Switch to solar with a system built for you. Since ancient times, people have found ways to use the sun’s heat to stay warm or keep cool. They built homes from clay and other materials that hold heat ...

A passive solar-heated home needs no solar panels to heat or cool it. Rather, the energy used to heat and cool a house comes directly from the sun through skylights and windows. Some of that energy is ...

The author’s home boasts numerous large south-facing windows that enable passive solar heating of the entire house, even in single-digit temps. In the early 1980s, an American energy crisis had passed ...

Now that the winter solstice, the shortest daylight day of the year, is behind us I’m reminded of how important it is to let the sunshine into our lives. There are many benefits to having large ...

SOLAR HOT WATER pre-heat systems fall into two basic categories active and passive types with numerous subcategories. A passive solar DHW pre-heater is also known as a breadbox heater or batch heater.

As I discussed in last week’s column ("Resilience: Dramatically Better Building Envelopes," Jan. 4), a resilient home is extremely well-insulated, so that it can be kept warm with very little ...

This second floor room takes advantage of the passive solar heat of the morning sun. ANA VENEGAS Fresno Custom Publications Photo When Chris Senior was in college in the ’70s, he was convinced energy ...

Do you enjoy coming home to a warm home in the dead of winter? Do you leave your furnace running in cold weather even if no one’s home? If you want to keep the house warm for when you return later in ...

It won't be long before winter hits us again, and I promised myself last year that we'd do what we could to our home to make it more comfortable this year. It stayed cold indoors all last winter, and ...

Following the first energy crisis in 1973 there was a rush to heat homes with the sun. It was a tinkerer's paradise, with all manner of solar heating systems migrating from garage workshops to ...

Passive solar heating and cooling was omitted from the interesting article on "Building Green" (C&EN, July 16, page 11). This technique can save 50% of the heating and cooling costs of a home in the ...