Passive Solar Barn Design

The Hobbs men have been hard at work planning our next home!

Instead of depending on a central heat and air system, we are putting our trust in passive solar design (and wood stove).

Passive solar design:

In passive solar building design, windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer. This is called passive solar design or climatic design because, unlike active solar heating systems, it doesn't involve the use of mechanical and electrical devices.

The key to designing a passive solar building is to best take advantage of the local climate. Elements to be considered include window placement and glazing type, thermal insulation, thermal mass, and shading. Passive solar design techniques can be applied most easily to new buildings, but existing buildings can be adapted or "retrofitted".   - Wikipedia

A diagram to help the visual learners:

Because we are in the Northern Hemisphere, our windows need to face south to catch the sun while it is on its low winter track. Large overhangs then shade out the sun during the summer when it is high in the sky passing over our heads. Thermal mass is what stores the heat- we will have either dark colored concrete or earthen floors, as well as a stone slip form wall with stones from the land, to absorb the warmth of the sun all winter day, then release it to us during the night.  (Read more about stone slip form construction here. More about earthen floors here)

Daddy's sketches:

Our north facing wall has operable windows upstairs for summer ventilation and may be the place for plan B- a window air conditioner.

East-facing wall: you can see the carpot on the north side, greenhouse and pergola on the south side and the solar panel rack.  This East wall is where there will eventually be a garage door opening when this is converted to a barn/workshop.

South facing wall- lots of windows! The roof will overhang by 2 feet over the south wall. We are planning a pergola with vines to further shade the lower windows in the summer; the vines will die back and let the sun in during the winter.  

Next step- build a model!

We got the popscicle stick building idea from this blog.

 Looking from the living room, under the stairs and into the bedroom.

The north wall

We still haven't quite finished it, but we have a more tangible example now to visualize and plan with.


 CLICK HERE to see a detailed floorplan of the ground floor. The stairs will go up to a wide open loft, 32 x 20- half the size of the building. This will be the kids bedrooms and school and toy areas, and  maybe eventually a hay loft??

We still have aways to go- selling the house and getting bids on the parts we don't feel like we can handle for ourselves, but it's exciting to be getting so much closer!