ABOUT APPLEWOOD INN
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The structure now used as the Applewood Inn was constructed in 1979 as a private home and continued as such until Linda and Chris Best bought it in July of 1996. The structure is a three story passive solar envelope design by Lee Merrill, a Lexington architect who has designed a number of solar homes in the area. The envelope design
works extremely well but was very expensive to build. Thus there are relatively few such homes in existence.
The design allows for air convection all the way around the house, from the south facing two story enclosed porches upward through the "envelope" into the attic space and then down the "envelope" on the north side to the crawl space underneath. The enclosed porches on the second floor are essentially usuable year round except during prolonged cloudy cold weather, with daytime temperatures on a sunny January day reaching into the 80s. Auxilliary gas heat and central air conditioning are used to balnce the natural fluctuations. |