Passive Solar House Design

Passive Solar House Design

Warm in the Winter—Cool in the Summer

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, or an energy guzzling, expensive home. Obviously the warm, sunny, low maintenance house is going to be a lot nicer to live in, and it will be worth far more if and when you decide to sell your home. For help in choosing building materials see: Choose building components

During the mid to late 60’s through the late 1980’s, the U.S. economy was booming. We went zooming down the freeways at 70 miles per hour, gasoline was anywhere from 28 cents a gallon to 98 cents a gallon. During that time, most builders and developers had the opinion that the heating contractor’s job was to install the heating system that the homeowner or developer wanted. Home designers, and building contractors were not responsible for that aspect of a new home’s construction. In fact, during that time, house plans typically were unconcerned as to the home’s relationship to a specific environment,(i.e. its site and the rotating seasonal position of the sun). House plans simply indicated “front, back, left, right”, not “north, east, south, west”. Home designers and architects rarely concerned themselves with energy efficiency, but rather with how the house would look and curb appeal. In fact, even today in the 21st century, little if any thought is given to a homes site and specific environment. During boom times, developers and home builders goals are to build as many houses as they can, as fast as they can. During times of recession, building slows down to a trickle. With the exception of installing energy efficient heating and cooling systems, the majority of the construction industry still gives little, if any, thought to the homes passive solar ability. The construction industry, and society as a whole, managed to “forget” certain fundamental ways of building in harmony with the sun, landscape, and changing seasons – in ways that have formed the basis for many architectural traditions for thousands of years. There has never been a more practical and economical time for home builders and developers to use the ancient art of passive solar house design.

Minimize Your Summer Exposure, Maximize Your Winter Exposure

Following are basic diagrams of a passive solar house design.

The Passive Solar House Design

Best orientation-Facing South. In all temperate latitudes, houses perform best from a solar perspective if they are elongated along the east-west axis and thinner in the north-south axis. This gives maximum southern wall exposure to the low winter sun, and minimum east and west wall exposure to the high summer sun. Combine proper house orientation with a properly sized roof overhang or awnings to further protect the southern wall in summer. Minimize north, east, and especially west facing window areas. South facing windows can be very good, if there is sufficient roof, awining, or other structure overhang to shade these windows from the high summer sun, but not so much as to block the low winter sun.

A great reference material is a book called, The Sun Inspired House "The Sun-Inspired House" illustrates numerous house design concepts related to the sun. It also addresses the related subjects of passive solar design, passive cooling, energy-efficient construction, green building, and sustainability. Over 50 house plans show examples of integrated concepts. Numerous examples, photos, and testimonials from homeowners describe the livability of these sunny and comfortable houses built in North America.

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