Award-Winning Homes Harness Passive Solar Energy  | | Stitt Energy Systems' custom home. |
Several 2006 EnergyValue Housing Award (EVHA) winning builders have successfully incorporated passive solar design into beautiful and extremely energy-efficient custom homes. A combination of state-of-the-art energy efficiency, passive solar design and striking architecture landed one EVHA-winning home an 11-page feature article in the May 2005 Celebrate Northwest Arkansas magazine. Stitt Energy Systems' 5,400-square-foot custom home features large south-facing windows to collect wintertime sunshine and overhangs sized for shading the windows from the high summer sun. The south-facing windows, fortunately, also permit stunning views of nearby Beaver Lake. Precast concrete walls are the keystone of Tierra Concrete Homes’ passive solar homes. Acting like a battery, the concrete walls store the sun’s thermal energy during the day and release it during cool nights, helping to dampen the large daily temperature fluctuations common in the Colorado climate.  | | A Tierra Concrete Homes passive solar home. |
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The home’s decorative concrete floors are left uncovered for maximum solar energy storage. Radiant floor heating, fed by solar hot water panels, provides backup heat when necessary. And clerestory windows and tubular skylights permit the home owners to walk into any room in the daytime without the need for artificial lighting. On the south side of the house, windows have a high Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) for maximum solar energy absorption. Twenty-two-inch overhangs block direct sunlight from late May through late July. Tierra Concrete Homes uses Energy-10, a well-respected passive solar design software program, to optimize window area, placement and shading. SunTerra Homes of Bend, Ore. also specifies window SHGC based on orientation. South-facing windows permit 62% of incident solar radiation through while west-, east- and north-facing windows permit only 33% through, helping to reduce the likelihood of overheating from the rising and setting sun. By combining passive solar design with a solar electric grid, Big Horn Builders of Boulder, Colo. built a completely off-grid, super-insulated passive solar home that needs no central heating system. Back-up heat is provided only by a gas fireplace. Because air conditioning is unnecessary in the cool mountain location, power needs are substantially reduced. Due to the home’s distance from the power grid, the off-grid power system was actually more economical than tying into the electric utility grid. For more information about passive solar design, click here for a fact sheet from the U.S. Department of Energy. | 
