Passive Solar Simplified 1; An overview of green home design

Architect Thomas Doerr shows just what you need to know about passive solar house design to save over 80% of your home's heating and cooling bills. You will learn what you need to do to take advantage of the clean, free heating and cooling from the sun, and to lessen your dependence on volatile dirty energy sources. You will know the green building design strategies that save money, your health and hopefully the planet.

Video Part 1 of 6: an overview of passive solar design
Introduction to sustainable design including an off-the-grid house in the Rocky Mountains.

Topics of this video series include the three different passive solar systems, proper building orientation, area and types of glass, solar shading, thermal mass, ventilation, room arrangement, daylighting, and other important sustainable building strategies. You will know the green home design strategies that save money, your health and hopefully the planet.

You may view this video series in its entirety at a higher resolution at http://www.doerr.org/video/passive-solar-simplified-sm.html

A DVD with higher-resolution video of all the videos of this Passive Solar Simplified series plus some bonus material may be purchased at http://www.doerr.org/video/passive-solar-simplified-sm.html

http://www.BuildSustainably.com

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Category:

Education

Tags:

• passive
• solar
• home
• design
• green
• house
• sustainable
• building
• residential
• Denver
• Colorado
• architect
• sun
• energy
• efficient
• heating
• cooling
• Doerr
• off
• the
• grid
• boulder
• new
• mexico

[dassouki]

In terms of cost, how does an average 1,500 sq foot urban home let's say in Maine or North Dakota will cost to build in terms of building it passive or regular? The other question is, after 10 years of building a house, how passive is the house, does passive housing require a lot of maintenance and upkeep? are parts easy to replace? etc

[BuildSustainablyCom]

@dassouki, good house construction usually costs $150-200/SF so a 1500 SF house would cost about $263k, subtract 5% for conventional construction; perhaps Maine or ND are less expensive. The beauty of passive solar is that it is not complicated and thus will not require much maintenance. The parts are not high-tech.

[bokomaru4]

What a clear and concise explanation of passive solar design!! Nice projects, too.

[BuildSustainablyCom]

@bokomaru4 Thank you.

[trybal007]

Awesome simple explanations! Hats off! :)