Articles

When it comes to heating costs, most of us are not lucky enough to live in a temperate area with a constant year-round climate, and instead have to contend with winter heating bills that can be exceptionally high. When evaluating alternative home heating, an option that is often overlooked is passive solar heating. You not only save money, but energy as well.

The sun's power to heat is high, even on the very cold winter days. If the days were longer during this time the sun would melt the snow. Wouldn't it be great to use the sun's power to heat your home without having to redo your home completely?

Enter the Trombe wall. It's a wall of material used for thermal mass (concrete or stone, for example) to store the heat of the day and release it slowly through the day and night. It's insulated on the outside by a pane of glass and an airspace to prevent heat loss to outside at night. Above the glass is a shade that allows direct exposure to the low winter sun, but shades the glass from the prolonged heat of the high summer sun, helping to keep summer cooling bills low as well.

It is not very easy to retrofit your home, and you would might need to do a major renovation. Custom designed homes are also expensive. Retrofitting your home for other energy efficient heating systems such as radiant heating is also expensive. However, with passive solar heating, after you pay for installation, it costs nothing to heat your home.

You should also think about how the Trombe wall was invented in the 19th century, and became popular in the 1960's. This wall has been installed in many existing homes. If you want a new, energy efficient home, you can still consider older designs because they can be green as well.

Ideas that circulate in the mainstream today do work, but people have been looking for money saving opportunities for a long time now. It's due now to the increase in environmental consciousness and rise in heating costs that is leading people to look to the solutions of yesteryear, such as passive solar heating, that were used effectively by our ancestors to save resources, to use as solutions to help save the world.