Editor’s Note: I’ve written about Rob Dumont in the past. He is one of the fathers of the green building movement, and I’m very pleased to have permission to reprint one of his columns here.

By Rob Dumont

Have there been any recent advances in the area of passive solar heating for residences?

Passive solar heating has been known since the time of Socrates. However, it is only slowly catching on in Canada. Improved windows have made the recent advances possible.

In the 1970s there developed two schools of thought regarding how best to reduce space heating bills in residences using passive means. One school was called the “mass and glass” school. With this approach, large south facing windows would be used along with concrete slabs and heavy construction such as adobe. This school had a lot of proponents coming out of the south-western United States. New Mexico was a hotbed. New Mexico has an especially favourable solar energy climate and relatively mild outdoor temperatures compared with most of Canada. A photo of the David Wright Home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is shown in Figure 1. In Figure 2 a cross section of the house is shown.

Figure 1. South exposure of the David Wright House in Santa Fe, New Mexico

(Photo Credit: Design for a Limited Planet, Skurka and Naar, 1976)

Figure 2. Cross Section of the David Wright Mass and Glass House

( Credit: Design for a Limited Planet, Skurka and Naar, 1976)  read more... »