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Title: The Passive Solar House (Real Goods Independent Living Books) by James Kachadorian ISBN: 0-930031-97-0 Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company Pub. Date: June, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.54 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Passive solar design basics, formulae and needed databases
Comment: An excellent book for the beginner in passive solar home design with a cookbook approach and worksheets to calculate the solar performance of you building design. Usefull tables needed for calculations are included but only for a limited number of localities. Based upon a sound, albiet more than 20 year old, approach to passive solar design. An easy to understand process for the design of a truely passive home with methods to determine the need for and cost of supplemental heat in many areas of the country. Principles throughout the book may be applied to other designs. A detailed explanation and instructions on building the "solar slab". Well worth the price of admission!
Rating: 5
Summary: A Realistic Option for a Solar Home
Comment: I was planning a major two-story, south-facing addition to our home on a slab and wanted passive solar already so I was intrigued by this book. It brings together the need for thermal mass to moderate temperature swings, backup heating needs, and provides much needed cooling assistance. I liked how he determined a practical level of insulation and didn't over engineer that aspect. He also covered air quality issues at length.
One small error, I think, was in his design of thermal shutters saying the foil surfaces would reflect heat back into the room while behind wood veneers. I may be wrong, but reflective surfaces don't reflect heat unless there is an airspace adjacent and not up against a solid surface.
I would like to see spreadsheets on disk to make it easier to run your own calculations for your home design and for your region. I would also like to see a chapter on making additions to your home like I'm planning. Adding more information about solar water heating would help complete the book too. I'm curious about the author's experience in this area.
Rating: 4
Summary: Thorough exploration of one type of passive solar system
Comment: "The Passive Solar House" explains in detail a system that the author patented (patents since expired) for a passive design using a concrete slab for thermal mass. There are detailed worksheets to let a prospective homebuilder figure out expected temperatures and available solar intake throughout the United States. Along with the formulas and worksheets, you can figure out how much insulation, concrete slab mass, air duct area, and heating plant capacity you'll need to incorporate the author's system into your house plans. While the author's patents were in effect his company sold dozens of passive solar houses in factory-built modules. Many of those houses are depicted in both exterior and interior photographs.
While the thermal slab approach works equally well to buffer temperature swings for both heating and cooling, the book's emphasis is on solar heating. Conventional above-ground construction is assumed for the most part, but the treatment on the "sidehill" variant can be extended to included earth-bermed or buried houses.
The illustrations are generally good. In a few cases they are more diagramatic than detailed; however, with enough attention to the illustrations and the text, most details can be gleaned. (I'm still trying to figure out the spacing relationship between the concrete slab channels and the return air duct, though.) But this is definitely a book more about solar design than engineering or construction.
"The Passive Solar House" could be improved by including more techniques for summer shading (such as awnings and overhangs) rather than just assuming deciduous tree plantings (which are expensive to keep watered in desert regions). Coverage of solar absorption properties of floors and windows would also be helpful.
Summary: while not perfect, this is a very good book for explaining the author's thermal slab approach to passive solar design.
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