House Plans Solar

I’ve been meaning to write up several articles and book reviews that are in draft form on this blog for a while now and perfection has been my enemy. In the spirit of this site I thought I’d link to some of the best online low/no cost solar house plans - emphasizing passive solar plans as I feel that is the BEST option.

There are two great sites with free plans that I can recommend:

1. Appalachian State University Energy Center Affordable Passive Solar Homes Planbook. This is a set of really nice inexpensive plans for North Carolina. Since this climate has hot, humid summers and can have really cold winters it is a good fit for most of the country. If I were to adapt these plans for my brothers in New England (Massachusetts border with New Hampshire) I’d recalculate the overhangs, increase the foundation frost depth, and slightly increase the roof insulation but everything else is already close to ideal. If I were going to use these plans in my location (Huntsville, AL) I’d again modify the overhangs (increasing them in this case) but keep the rest the same. Nice COMPLETE plans with all the details etc. The only complaint I have is the designers selected asphalt shingles and imply vinyl siding; I abhor these two selections - they are cheap in a bad way with a short lifespan - metal roofing and hardiboard cement siding really should be designed in as these are MUCH cheaper over the building lifespan for a small additional initial cost.
2. Building Science Consulting Designs and Plans for Affordable Housing. These plans do not emphasis passive solar like the Appalachian State ones do but they have several a different plan for each climate region for the USA. I really would recommend moving the windows around on these plans to put the majority of the windows on the south side and fewer on the east/west sides of the house. Then you’d need to add additional thermal mass to the home as well. In the end I’m recommending these plans because they are MUCH better than standard planbook house plans you can typically buy (and these are free) BUT they aren’t house plans solar optimized for your climate. They use some shading overhangs and obtain some passive solar heating but there is still quite a bit of optimization available. I’m quite certain that these aren’t optimized in order to produce plans that do not need to be oriented with the sun. Too bad they probably could save another 20% on their customers heating/cooling bills.

Good luck with your plan selections - please remember to be extremely suspicious of angles glass - I’ve seen lots of solar house plans from the early 70’s on the internet and they will really cook you out of the home in the summer (or cause a HUGE A/C bill).

Have you found any other solar house plans online? Let me know in the comments and I’ve review/comment on them here.