Conservation is vital to make living in a solar home work. As I have said before, my wife and I intend to build a rammed earth solar home and we are looking for the right piece of property to build it on. You can get back to the beginning of this series to find out more about what we are doing here.
So, how do you make a solar home work? The first step is to reduce the amount of electricity that your house needs to be livable, and one of the biggest draws on electricity is for heating and cooling. During the summer months half of our electric bill is just to run the air conditioner, and we don’t even keep our house all that cool.
Our house will have rammed earth tire walls on three sides with earth berms against the outside. This by itself would keep the house a constant 54 – 56 degrees, like in a cave. The fourth wall, the one facing south, will have large windows to allow in the sun to heat the space up to about 70 degrees year around. This is called passive solar heating. The earthen walls will store the heat that the absorb during the day and radiate it back out at night.
Without needing electricity for heating and cooling, the solar panels on the roof should be able to generate enough electricity for the rest of the services we need.
There are are other things that we can do to reduce our need for electricity. Another potentially large expense is the electricity for the refrigerator or freezer. If we keep those to the back of the home where they will stay in the shade, they won’t have to work as hard as if it was in the direct sunlight at the front of the home.
Some lifestyle changes will also help to reduce our need for electricity. Basically, if you need light to do something, try to do it while the sun it up. When we do need light after dark we try to use LED lights as much as possible. We can also shift our sleeping schedules to coincide with the sun moving across the sky. Obviously this will be much easier to do during the long days of summer and will be more of a challenge during the winter when the sun can be gone by about 6PM.
That’s the plan and we will see how it goes once we actually get it built and start living in it.
Wayne Woodworth
wow ! great idea! do you think these solar house may work in an urban area?
Thanks so much!
Larissa from Hair removal methods
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That’s entirely up to your local building inspectors and whether they will give you a permit for it or not. I know the Earthship people are building one in New York City, so it is possible.
We have solar panels so we have hot water all year round b/c we live in a very sunny place.
But i have a question how will you keep your place cool in the summer? it will get super hot no?
Leeanna, thanks for the comment and the question. The house will be partially underground so that the Earth will cool it. If you have ever been in a cave then will understand. Once you get 3 or 4 feet down into the ground the temperature becomes fairly constant. Our house will have earth berms around 3 sides to keep it cool, but no cooler than about 56 degrees. The south facing wall is mostly windows so that the sun can heat the space from 56 degrees up to 70 degrees. We can prevent it from overheating in the summer with blinds on the windows and vents in the roof. You can see my first rammed earth solar home post on this here.
Yes you’re right i just thought about the heating effect you were talking about but yes it is indeed pretty cool inside caves, this is great! I liked your post about the solar home especially the fact that it collects water for later use, too bad all our houses aren’t made like that. think about how much good that would do for the environment…
I agree. When my wife first found and told me about all of this, and that they have been building homes like this for 30 years, I was amazed that there aren’t more like this. We have the ability to significantly reduce the amount of fresh water that we use, fossil fuels that we burn for energy, wood for houses and the subsequent deforestation. I really is amazing.
Hi Wayne,
Thanks for writing this post!!! I’m very interested in this subject lately. I have another question, if I may, how are you going to warm the water for shower during the winter ? Do you have kids?
Thanks again
Jess from Best Long Term Options
Hot water is easy with a solar hot water heater. It mounts to the roof like a solar panel to collect sunlight. Yes, we have 2 kids and they are going to learn a lot through this process.