Hi list, We are in the process of drawing up house plans for a solar passive earth home. We plan on moving to the North west. I was wondering if anyone could give me any helpful hints on drawing up plans, getting water into the house, or any other thing that would be helpful for us to know.. We probably wont be able to afford anykind of solar/wind power. We do have a wood cook stove with a water jacket and a large tank that the heated water goes into. Thank you for your help! Ginny http://goin.missouri.org/~yehagirl

-- Ginny Davis (yehagirl@goin.missouri.org), November 16, 2000

Answers

Ginny:

Please define passive earth home.

I suspect it is where a hillside is dug out and all which really shows of the house is the front. I have only been in one of these and didn't like how dark it was - about like living in a basement with no windows. I saw a design on TV to where such a house was built with a center, open courtyard. This let light and fresh air into the side and back rooms, but did sacrifice some energy efficiency.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), November 16, 2000.

Having attended the National Tour of Solar Homes for many years now, I drool over the many active and passive solar designs and have never seen a dark one yet. Even got to go inside a real Earthship (built of aluminum cans and tires) and it was the most beautiful home I have ever seen. It would have been nice to spend more time there talking with the owners. There are many books and periodicals available at the library containing a wealth of information. Or browse through them at a large bookstore.

-- Sandy (smd2@netzero.net), November 16, 2000.

We checked out a book at the library on earth homes. Built into hills with south facing windows, Average inside temp 65 degrees, no painting on outside, just mow the roof and no need for a tornado shelter. I saw one here in North Alabama about 6 years ago, they installed skylights in some rooms with insulator covers for extremly cold weather.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), November 16, 2000.

Hi Ginny. Where abouts in the Northwest? If the interior, you will probably have enough sun to justify it. If on the coast, difficult to capture much solar gain, as it's cloudy, overcast, or just plaining raining a lot. You are wise to consider the passive part, as well as earth sheltering/berming. Depending on geography, you might get good wind. Hydro is an option in some parts, too. Best of luck to you.

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), November 16, 2000.

Actually, Sheepish, when we lived in Tacoma (hubby was in the Air Force and stationed at McChord), my husband knew someone with a summer home on one of the islands (Vachon? I don't remember). They had put in a solar water heater, and were very surprised one cloudy day to find that they just about got burned when they leaned against the pipe from the collector. So even in cool cloudy weather, there can be some solar gain.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), November 17, 2000.

Gerbil, told me of a good book which covers this a little, its called the integral urban house by the farallones institute. I got my copy on ebay for 5 dollars.It covers gray water, recycling, ect.

-- kathy h (ckhart@earthlink.net), November 17, 2000.

Ginny, after the frustration of living in a deep valley with NO sunshine in the winter for slightly over twenty years, I moved a quarter mile away, onto a ridge with full winter sun. Heaven! I didn't realize how much difference it made.

I'm in southwest Oregon, north of Grants Pass (Jumpoff Joe Creek Valley) It's normally very cloudy, and rainy here in the winter, with fog some mornings. I built an earth sheltered house--the downstairs is buried up to about six inches shy of he second floor joists on the two uphill sides, and about three feet deep on the other sides. I also insulated the home quite heavily.

I am fortunate enough to have a five star view to the west, which is awesome, but is a bad place to have lots of windows. I couldn't sacrifice the view for efficiency, so I put very large overhangs (four to six feet) on the west side (on the east side, too, for that matter.

To make up for not having as much southern wall space as I would have liked (what with all the west facing windows), I designed the house with an attached greenhouse along about twenty-five plus feet on the south side.

On the rare days when we get full sun, I don't need any heat, but only during the day, and it's usually necessary to have at least a small fire in the mornings if it's cold. I am blown away at how easy it would seem to be to heat a house with passive solar in a sunny climate, considering how well it works here.

Two bits of advice for you, and anyone who lives in a climate in the northern hemisphere where it is necessary to heat in winter, but where it's hot in summer:

1) Unless there are mitigating circumstances, such as my westerly view, it's best to orient your house along a long east west axis. In other words, make the house, say fifty feet long and twenty feet wide, with one twenty foot side facing east and one facing east. Then the fifty foot sides will be on the south and the north sides of the house. This serves a couple of purposes; it presents more wall (with plenty of glass) to the low southerly sun, which also makes it easy to shade in the summer, when the sun is high, and it presents smaller walls, with less glass, to the morning and afternoon summer sun.

2) Try to maintain vegetation (or earth sheltering) on the east, north and west sides of the house. In the winter, the sun will be rising quite a bit south of due east, and setting quite a bit south of due west, so the vegetation won't be blocking the sun in winter. In summer, the sun rises quite a bit north of due east, and sets quite a bit north of due west, so the vegetation on north, east and west sides will give you shade morning and afternoon. Overhangs on the south wall will give you shade during the middle of the day in summer. This is not perfect, as the sun in Sept. follows more or less the same path as in March, so the sun which helps heat the house in March will help heat the house just as much in September, but this can be overcome with shades, or bamboo curtains, etc.

A big advantage to earth sheltering here, where the summers are fairly hot, but dry, and the nights are generally quite cool, is that the downstairs part of the house stays very nice all the time. We just open the windows, and sometimes turn on a whole house fan for a couple of hours before dawn during the hottest days (like over ninety-five or 100 degrees.)

We've only ever had to run the air con for about fifteen or twenty hours TOTAL in three summers!

I could spend hours giving you advice, but instead I'm going to recommend a book. I've learned a lot from it; I've had it for over fifteen years, so some of the info is somewhat outdated (like it's normal now to use a lot more insulation than it was then), but it's a wonderful reference book, and has lots of sun charts, climate charts, etc. and is written by a very sharp man. The book is called THE PASSIVE SOLAR ENERGY BOOK, by Edward Mazria, published by Rodale Press, surprisingly enough, in 1979. Whether there are any new editions or not, I can't say.

I've done a lot of research over the years; I've designed and built several partially solar heated houses, all in this area. I wish we had more solar potential. I've also designed and built many solar water heating systems, which work extremely well in the summer only. I don't even try to heat water here in the winnter, as it makes the systems too expensive with little hot water generated.

I have found no better book to recommend than the one by Mazria. It's great.

I skipped your post, by the way, because it only said "help", and I don't have time to read every post. I only read it because I was asked to by another visitor here: Sharon, of the Wild Heart :)

JOJ

Oh, one other thing; if you're building earth sheltered, especially in the rainy parts of the northwest, pay especial attention to drainage outside the house!

-- jumpoffjoe (jumpoff@echoweb.net), November 18, 2000.