Ken Kern Quotes

47 Sourced Quotes

Most houses grossly violate the basic principles of natural summer cooling and sound winter heating.

Ken Kern
In course sand it may be better to drive a well. Driven wells are usually 2 inches in diameter and less than 30 feet deep. If driving conditions are good, you can drive a 4-inch casing as deep as 50 feet. A driving tool consists of a drive point connected to the lower end of sections or pipe.

Ken Kern
An adequately designed spillway is critical to pond management. The purpose of the spillway is to carry surplus water from the pond, away from the face of the dam. It may consist of a mechanical control, such as an exit pipe installed in the base of the dam where it will empty below the dam site.

Ken Kern
No critic as yet comprehends entirely why our houses are so poorly constructed, why they look so abominable, why they cost so much for construction and for maintenance, and why they are so uncomfortable.

Ken Kern
Trellises for leafy vines, which will lose their foilage in the fall, should be set up over southern windows so that sunlight will penetrate into the house through the winter months.

Ken Kern
Heavy, clayey soils hold more water with less nutrient-leaching. The structural aggregates of heavy soils retain nutrients but allow water to drain around them. Light soils are extremely sensitive to excess water.

Ken Kern
Aquaculture is an important aspect of homestead polyculture, for it facilitates the management of a variety of crops in a single production area.

Ken Kern
The first principle of good barn design is flexibility of space.

Ken Kern
Cooling systems... need only supply a drop of from 10 to 20 degrees below that of the outside temperature.... greater cooling differentials... are a real injury to health.

Ken Kern
Around 1800 American-born, expatriate Benjamin Rumford discovered that once heated, a firebox built of masonry materials did not cool the fire. Instead, it slowly built up the heat that kept the fuel in the firebox burning hotly. He joined the growing debate between builders of metal and masonry stoves, contributing considerable support to the latter.

Ken Kern
The mere technical problems of building a home are insignificant when compared to an understanding and an interpretation of one's innermost feelings and thoughts concerning his shelter needs.

Ken Kern
When replacement or repair is required due either to accident or deterioration by age, the materials are readily at hand, and the householder himself can do the work.

Ken Kern
A mixture of damp peat moss and loamy soil spread around the roots is far better than fertilizer in any form. Do not saturate the hole in which a tree is to be planted with water.

Ken Kern
A wind of only 15 mph may increase the heat loss from a window surface by 47 percent or from a concrete wall by 34 percent. Therefore, heating plans have a critical relationship with windbreaks and with wind baffles.

Ken Kern
Ceiling insulation is... preferable to roof-top insulation.

Ken Kern
The concrete shell of this stove would surely crack if its strength were not reinforced with steel rod, wire fabric, or barbed wire. The latter is our choice. We laid continuous strands of barbed wire between the rows of slip form masonry. The thermal expansion rate of concrete is the same as steel up to a temperature comparable to boiling water... Beyond that, steel expands at a faster rate than concrete. At a temperature of about 500 degrees F., the bond between the concrete and steel is destroyed... The type of aggregate in the mix is primarily responsible for this kind of failure.

Ken Kern
Bedroom insulation is unnecessary and restrictive of optimum summer sleeping comfort.

Ken Kern
In cold climates it will cost only half as much to heat a well insulated building as it will cost to heat a poorly insulated one.... the annual fuel saving will amortize in two years the addition cost expense of the insulation!

Ken Kern
In medieval Europe, monks grew vegetables, herbs, flowers, berries, and fruit trees together for mutual benefit. You should plan plant populations relative to the root level each species occupies in the soil relative to the feeding capacity of each species.

Ken Kern
For every serious attempt to achieve integration of house to site you will find a thousand houses peppering the landscape and clearly demonstrating the builder's total disregard for even the most basic considerations of sun, wind, and view.

Ken Kern
As much as 70 percent of the sun's heat rays can be reflected from one's house by the installation of a white or light-colored roof.

Ken Kern
It costs three to five times as much to remove a BTU of heat from a house in the summer as it does to add one BTU of heat in the winter.

Ken Kern
Pit Greenhouses... greenhouse plants... need additional sources of carbon dioxide.

Ken Kern
Every house needs a warming spot where persons coming in from the outside chill can, if for no other reason, warm hands and hearts.

Ken Kern
A totally new concept of building design evolves from the application of basic aerodynamic phenomenon. Vetillation by installation of windows becomes obsolete... Air can be brought into the building from the roof or from under the floor. Wind scoops can be designed to assist the flow of air from practically any angle.

Ken Kern
This process has suggested some workable alternatives as solutions to personal housing needs. Here they are in the form of seven axioms... 1. When building your home, pay as you go. 2. Supply your own labor. 3. Build according to your best judgement. 4. Use native materials whenever possible. 5. Design and plan your own home. 6. Use minimum but quality grade hand tools. 7. Assume responsibility for your building construction.

Ken Kern
Grafting is, in effect, the healing of two common wounds. Commercial nurseries charge high prices for grafted stock, and the public bears the cost...

Ken Kern
It is claimed that the Russian stove is seldom plagued with creosote build-up. If this is so, the reason may have more to do with the stove's operation than with its large ducts. Any masonry stove operates best when its fire is hot, and when fuel burns rapidly in a single, intense conflagration.

Ken Kern
It is a rarity of the first order when the dean of an architectural college takes it upon himself to build houses comprised of woven split bamboo placed between two layers of treated clay. These readily available materials were artfully used by Professor Stein in his creation of two demonstration low-cost homes.

Ken Kern
The design of a house around a massive, central fireplace has, somehow, always felt right to this writer-builder.

Ken Kern