Are there ways to reduce your home's energy loss without "going solar"? The principle behind passive solar energy is that you can orient the design of your home to retain heat in the winter and block heat from entering in the summer.
Frederick Bernard, the owner of Acorn Builders, a custom home designer, builder, and remodeler, says, "Certainly." There are many ways to make your home more energy efficient without having to start using solar power for all of your energy needs. Reducing the amount of energy your home uses can save significant amounts of energy. According to Solarenergy.org, "Just by using the 'off the shelf' energy-efficient technologies available today, we could cut the cost of heating, cooling, and lighting our homes and workplaces by up to 80%."
Bernard says, "A lot of the energy used in your home is used for lighting, for electricity for your appliances, and for conditioning the space to keep it at a comfortable temperature." There are ways to conserve the energy that is used for each of those purposes.
It's easy to save energy on lighting. Bernard says that "one way to save energy in your home is to use less wattage in your house by using low-watt fluorescent lights." Solarenergy.org says that "Replacing one incandescent light bulb with an energy-saving compact fluorescent bulb means 1,000 pounds less carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere and $67 dollars is saved on energy costs over the bulb's lifetime."
To reduce the resources needed to run appliances, Bernard says, "You can buy energy efficient appliances that use less water and less electricity to operate. Energy efficient refrigerators are a big way to decrease your home's energy use. Refrigerators in particular use a lot of electricity."
As for keeping your space a comfortable temperature, Bernard says, "You can insulate your home so that you minimize temperature changes in your home--so that it doesn't change temperature when the outdoor temperature changes. You can make your house airtight so that when your refrigeration (air conditioning) unit does run, it's not leaking air that you've conditioned into the air outside your home, but keeping that conditioned air inside."
When asked whether these techniques for saving energy are part of the principle behind passive solar homes, Bernard answered, "A passive solar house is a house that is designed from the ground up." The house is built to take full advantage of the energy from the sun. "You would want to orient your house so that the long wall with all the windows would be facing south. This is in climates where heating is required. When I build homes in warmer climates, I use a lot of overhang and shade. In colder climates, you design your house so that the sun will shine into it in the wintertime and will not shine into it in the summertime. The idea is that in hot seasons, the heat energy created by the light of the sun should actually hit a solid wall, like a brick wall, because that heat is absorbed into that hard material, which is able to sustain its warm temperature for several hours. And that radiates back out into the air of the house. That's passive solar energy because no mechanical or electrical means are used to collect that energy."
