Thanks to my good friend and fellow mountaineering buddy, Alex, I will soon be putting my architectural training to good use. I was brought up with the concept of environmental design which does not mean the lastest gizmos and gadgets and whatever else technological experts are pushing these days. Dont get me wrong, they are part of the evolution of design and serve an important purpose in our economy and etc.
passive solar is a very very old concept used by the vernacular architects throughout the world for eons. Why? they work. If a boat has a leak, don’t add a big motor to go faster, fix the leak. Passive solar is the same analogy. make your house or your house design reponsive to the environment. this is not a theory. think about what BTUs are and how to prevent lose of them and how to gather as much of them as possible.
Use whatever tools, techniques, intuition, science at your disposal to make a house comfortable using the sun’s power, without complicated systems. Cost is always a consideration as well. If it costs the same to make the house responsive to solar then do it! The motors, pv, ducts and the rest of the techs that go into a home’s making should follow, and therefore, you can minimize their size and even the need for such things, just think about how heat can be transferred from the sun (sun’s path) into the house (glass and orientation) and then protected (insulation on the needed sides).
I will use this site to track the progress of this project and hopefully the end result with provide a working model for others to use and reference.
cheers
williemon