Passive
Solar Designs
Passive solar design
helps us limit a home's lifetime impact on the local ecology and
minimize heating and cooling costs. By designing with a keen
awareness of the sun's path and the local climate we are able to
improve the quality of natural daylight inside the house and
greatly reduce the external energy inputs needed to maintain a
comfortable indoor temperature year round. That means much less oil
or gas coming out of the ground or less wood coming out of the
forest. Passive solar design has four main components: solar
orientation, glazing to floor area ratios, insulation and thermal
mass. Each is essential, and the four work
together.
Orienting
a building's longer side to within ten degrees of solar south
allows us to take full advantage of the sun's light and heat.
Sizing and positioning the windows on each side of the house
according to careful calculations maximizes heat gain and minimizes
overnight heat loss--the most important factors in our cold
northern climate. Adequate thermal mass properly positioned to
absorb the sun's heat allows us to store it during the day and then
slowly release it once the sun goes down. Earthen floors are great
for this. Finally, abundant insulation in the walls and ceiling,
and double-paned windows ensure that most of the heat gained during
the day will stay inside the building. For our walls and ceilings,
we combine the timber frame structure with a lightweight truss
system that allows us to achieve R-38 for the walls and R-48 for
the ceiling, while all but eliminating thermal breaks.
