IntelEfficient

Each day, as the sun rises and travels across the sky, an immense amount of energy is lavished on our planet.  An oft-cited statistic is that more solar energy falls on the earth in one hour than what is used by the entire population in a year.  In fact, most (almost half) of this energy is stored in the ground as heat.  This time of year, it doesn’t feel like there’s much warmth to spare, but you can certainly capture it and use it to heat your home.

If you’re building a home, your builder or architect could design it to take advantage of passive solar heating.  With this concept, the building is oriented so that the southern façade has lots of windows and a wide roof overhang.  In the summertime, when the sun is high in the sky, the overhang shades the windows like an awning to keep the building cool.  When the sun is lower in the sky in the winter, the sun’s rays shine freely through the windows to warm the floor.  A concrete floor with tile is an ideal surface to store the heat well into the evening.  The concrete floor can also use radiant heat as a quiet mainstay heating source. Read the rest of this entry »