Hi does any body or no of any information of a passively designed building which uses the soalr energy fron the sun to heat the building during the day, i.e large panals of glazing to the southern facade of the building. If so what was the building like, excessively hot in the summer cold in the winter? also interested if there are any energy saving to be made.

Kind Regards

Mark Owen

Have a look at Passivhaus they have been doing it for ages.

You cant stop it happening just that most buildings are so poorly insulated that they need additional heating.

Hi Mark,

I think what you're asking about is commonly referred to as "Passive solar design", that is a design which relies on the winter sun to warm a thermal mass inside the home. This is not exactly the same thing as "passivhaus", which is a building standard for building very very well insulated airtight homes (which don't really rely on winter sun and could even cut back on southern glazing in favour of better insulation).
And then there's the passive annual heat storage (PAHS) that fostertom mentioned which relies on _summer_ sun to heat the earth and then release that heat in winter.
If you don't get much winter sun then a passive solar design might not be a good choice as all that southern facing glass loses a lot of heat. In this case you may be better off going with something like the passivhaus concept and rely on MHRV and appliances to provide heat.

David, did you use the vents in the floor as described in The Passive Solar House, or a solid slab? I'm also planning on building passive solar but need a basement too, so the plan is to have: concrete as the roof of the basement, then a layer of insulation, then a 6-10cm solid concrete slab to act as the thermal mass and ground floor. I'm working on the hunch that vents in the thermal mass will not make all that much of a difference...

hi guys thanks for th information, it is really helpful. does anybody have any first had experience of a passive solar designed building, eg, lived in, worked in.

king regards and many thanks

Mark

Tony, no the basement won't be heated. The idea is to insulate between the basement walls and the earth but not under the basement floor so that it's thermally connected with the soil 6ft below, but not with the upper soil. I'm hoping that this will allow the basement to be a more constant temperature in both winter and summer.