Passive Solar Design in Early American Homes: by Bill Hirsch, Architect and Author of Designing Your Perfect House:Lessons from anArchitect

The heat of the summer has energy-efficient cooling on my mind lately. Here is a passage from a blog I recently wrote after visiting a house in San Diego.
"Passive solar design and sustainable building are not new inventions. Who would have thought that we would be returning to the house design principles of more than a century and a half ago? I visited a house in San Diego that is built in the Spanish Colonial style of the early California settlers. You can see from the photographs that it is built in a "U" shape with a covered veranda wrapping the inside of the "U". In the center is an outdoor space that is planted and has a water feature in the center.

This is passive solar design at its essence. The climate is dry and the sun is harsh. So what did the builders do? They shaped the building so as to create a protected courtyard. The hot sun is kept from streaming into the windows and the thick adobe walls don't heat up in the sun because they are shaded by the veranda roof. This prevents them from radiating heat into the living spaces. In fact, the high-mass adobe walls will hold the cooler nighttime temperatures, providing a measure of cooling that requires no electricity. After all, they did not have that luxury. The shape the building and the use of the veranda as a corridor between rooms means that every room will have openings on two sides so that even the smallest breeze will ventilate the room.
It's these simple principles that we should be incorporating into our "modern" designs to reduce our demands for energy. The pleasant by-product of designing in this manner is that the spaces become more inviting and comfortable for people. Rooms with daylight on two walls are wonderful. Transition spaces, such as verandas, improve the quality of the spatial experience. Smooth transitions from outside to inside soothe our souls."

More about Bill Hirsch--

Bill's book, Designing Your Perfect House: Lessons From An Architect, continues to receive rave reviews from everyone. In fact, the awards and recognition are beginning to pile up! Some of the most recent citations include they following:

-2009 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Winner: Home and Garden category
-USA BOOK NEWS 2008 National Best Books awards: Winner in Home Reference category
-ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Award 2008: Silver Medalist: Architecture category

-Independent Publishers Book Awards 2009: Bronze medalist: Home and Garden category.

If you are interested in hearing Bill discuss his ideas about design and home building--- he was interviewed by Natalie Weinstein, host of Home Show with Natalie Weinstein. The radio program broadcasts from New York's 1370 AM, "WALK", on Sunday July 26 at 10 am. After it's airing, the podcast will be available at http://designingyourperfecthouse.com/mail/images/tracker.phpqid=0d3c4efeec8e1a6c06e98dfa71ebf223&go=http://walkradio.com/cc-common/podcast.html.

For more information about Bill Hirsch, go to his website:

http://www.williamhirsch.com/

http://www.designingyourperfecthouse.com/

Contact: maureen@dalsimerpress.com