The Alternative Lifestyle Site

Eco-Friendly Housing: Learning From Mistakes

I guess you can tell by now that I am really sold on Solar Passive Design and I suspect if you were starting from scratch with all the right things in place you could create for yourself an amazingly comfortable home that was almost free to heat and cool. Yes, I did say almost.

Solar passive design is not the total solution to our energy needs for heating and cooling our homes. No matter how good the design, there will be times when supplementary measures are necessary.

So if I were considering some of the limitations of Solar Passive Design for residential and commercial purposes, this would be the first limitation I would consider:

• Passive Solar Design in homes reduces the need for extra energy needed to heat and cool the home. It does not negate that need entirely.

• It is possible and even desirable to have additional, mechanical heating source for days or weeks when the sun just doesn’t shine. Wood, gas, electrical, and geothermal are all suitable systems to have on hand for those seasons of the year when an additional boost of warmth or coolness is needed.

Now, let me share a bit of a story with you about my personal experience which I label learning from past mistakes.

Just a few years ago my family and I moved from living in a 1870′s stone cottage to living in a standard 1980′s cream brick veneer home.

• We didn’t give it much thought when we chose the new house (we were renting at the time and didn’t have a lot of options to choose from), but as luck would have it, this house faced it’s main living areas to the north and collected all that delicious sun.

• The difference to our lives was immense. The rooms were filled with light and warmth, the amount of energy we needed to buy to heat it to a comfortable level was significantly reduced and it was a delight to live in.

I’m sharing this with you because this was just a very ordinary four bedroom 1980′s family home. Ordinary construction, insulation and all the rest, but it faced exactly the right way to be snug on a winters day and reasonably comfortable (without air-conditioning) during our hot, hot summers. It’s large windows faced the sun (north in the Southern Hemisphere, South in the Northern Hemisphere) to catch the winter sun but they were protected from the summer sun by pergola’s, outside blinds and wide eaves (roof overhang).

As the builder I quoted in an earlier post on this subject said – 80% of the benefits can be derived by correct orientation to the sun. Imagine how nice it would be if there were floors to catch and store the heat to be released during the evening!!

There is much you can do to make your home more comfortable and more energy efficient. To that end I’ve created a series of video’s for you to help you minimise your energy use and maximise your savings in both money and in carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

To access this great resource put your name and a good email address into that form at the right …. ensure you respond to the request to confirm your details because I don’t want to be spamming anybody…. and they will then begin arriving right to your inbox.

If you have any first hand experiences you would like to share, let me know!

Leave a comment to this or any other post on the blog and help others learn from past mistakes and move into a more comfortable and eco-friendly lifestyle.

Eco-Friendly Housing: Living Happily Every After

Solar passive homes work because they allow sun into the home in the winter and stop it entering in the summer. They have “heat banks” inside the home to store that winter warmth and re-radiate that back into the rooms of an evening – this can be brick walls, concrete floors or any other innovative method of storing the heat. In the summer, these same things help keep the home cooler (if you stop the sun entering the home) and ensure you have good ventilation.

• Understanding the differences in the location and strength of the sun in relation to your house and designing to suit that will ensure you gain all that free, healthy energy available to you from the sun.

So the design of your home is very important but equally important is the design of your garden in terms of shade and light, structures to offer shade in summer and allow sun to filter through in winter.

• Removable or retractable blinds and awnings, deciduous trees and vines, pergolas and verandah’s are all things you can consider and reconsider as you make your home more solar passive, more eco-friendly and more comfortable to live in.

Once you have made your initial investment to either design and build a passive solar home or to re-think and retrofit your existing home, the benefits are free, forever.

Have you signed up to receive the video series yet?

Put your name and a good email address into the little form there at the right and I’ll send you these video’s I made especially for you.

They will show you how to save money and save energy and they are at no charge to you.

Eco-Friendly Housing: There Is So Much More

There is so much information out there on Solar Passive Design and eco-friendly housing that it’s hard to know where to begin when looking to share some core information.

While reading lots of articles on the subject, I discovered this one from Tim McDonald (thanks Tim!) and I’ve posted it here because it has some really good basic principles for you to consider when designing or re-designing your home.

• On the topic of re-design or retrofitting your home, have you considered alternative energy options? If you follow this link, you will find a review I wrote for you a little while ago comparing two alternative energy options. Take a look at them and consider which one suits you the best.

• And while you are considering, why not subscribe to the video series? Put your name and a good email address into the little form there at the right and I’ll send you these video’s I made especially for you. They will show you how to save money and save energy and they are at no charge to you.

Here is Tim McDonald’s great article. I hope you enjoy it.

Passive Solar Design Basics
By Tim McDonald

If you ever wanted to save electricity and improve the comfort of your home without using any high-tech gadgets, then passive solar design is the answer.

Passive solar design is a technique of using the sun to naturally heat and light up your home or office. This is achieved by using various building features and materials to improve heating and cooling efficiency. The best part about passive solar design is that it is relatively simple to implement, little maintenance is needed, and your home’s market value can increase considerably.

