Passive heating / Guides

...passive solar house appropriate for the local climate. The result was the world's first Passivhaus - The Saskatchewan Conservation House , which not only incorporated passive heating from the sun, but also many of the elements that make up the current Passive House standard: careful sealing with tape for air-tightness ...

...passively-heated home. See post 1 of the off-grid homes blog here . or post 3 in the off-grid homes blog here . This off-grid home design began with the basic principles of passive heating and cooling - invest in really good windows, face as many of them south as you can to gain heat, and install heavy duty insulatio...

...heating needed for this home is accomplished by sun streaming in the windows. I've taken just enough of a look at the passive solar heating literature to know that this is roughly as high as one should go with passive solar heating in a home unless one is willing to endure unwelcome overheating on warm sunny days in ...

...Passive House certification in North America , Passive Solar Homes & LEED certified homes. Slab on Grade Foundation © Yanni Milon for Ecohome Sacrifices, challenges and solutions: In order to be able to make an informed decision about this type of foundation, there are several precautionary ...

...heating by that same amount and suddenly heating a house with an active solar panel system becomes more realistic. Even more so if you design for passive heating as well, which can potentially cut demand in half on its own. It is our humble opinion that financial resources are often squandered in home construction wh...

...passive strategies such as natural ventilation, passive cooling, daylighting, and solar gain were maximized. These were integrated with efficient active systems, such as in-floor radiant heating , high-velocity cooling, low-flow plumbing fixtures and high-efficiency lighting . Complementary to this approach, a key su...

...passive solar design is that much of the heating load is carried by the heat coming in the windows, with energy modeling suggesting that about 30% of the house's total heat load is being passively provided by the sun. The final thing that always needs to be mentioned when discussing a building envelope is air-tightne...

...heating coils, you are simply operating fans, so they are relatively cheap to run. And you will certainly save money overall, as heating moist air eats up a lot of energy. Depending on the quality of the machine you buy, you can expect to recoup anywhere from 50% of the heat in the air, to as much as 95%. Plan on spe...

...Passive House slab on grade form kit ready to pour concrete © Ecohome The drawbacks of building on a slab on grade: Building your home on a slab on grade means you will have no basement storage, a mechanical room on the main floor, and no ability to move plumbing fixtures for future renovations. So how to deal ...

When considering solar cells as thin as laminate and completely transparent, the possibilities seem endless. Imagine every glass or laminant surface in our built environment and all of our devices, large and small, harvesting solar energy. In a world of passive, self-sustaining mini-power stations, would the need for ...

...heating or cooling needs) and increasingly become a durability nightmare the further north you go. Before listing off the problems, let me first say that I love skylights. I love natural light in general, and given the amount of time humans spend indoors I welcome features that make you feel a bit more like you are o...