Passive Solar Energy

Read free. Passive solar energy: the homeowner’s guide to natural heating and cooling, by Bruce Anderson and Malcolm Wells, 1981.

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Excerpt

Some skeptics say solar energy won’t work. But you know better, you’ve been using it all your life. Think of how nice and toasty your sunporch gets. And the way you can almost bake bread inside your car on a sunny October day. Remember how your favorite begonias had sunstroke in the greenhouse last April? There’s a lot of heat in all that light.

It’s only natural, then, that thousands of people are turning to solar energy to heat their homes. Many of the countless newspaper reports focus on fancy solar homes of the future, replete with lots of “active” moving parts: collectors, pumps, fans, valves, heat exchangers, and electronic controls. “Active” systems can save a lot of energy (and are certainly preferable to systems that use coal, gas, oil, and nuclear power!), but it’s no secret that they are often needlessly complicated and expensive.

Solar heating and cooling doesn’t have to be complicated and expensive. This book is for all of us who know that solar energy works-who have burned our behinds on the sun-baked seats of our cars, who have been burnt by uncertain energy supplies and skyrocketing prices, and who are ready to do something about it all—just as soon and as simply as possible.

“Passive” solar heating and cooling does not depend on pumps or fans or any other devices. Instead, it relies on the natural ebb and flow of the energy of the sun through a house. With a few facts from this book and a little common sense, you can combine passive solar design with energy conservation and reduce the heating and cooling bills for a new house to less than 15% of those for conventional houses. And many of the ideas can be adapted to existing houses as well.

It’s no wonder, then, that more and more people who are planning to build houses someday are thinking passive solar. It is the natural first step toward living better while using less energy. Those who live in passive homes bathed in winter sunshine wish that everyone else could learn how to capture more warm solar energy.

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