Your home’s passive solar potential is determined by where and how it is situated and by the types of windows and materials used. Although most buildings can be optimized to receive the ideal amount of sunshine, it is easier if they are on flat land or a sun-facing slope. If your home is surrounded by many trees, make sure they are deciduous so that they shade your home in summer, but their bare branches let sunlight through in winter. Also, try avoid nearby buildings that create too much shade.

When constructing a new home, make sure it is built so that the length of the house faces the sun, allowing the maximum amount of sunlight. Also note how the size, shape and placement of windows will determine the amount of natural heat and light in your home.

So how does the sun heat your home? There are three ways:

• Direct gain – direct heat from the sun shining on a surface.
• Indirect gain – radiated heat from objects heated by the sun.
• Isolated gain – determined by the airflow in your home.

To ensure the most natural heat from the above three sources, a number of large windows should be placed on the sun-facing side of your home, allowing maximum sunlight in.

All that sunlight and heat in your home is useless, if it cannot be stored and used when the sun is set. The solution is to use heat-absorbent flooring and walls that carry on radiating heat long into the night. A simple way to reduce power cost in winter is to locate to rooms in your house that get the most sunshine at certain times of day. Also, shady rooms should be cut-off (their doors closed) from the rest of the house to retain heat better.

During summer, the right length roof overhangs or eaves can be used to control the amount sunlight and heat in your home. The eaves should be wide enough shade out the intense midday sun, but let the let low-angle sunlight through during dusk and dawn to light up and warm the home. Again, the right trees and shrubs can be planted to regulate the house’s seasonal exposure to the sun.

For current buildings, the simplest passive solar design solution is to replace your windows with modern ones, that use various methods to store up 50% more heat. Although they are 10% to 15% more expensive, they pay for themselves in the long-term from all the power saved to heat your home.

Double-glazed or Low-emissivity (Low-E) windows let solar heat in, but keep in the indoor radiant heat. Another way to reduce heat loss is to ensure tight seals around all windows or by using multiple panes that have gaps between them filled with argon or krypton gas.

What your windows are made from can make a big difference too. While metal framed windows generally conduct heat out the house, wood, vinyl and fiberglass frames insulate the heat better. Always ensure any modern windows bought have labels issued by Energy Star or the National Fenestration Rating Council. These labels provide statistics on how effective and efficient the windows are at retaining heat, which helps you purchase the right windows for your conditions and budget.

So you can see, passive solar design is the effective use of nature and physics to maximize the use of the sun’s natural lighting and heat. Always remember, the point of solar passive design is to reduce your electricity usage and bills. So it is recommended to always weigh up the costs against the potential power savings when installing any passive solar solution at home.

Tim McDonald and his wife, Trudy, have been living off the grid since June 2008. If you want to learn to make your own power at home, get off the grid and save thousands on your electricity bills, then go to http://DIY-Renewable-Energy.com, where you will find a wealth of information.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tim_McDonald
http://EzineArticles.com/?Passive-Solar-Design-Basics&id=1728697

Remember: sign up to receive the 20 video Energy Series now!

Eco-Friendly Housing: One Small Thing Makes All The Difference

What is the one big thing that can make all the difference between a home that is comfortable in all seasons and relatively cheap to live in?

Read on…

To begin with I’ll list many of the benefits of solar passive design ( or just plain common sense design if you ask me!) just in case someone out there has yet to be exposed to the concept of solar passive design in homes, apartments, offices and shopping centres and even schools.

I watched a recent television program where a builder suggested that merely changing the orientation of your home (almost any design) to make maximum use of the sun’s energy would give you around 80% of the benefits of solar passive design. Now you might think I’m having a bit of a laugh with you but I assure you that I’m very serious about this, if fact I know this from personal experience of some dear friends who built their dream home.

• They bought a traditional home plan from a building company and had the home custom built for them off the plan…BUT, they made certain that the main living areas faced the northern sun (they live in Australia), additionally they installed electric in-slab heating and a small wood combustion heater for the winter.

• However, they soon discovered that they really didn’t need their slab to be heated by electricity because the sun just poured in through their large windows and sliding doors – they had to open their windows on some days because it became too warm inside!

• They now use just a tiny portion of their in-floor heating (bathroom floors being particularly favoured) and if there is a longish period without sunshine, they have two backup systems they can rely on.

So when I heard that builder say you can derive 80% of the benefits of solar passive design by just this one small decision, I knew he was absolutely right. And you know what – other people know this little secret too.

Just watch this great little explanation of how it works and why.

Yahoo Answers: Limits To Solar Passive Design

Yep I’ve been mooching about on Yahoo Answers again and I’m glad I did because someone wanted to know about the limits to solar passive design.

What a lovely rich little field of research and writing that turned out to be!

Here is a little video to give you the heads up on what’s coming up around this topic in the next little while.

You can get a head start creating your eco-friendly home by signing up for the 20 video series on Energy. Put your name and email address in the form (top right) and begin making those little adjustments today.

Learn how to maximise the benefit and minimise the cost of the energy you use.  You’ll be really glad you did.