A wide selection of books, articles, and software that you will find useful in the design of your passive solar home.
Directory for this page:
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Passive Home Design Guidelines | |
Passive Solar Energy Book Bruce Anderson and Malcolm Wells
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![]() A free download thanks to the authors. |
Passive Solar Heating and Cooling
Manual Arizona Solar Center |
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Path to
Passive -- Nebraska's Passive Solar Primer, Solar Associates, Ltd. Chen, Hollingsworth, Pedersen, Maloney, Stangl, Thorp, and Rives
Download the book from the Nebraska Energy Office ...
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![]() It is aimed at Nebraska, but the
material is applicable to cold climate areas over a lot of the US. It
has a wider variety of solar designs than most newer books have. |
Low Thermal Mass Sunspaces All the details on Low Thermal Mass Sunspace advantages, performance, design and examples... |
![]() At the same time they provide added living space that is good for a wide variety of activities. The sunspaces can also add to the aesthetic appeal and value of the home. The new section on low thermal mass sunspaces provides design and performance data, heat output and efficiency tests, and several detailed examples of low thermal mass sunspaces that work well. |
Solar Site Survey...
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![]() This free and simple survey only takes an hour and is fun and educational. Its a must do for any type of solar project! |
Home Sweet Solar Home -- A Passive
Solar Design Primer Ken Olson and Joe Schwartz |
Home Power magazine article, issue 90 A very good primer on how to design a passive solar home. A good place to start. |
Checklist To Determine Energy
Efficiency of A Home, Leona Hawks, Utah State University Extension Checklist (pdf) |
![]() Fairy high level but useful. |
High level design guidelines for passive solar heating and cooling | High level design guidelines for passive solar heating and cooling. |
Green Building
Advisor
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/
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![]() There is a $15 a month fee, but a 10 day free trial is offered to see if you think its worth it. If I was in the process of designing or building a new home, I would definitely maintain a membership to GBA. |
Canadian
Solar Home Design Manual from Solar Nova Scotia, 2009, 200 pages
This new 2009 edition is a complete rewrite of the older edition. |
![]() The manual is written in a very down to earth (even humorous at times)
style, but gets down to enough detail to be genuinely helpful in doing real
designs (unlike many other introductory solar books). |
The Solar House Daniel Chiras |
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The Natural House -- A Complete
Guide to Healthy, Energy-Efficient, Environmental Homes Daniel Chiras
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Green From the Ground Up - A
Builders Guide David Johnson and Scott Gibson
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![]() Fairly nuts and bolts coverage of what's green and energy
efficient in foundations, framing, HVAC, insulation, electrical, plumbing,
... |
The Energy Efficient House Solar Today Magazine Richard Crume |
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Design a Home That
Keeps You Cool, Naturally, William S. Hoffman, Fine Homebuilding Magazine, Issue 165, Sept 2004
How to get
articles from Fine Homebuilding ...
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![]() Techniques such as shielding from sun, using breezes, good material choices, open plan, ... are described.
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First UK Zero-Emission
Home Unveiled news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6735715.stm
Another article with good refs at bottom:
Another article: |
![]() This is one of the early cuts at such a home. It will be interesting to see the designs that come out of this requirement. |
Passive Solar Homes -- 91 new
award-winning, energy-conserving single family home plans, U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1982
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![]() It came out of a competition that HUD sponsored in 1982 for passive solar home designs. These 91 award winning plans were selected from more than 500 entries by builders, designers, and architects. This was a very active time in passive solar home design, and the plans show a high level of innovation. This is the first 30 -- rest to come as time allows. |
The Florida Solar
Cracker House http://www.phys.ufl.edu/%7Eliz/home.html
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Build a Solar Home and Let the Sunshine In Dan Chiras Mother Earth News |
![]() A good set of guidelines for building a successful passive solar house. Also includes actual examples of the cost of passive features and the yearly savings achieved. |
A Water Wall
Solar Design Manual (2 MB pdf) David Bainbridge Marshall Goldsmith School of Management
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![]() David is also the author of this fine book on batch water heaters. |
"A Tiny Home To Call Your Own" Patricia Foreman and Andy Lee
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![]() This book makes some very good arguments for the simplicity, cost, livability, and consideration for the planet that small homes bring. |
Small, Efficient, and Beautiful Energy Source Builder Newsletter http://www.oikos.com/esb/52/smallefficient.html
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Earthships
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Michael Reynolds Earthship design has: passive solar heating, solar water
heating, rain water harvesting, solar electric, grey water recycling, and
black water treatment. It also makes use of rejected and
recycled materials. It not only does all of these things, but it
appears to do all of them well. |
New
Home Construction Green Building guidelines, Alameda County Waste Management Authority and Global Green USA www.globalgreen.org/media/publications/guidebook_insides.pdf
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![]() While intended for a specific area, most of the advice is widely applicable -- one exception being the rather low insulation levels they reccomend. |
A Guide To Building and Planning
Solar Homes -- Solar Homes for North Carolina II A Design Competition Planbook • June 1999 Energy Division, North Carolina Department of Commerce 38 Page Guide and Plans (3.1 MB pdf) |
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A Builders Guide to Energy
Efficient Homes in Georgia From Southface.org
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![]() Wish other states would follow this lead. |
The Passive Solar House Jame Kachadorian |
A
![]() I believe there is a new version about to come out that includes some solar design software. I have not had chance to look at the new version. |
Designing Shading Overhangs with
Google SketchUp
Caution: The free version of SketchUP does not allow you enter your latitude. For the sun model they assume a latitude of about 40 degrees North. This means if your latitude is near 40 degrees, the shadows will be accurate. However, errors in the sun's elevation and azimuth will increase as you go north or south of 40 degrees. Within the US (latitude 25 to latitude 50), the elevation angles can be off by up to about 12 degrees. Azimuth angles (particularly for south areas) can be off by as much as 40 degrees. |
![]() It could also be used to layout your whole house (with trees and sunspaces), and see how the sun plays over it. VERY easy to learn. |
The Energy Source Builder
newsletter
http://www.oikos.com/esb/51/passivecooling.html See also the section on Passive Cooling for more passive cooling techniques for homes.
