Part 1 of Passive Solar Design for the Home. Your home’s windows, walls, and floors can be designed to collect, store, and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer. This is called passive solar design or climatic design because, unlike active solar heating systems, […]
An architect can examine the energy performance of your house in terms of how each of the components—the insulation, windows, heating and cooling system, ventilation, and lighting— all work together. This approach, called “whole-house” design, allows the architect to optimize each of these components for your location to achieve the best energy performance at an […]
In an existing home, any renovation or window replacement project is an opportunity to improve your home’s energy performance. Most existing homes have poorly insulated, leaky windows that would be cost effective to replace. When replacing windows, consider increasing the windows on the south side of your home and decreasing the windows on the north, […]
Part 12 of Buying and Using Renewable Energy at Home. Heating and cooling uses more energy and drains more energy dollars than any other system in your home. Typically, 44% of your utility bill goes for heating and cooling. What’s more, heating and cooling systems in the United States together emit more than a half-billion […]