Carefully designed home gets most energy from the sun

A friend designed a "passive engine" design for solar houses ca. 30 yrs ago that won a large Lawrence Livermore solar design competition. Analysis' at the time showed that in Nov. thru Jan there would be >95% energy collection w/ no other additional energy inputs from people living in the house. Heat loss was on the order of 1 deg F for a 24 hr period w/ no energy input. Three totally different house designs were built around the "engine" in N.H. that confirmed the computer modeling.

The secrets were; the use of industrial design techniques utilizing precast concrete slabs and the utilization of the passages incorporated therein, concrete walls, properly designed greenhouse w/ precast overhange to minimize heat input in the warmer months (obviously facing south), super insulation (equivalent to what is standard practice today), storage of the heat in the large masses of concrete construction materials. This was big a step away from the traditional stick construction used in N.E., and it worked(s).

A house carefully designed for energy efficiency would not be 3200 square feet.

A house carefully designed for energy efficiency would not be 3200 square feet.

1) opinion, not fact
2)the larger the floor area (=function of volume)the lower the exposed surface area to living area (volume), thus the easier to maintain a given temp.

1) When I was in Minnesota 10 years ago they were changing the building codes to require 2x8 in the outside walls. This could have saved them even more.

2) 50% less than their neighbors is not "most" of their energy, its half.

3) Hampton Va isn't really that cold.

In Canada, the expectation is for 12" exterior wall insulation to get the optimum thermal barrier. Nobody does that. There are also special multipane windows (3 to 8 layers) that can insulate the biggest heat leak from the house.