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![]() This article is based on the book "Sun, Wind and Light" (see next item). The method requires some temperature and humidity data for your climate -- these data can be found here: http://ols.nndc.noaa.gov/plolstore/plsql/olstore.prodspecific?prodnum=C00095-PUB-A0001 |
Sun, Wind and Light --
Architectural Design Strategies, 2nd Edition G. Z. Brown and Mark DeKay |
![]() Details on a large number of specific design strategies for making effective use of the sun and wind, and natural lighting. It includes quantitative analysis techniques for each strategy. Intended for architects, but quite readable. Covers commercial buildings as well as residences. 2001 400 pages |
WHOLE-HOUSE ENERGY CHECKLIST 50 Steps to Energy Efficiency in the Home SouthFace at http://www.southface.org Checklist (122K pdf)
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A good detailed checklist to use while designing and building and energy
efficient home. Covers both heating and cooling climates. Some very good ideas, and a good way to make sure important steps in an energy conscious design don't get overlooked. Other good things on the Southface website. |
Design: Solar Heating Of Buildings and Domestic
Hot Water
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Guides to Selecting New or Replacement Windows |
If you are selecting windows for a new house, take a look at this section.
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Landscaping for Energy Efficiency: Energy-Saving Landscaping for Your Passive Solar Home, NC Solar Center (pdf)
www.sustland.umn.edu/design/energysaving.html Designing Tree Wind Breaks: Purdue University Extension:
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Passive Solar Home Design Software After you have absorbed the guidelines above, and roughed out your new solar home design, you may be able to check its thermal performance with simulation software. |
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HEED http://www2.aud.ucla.edu/heed/
Additional documentation: http://www2.aud.ucla.edu/energy-design-tools/papers.html
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Passive Solar Design Software | See the Solar Analysis area of the References section for other software tools that can be used for passive solar home design. |
Best Practices Manuals Solar homes work much, much, much better with an outer shell that is well insulated and does not leak cold air in. This is probably the most important element of getting a solar home to work well. |
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NAHB's Model Green Home Building
Guidelines National Association of Home Builders, 2006 Green Home Building Guidelines (4MB pdf)
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![]() Overall, its up-to-date, provides both high level guiding principles and detailed how-to, and covers the whole process of house planning, site layout, and building. |
Insulation Guides -- Building
a well insulated and Tight Shell for Your Home The DOE-EERE Insulation Guide Series:
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![]() I guess my one bit of advice would be to go a bit further than they recommend for your climate, because experience shows that in a while (as fuel prices climb) they will be recommending higher levels.
Other DOE-EERE publications here: |
Building America Best Practices
Series Building America -- Department of Energy
V1 - Hot-Humid Climates (pdf) From Building America: www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/building_america/ |
![]() Covers site layout, layout of windows for passive solar, insulation, infiltration control, furnace and AC, ... |
Energy Efficient Mortgages These mortgages offered through the FHA and others allow you to add energy efficiency features to your house with no extra down payment and lower total ownership expenses. |
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Energy Efficient Mortgages http://hes.lbl.gov/hes/makingithappen/financing.html
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![]() For approved features, 100% of the extra cost is financed, and the increase in the monthly loan payment is more than offset by the decreases in utility bills. It seems hard to go wrong with this -- no increase in down payment, lower total monthly ownership costs, added value at resale, and significant greenhouse gas reductions. And, the savings should just increase over time as fuel prices go up. |