Passive Solar Design: Creating Sun-Inspired Homes

Image Gallery This home is a passive solar design, meaning it’s designed to capture the sun’s heat in winter. It’s also incredibly energy efficient, and incorporates another type of solar — the solar-electric panels on the roof. PHOTO: SUN PLANS

Many people who are planning to build a house would like to end up with a green, energy-efficient home, but aren’t sure how to get started. While we may be familiar with the need for insulation, or even with the basics of passive solar design, it’s not always clear how to transform those ideas into an actual house. And just as importantly, how do you build that house without spending a fortune?

Fortunately, architect Debra Rucker Coleman would like to help us answer these questions. Her book, The Sun-Inspired House, outlines her design ideas, while her company, Sun Plans offers a range of house plans, custom design and consulting services for people who want to build beautiful homes that don’t consume a lot of energy.

Here’s what Coleman had to say about her work, the fundamentals of passive solar design, and why it’s always a good idea to design homes (or select house plans) with the sun in mind. As Coleman says, constructing a sun-inspired home begins with a thorough planning process, and choosing or developing a house plan is one of the first steps along that path.

Designing Sun-Inspired Homes

How would you define “sun-inspired” as opposed to “passive solar”? 

I like to use the term “sun-inspired” rather than “passive solar,” because with passive solar, you run into confusion with all the different kinds of solar, such as photovoltaics, and now the new Passivhaus standard that’s coming out of Germany.

Also, “sun-inspired” incorporates more than just the heat from the sun — it also incorporates the light from the sun, and the necessity to keep the sun out in the summer.

(Note from MOTHER: We think the terminology gets confusing, too. If you’re trying to pin down what these different terms mean, check out these brief descriptions of the different types of solar and of the Passivehaus standard — which is not the same thing as passive solar design.) 

Can you tell us a little about your company? 

Sun Plans was established in 2002, and the goal was to be able to offer affordable architectural services throughout the United States, especially related to sun-inspired/passive solar design.

I’d had a lot of questions from people who were asking why there weren’t more passive solar architects or house plans available. So I thought, well, we’ll make them available on the Internet. It started out nationally and now it’s gone international, into Canada.

The other thing was to make it affordable. Typically architects will charge 6 to 15 percent of construction costs, and less than 5 percent of people hire them to design their homes. So we developed an affordable service that’s more along the lines of a house plan company. That keeps the fees — even for a new design — closer to 2 to 3 percent of total construction cost. And that’s only about half of what you’d pay a realtor if you were buying a home.