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 There
are a variety of design methods for passive solar homes. Although many companies design
homes around the same principles of capturing the sun's heat, the specific
design parameters vary. Here are a few other common design strategies, along with a brief description
of how they differ from our approach.
While our
homes can become zero-energy homes with the addition of solar electricity, our
goal is to create "low-energy homes." This allows the inclusion of other desirable
features in your home. For instance, some companies recommend giving up the windows
on the north, east, and west to minimize heat loss. To us, this may sacrifice
balanced daylighting and natural ventilation, let alone prevent you from taking
advantage of beautiful views in a direction other than south.
Although it is important to have some thermal
mass in passive solar homes—and we would agree that in general, the more mass the
better—the Sustainable Building Industry Council's guidelines show that not as much mass is needed as others
claim to maintain interior comfort. There is no need to go to extremes. This is
not to say that it would hurt our homes to be built with more mass, we just don't
recommend you make sacrifices to do so.
Our designs normally incorporate
some mass materials like brick, stone, ceramic tile, or colored concrete for some
interior floors and/or walls. Each home is different, but the mass is balanced
with the amount of south glass. Although most of our homes are designed with 6" stud walls, SIPs (structural insulated panels), or ICFs (insulated concrete forms),
they can also be constructed with higher-mass materials like concrete block, poured
concrete, or adobe should you choose to make those modifications.
While there is no doubt that more insulation
keeps in more heat, there is a point of diminishing returns where the extra cost
is not worth the extra energy savings. Often, the higher cost is not in the insulation
itself, but rather in the construction elements necessary to hold the extra thickness
of insulation. For each of our blueprint, erasable vellum, or CAD orders for
our existing house plans, we make custom energy recommendations for your home
where we specify the amount of insulation (or R-value) and any necessary construction modifications. For custom designs, we perform an energy analysis where
we balance the amount of insulation with the amount of solar gain and heat loss
to achieve performance of no greater than 4 BTU/s.f./DD (or usually much lower)
whether you have a sun-tempered home or the regular passive solar version.
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