DIY Heating Passive Solar

Saving Money with DIY Heating Passive Solar

In a perfect world, that’s how we’d have our house. Using a minimum amount of heating or cooling energy to keep them that way is an environment in which everyone wins, and by using passive solar house design is the way to get there. Using exactly the same pile of building materials and labor costs, you can have an energy-efficient, sunny, and easy to maintain home.

A Passive Solar House is:

• Sunny, open, and creative

• Warm in winter and cool in summer

• Integral to green & sustainable design principles

• Complementary to active solar & zero-energy

• Fuel-efficient and practical, yet elegant

• Healthy and environmentally-friendly

• A comfortable place to call home

DIY Heating Passive Solar Construction:

Passive solar construction is a very attractive design philosophy as it not only saves energy, but it also reduces dampness and condensation, improves sound insulation, increases the durability of building materials and makes the home healthier. A passive solar home uses the sun to warm the house. Heat is absorbed into the home and slowly released back into the house as it cools. Solar heating can be the sole source of warmth or can be supplemented by other sources.

Unfortunately most homes do not use energy efficiently. Space and water heating are the predominant uses of energy in a home, and energy savings in these areas are easily achieved. This website introduces the principles of diy heating passive solar design for space heating in houses. Solar water heating, if not already, will be covered on this site in the near future.

Challenges of DIY Heating Passive Solar

Hot summers and cold winters are a challenging combination for solar homes, and attention needs to be paid to both summer and winter conditions. Cold weather conditions can be warmed with correct window design to admit as much solar heat as possible, the right materials to store as much heat as possible and plenty of insulation to conserve heat. A home can be kept cool in the summer with little or no need for air conditioning, by correct placement of shading, ventilation and insulation (although flexibility needs to be built into systems to allow for extreme weather conditions, i.e. extreme heat waves or severe cold winter storms).

DIY heating passive solar principles can produce year-round comfort in your home for little cost and can be applied to existing houses as well as renovations. The initial extra cost (if any) is paid back over time in savings on energy costs.

DIY Heating Passive Solar Orientation:

Orientation, layout and positioning of your house on the land:

Orientate your living areas to the south side of the house, which receives most of the sun throughout the day (north if you live in the southern hemisphere).

The wind patterns of the region and the microclimate specific to the site should be examined. Cold winds can be buffered or deflected by strategic positioning of dense trees to unoccupied structures such as garages. Similar devices can be used to deflect hot summer winds, while cooling summer breezes should be funneled through the house with landscaping features and buildings form. Also low inlets and high outlets on the house will assist natural ventilation.

The wind patterns of the region and the microclimate specific to the site should be examined. Cold winds can be buffered or deflected by strategic positioning of dense trees to unoccupied structures such as garages. Similar devices can be used to deflect hot summer winds, while cooling summer breezes should be funneled through the house with landscaping features and buildings form. Also low inlets and high outlets on the house will assist natural ventilation.

The Cost:

Passive solar design is easiest, and cheapest, to incorporate during new construction. Some homes are easier to retrofit than others. However measures to increase the use of solar heat and thermal performance, such as increasing insulation of roofs, floors, windows, and radiant barriers can be retrofitted to most houses.

The cost of measures such as double glazing and the building of conservatories can be high when judged purely as a mechanism to capture and store heat. However other benefits and amenities may result and these need to be part of the cost effectiveness assessment.

The cost of adding passive solar design into a home is highly variable, depending on the site, size of the house, construction materials used and many other factors. These factors obviously affect the payback period and make generalizations difficult. However, as the average life of a home in most areas is 80 years, the additional cost will be saved many times over during the life of the building.

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