[BobWallace]

Hot climates: Both an attic fan to pull hot air out of the attic and a "whole house" fan to pull cool air into the house at night.

The attic fan will let the ceiling of your house "live" in a more moderate climate. Attics can get incredibly hot and moving some outside air in, hot air out can make a big difference.

There are attic fans that run off their own solar panels. Just cut a hole in the roof and install them.

Many hot places in the SE can be miserable during the day but quite moderate at night (I grew up in Tennessee). If you pull cool air into your house at night you can store "cool" in your thermal mass (think furniture, sheet rock, etc.) and use it to postpone the heat of the next day.

I had an aunt/uncle who built with a basement. They had a whole house fan and pulled cool air from the basement into the house in the afternoon. (These were the days before air conditioning.) Made a great difference. And the air exchanges in the basement meant no damp, dank basement.

Use curtains/shades/blinds/landscaping to block sunlight during the day. It's best if you block the heat before it gets into the house. Check into "solar screens" for windows that get hit with sunlight during summer days. They can block an incredible amount of heat while still allowing one to enjoy the view.

[TreeFarmer]

The attic fan/ whole house fan idea is good for October to April in southern Georgia. During the other months it really does not coll off that much at night as a rule (I'm talking 80ish at midnight is not uncommon).

I've got a site where I can build a one-story house with a walk-out basement to the North.

I'm going to get a couple of books and see exactly how close to E-W I need to orient the ranch I want to build and also how much overhang I need to shade the windows for 8 months of the year.

FWIW, the average January temperatures where I want to build are High 62, Low 37. As you can see, I will not need much heat at this location.

TreeFarmer

[BobWallace]

How about a heat collecting "porch" on the south side? Open it up during sunny days or add a thermostat controlled fan to move hot air into the rest of the house. Then trap that heat with good insulation/dual pane windows to hold you over the night.

Convert the "glass" porch to a screened porch during the warmer months. That will give you a thermal barrier from some of the heat, lowering your cooling needs.

Opening windows, French doors, opening skylights would all move heat out during the hot months. Might be a great place to add a solar-driven roof fan.

--

Doing an air exchange with the basement rather than sucking cool air out and replacing it with outside, hotter air might work better. You may have to take humidity into consideration.

[werigh]

I agree with Bob that an air exchange in the basement would be a good solution. Could be as simple as a set of large pvc tubes 10-foot deep underground on the north side of the house, with a "chimney" drafting air from above ground, a hundred feet of the house.

As for passive solar home designs, if you follow the basic principles, you get a house that can be both comfortable and nice to look at.

Besides, I like the videos they've put up on this page about alternative heating solutions. It's interesting what one can do with recycle tires and cans! You can actually see the cooling tube installation at 2:37.

[BobWallace]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('werigh', 'I') agree with Bob that an air exchange in the basement would be a good solution. Could be as simple as a set of large pvc tubes 10-foot deep underground on the north side of the house, with a "chimney" drafting air from above ground, a hundred feet of the house.

[Rogozhin]

The link I'll post has some very good information regarding passive home design. There are also links to many good books.

GreenHomeBuilding

Rogo

[Madpaddy]

gg3 wrote,
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ith a larger number of smaller rooms you have the choice as to how to use the rooms, which ones to heat and cool, and you can accommodate emergency guests more easily if needed (in the community, we call emergency guests "R&Rs" for "relatives & refugees"). You can have one or more people in the "library" reading or telling stories, while someone else is in the "media room" watching a movie, while another is in the "home office" online with email, and no noise-interference between them.

[Pops]

Lots of good advice here! I’ll talk about aesthetics since no matter the efficiency of your house, if you think it is ugly you won’t like it. I designed and we built a house in CA that met the energy code for two elevation zones colder than its location.

The best complement we had was from the guys installing the propane line who said, Great remodel on the old farmhouse!

Obviously we like old houses and Thuja and others struck on one of my favorite new/old choices; small rooms with doors and small heat/ventilation sources. Of course all southern rooms have advantages both winter and summer but we like the feeling of those little cozy rooms instead of the new barn/house style and as gg3 said, they allow you to have privacy without being totally isolated.

Our main sitting room is located on a north face and that is where we have our pretty woodstove. That room is the warmest in winter making the naturally warmer southern rooms just right.

And I’ll third Ludi and Sky’s endorsement of enclosed stairways, another new/old idea, which I hadn’t known the advantages they describe until we moved into this old house. Although we have yet to make the stairway as well lit as we would like, it makes a great picture gallery.

Finally, porches and their orientation, shelter and accessibility make all the difference in a person’s enjoyment of the outdoors and relations with passersby.

With all the technology and design tools developed over the last 30 years, the hard part is not in making an efficient house; but making it feel like a home.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Madpaddy', 'Y')ou do know that as much open plan as possible is the conventional approach to passive design. You then require only one heat source for the extremely cold nights

[BobWallace]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Madpaddy', 'Y')ou do know that as much open plan as possible is the conventional approach to passive design. You then require only one heat source for the extremely cold nights

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BobWallace', 'A')nd create a "nasty storm" wood stash somewhere close. I keep about a quarter cord in the garage just in case going all the way to the woodpile is problematic.

[Madpaddy]

Bobwallace wrote,

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') read the quoted part and found myself uneasy with it also.