What are several advantages of passive solar heating in homes?
Question:
Answer:
The obvious advantage is you don't have to spend a lot of money on equipment and there is nothing really that needs to be maintained or fail.
It's a very elegant way of building - you're combining the form and function more closely together than a normal home would.
It is not all that easy to do, however, because you have to have the right thermal mass (brick or concrete slabs make good thermal mass) and you need to understand the sun angle and regular daylight conditions very well or you will wind up either baking or freezing.
I am a big fan of using passive design as much as you can without making the house look too goofy and supplement with a small heat pump or geothermal heating/cooling.
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