Passive Solar Design:
When you take a Passive Solar design approach then your home will be kind to you by helping you make the most of the sun’s energy to keep you warm in winter and cool in summer. It does this through an appropriate orientation of your living areas, careful use of thermal mass, adequate insulation, ventilation, and external shading.
In Winter: your Passive Solar home lets the sun’s warmth into your home during the day and radiates warmth towards you during the night.
In Summer: your Passive Solar Home blocks the sun’s heat from entering your home during the day, and allows any heat build up to escape during the night.
Learn about Passive Solar Design limitations.
Passive Solar Design Limitations:
A Passive Solar design approach is only the first step towards an energy efficient home design.
- By upgrading to a Passivhaus Design, you will have the ultimate in energy efficiency, thermal comfort, excellent indoor air quality, and durability of your home.
- Indoor air quality, condensation and potential for mold are not addressed in a Passive Solar design approach.
- Sometime building sites, make it very difficult to achieve a Passive Solar Design due to such things as poor orientation and the presence of natural formations or man-made structures that result in blocking northern sunlight from reaching your site.
- A Passive Solar design is not necessarily a Supportive Design or a Healthful Design. These design approaches can be incorporated into your Solar Passive Design.
Passive Solar Home Example:
In this example, the client is planning to work from home, requiring 1 Bedroom, 1 Bathroom, 1 home office with carport and a separate workshop. Interested in allowing for future extensions as the family grows, and a Passive Solar design approach.
Find out about the constraints of this project.
Project Constraints:
- East facing site in bush block, BAL 12.5. A ‘standard’ home design would leave most of the living spaces facing East or West, resulting in relatively high energy consumption for heating and cooling.
- With Global Warming, an extra precaution is required in fire prone areas, so it is prudent to design for a higher BAL than the actual BAL level of the site.
Find out about the Site and the Site Plan.
The Site and Site Plan:
Bush block 
Building footprint & overhangs
The gently downward sloping site from the South to North boundary and no over shadowing from neighbor’s home on the North side, enabled the design of a Passive Solar home, with a long footprint and garden oriented towards the North.
Resulting Solution:
A safe, thermally comfortable home, within the client’s budget; that can be easily and affordably modified as the client’s needs change.
North orientation along the length of the home, shaded glazing, heat purging through top windows, and deep penetration of natural light.
- Summer Shading: (Deciduous) trees, wide eaves, external blinds to East and West facing windows
- Ventilation: East-West breezeway (connecting front and back doors). Clerestory windows with wide eaves expel heat buildup in summer while allowing deeper sun penetration in winter.
- Thermal Mass: Polished concrete floor, shaded from the sun’s energy in summer, remaining cool. Stores sun’s warmth in winter during the day, releasing it at night, keeping the home warmer for longer.
Find out more about the resulting solution
Looking Forward:
- Install solar panels on north facing roof areas.
- The building structure was reinforced to enable raising the roof to add more bedrooms if required.
- Add shelter to the gently sloping pathway connecting the Workshop/Garage and the main building.
- The sheltered pathway, reinforced bathroom walls, hob-less shower enable ageing in place in the future and/or provide short term support incase of a temporary disability.
Solar Passive Design is one of a number of design approaches that we can incorporate into your Building Design project. Additional approaches that we encourage you to consider are Healthful Design, Supportive Design, and Passivhaus Design.
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We hope you found this information useful. If you require any additional information please contact us.
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