How to Have a Solar-Heated House Without Solar Panels

Would you like your new house to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer without the use of air-conditioning, heating, or even solar power panels? You can. It's called passive solar, and is all about how you design your home and where you place it on your property.

The first thing to understand about passive solar is that it doesn't have anything to do with solar panels, photovoltaic cells, or any other technology. The whole idea is to build and situation your home in such a way as to harness a maximum amount of the sun's energy in the winter, while blocking the sun's rays from heating your home in the summer. And you do it all simply by understanding how the Sun moves where you live.

How Does Passive Solar Work?
There are three main elements that make a passive solar home different from a conventional home: South-facing windows; a ledge of a certain length and angle above those windows; and a mass-wall. The ledge above the windows is short enough and placed at such an angle as to allow the winter sun to shine in and fill the mass wall (or thermal wall) with heat during the day, which is released as the house cools at night. But the path of the sun is at a higher angle during the summer, allowing the ledge to block the sun from directly shining into the house. The mass wall stays cool, as does the house.