I suppose they’d never fly in Greenwich, but it was 15 degrees this morning and when I goosed the furnace I started wondering what happened to the idea of passive solar homes. Pal Nancy and I looked into the subject in 1981 when we lived in Bangor and twenty below zero mornings were common. We “chose” (we were living on a new lawyer’s salary based on a Bangor, Maine pay scale) to heat our old drafty farmhouse with wood – six cords or so each winter which, in Maine, lasts 10 1/2 months – but I was intrigued by the idea of a home heated without solar panels or moving, breakable machinery.
Apparently the concept is still around in an improved form and, to the extent you place any faith in the New York Times, they’re in use in Germany and Scandinavia. Do they really work? If I built one, would I have to erect a life-sized Al Gore figurine on the roof? Eschew bacon and eggs and switch to granola and bean sprouts? Wear Birkenstocks to the polls and cast my vote for Obama? If not, I’d be interested.
We have neighbors in RI who built one and they SWEAR by it. It’s horribly unattractive from the outside (especially in a community of historic seaside homes) but they didn’t give a hoot about looks and were going for sustainability and low bills. At least the interior is pleasant and light and airy.
http://www.zeroenergy.com/p_valette.html
Zero Energy has done quite a few passive solar homes in the NE.
Look into geothermal too. Good times.
go buy some Birkenstocks and patchouli hippy !
Geothermal is a bust here in New England – too cold.
With the old water loop technology, yeah. There’s a relatively new geothermal technology though: direct exchange. A hundred feet down, the earth is 54 degrees year round. Even in crazy New England, no matter how many five minute periods you wait.
Believe it or not, when I was ten, my father retired from GM and moved the family to our summer home in northern Michigan. It was a log cabin on lake Michigan and we used a wood stove as our primary heat source. There was some sort of back up, but I don’t think we ever used it, though. Anyhow, my father went from corporate guy to mountain man ( or lakeshore equivilant) pretty quickly. We had a huge garden, foraged for morels and leeks and berries. He never hunted, except frogs once or twice in order to traumatize the family with their twitching in the pan. I know I’m rambling on-especially for five in the morning,sorry-guess you triggered a memory and now I’m stuck in the moment! The way this is relevant is that he installed solar panels on our detached garage. I’m not sure what the point was, likely a late seventies fad, and we only kept stuff and a duck incubator in there. Yes, we were also traumatized /educated by seeing our pet ducks eliminated by wildlife…
Friends here in Ridgefield just built a house with geothermal and love it. Down side: Expensive to put in and to find someone to repair if need be.
The cost of maintaing an active system is why I’m interested in passive, Delving. I have a friend/client who, as part of a deal we negotiated with a busted builder, ended up with $600,000 worth (or so the builder claimed) geo-thermal pumps, wells, etc. for free. Even at that price, my friend says it works, sort of, but not enough to save significant money. And it hasn’t broken down yet, so he’s still in for that treat.