong to a heating installation with a return to the boiler that maintained the warmth in every heater, as we know that in the time where the LU9 radio was working in the building, they had installed central heating.

One of the heaters (original state)..

But the fact is the house itself is a thermal bridge. It is built suspended in the air, with armored concrete, a material with a high transmittance, and adding the landscape window all around the perimeter of the house, that we can suppose that was composed by simple glass and metallic framework without thermal bridge rupture, so the building must have a very low energetic efficiency.

Simulating the conditions, we can estimate the efficiency certification, and end up with an hypothesis of how it would have been back in its days.

Enerrgetic efficiency estimated certification, using CE3X.

The fire room (original state). Marking the heater and fireplace.

In conclusion, The Casa sobre el Arroyo must have been a cold place during the cold season, and warm in the summer. During the cold season, the family must have had all the heaters on and the fireplaces always burning, but maybe that was not a visible disadvantage for them as the had no economic issues, and there was for sure plenty of wood for the fireplaces from pruning the tree branches in the land.

Also, there may have been condensation problems all around the building envelope, although maybe the parquet helped avoiding condensations in the flooring.

In the other hand, during summer, thanks to the refreshing water stream and the natural sun shading, the house could have been a comfortable place.