Passive Solar House Design
Posted on | August 28, 2008 |
If you want to build a passive solar home in Nova Scotia, chances are you’ve heard of Don Roscoe. He is a past (or maybe even present, it’s hard to tell from their website) officer of Solar Nova Scotia, and teaches a solar design course, that my wife and I intend to take this fall. Our friends in Three Brooks have a Don Roscoe home and it’s positively incredible. You can see photos of it in the gallery of the Solar NS site (this is a direct link).
Don Roscoe passive solar home
The design of the home is modern, slightly eclectic and indicative of Don’s style. The basic theory of a passive solar home is thus:
- By positioning a wall of windows facing true south, you can collect heat from the winter sun
- This heat is captured by the engineered concrete slab floor
- You can also circulate this warm air via ducting in the floor
- Some passive solar homes collect the warm air as it rises to the ceiling and recirculate it back down to the slab, thereby increasing the duration of warmth
- This method of heating is sufficient for all but the coldest of days, in which case you’ll want a secondary heat source. The house above has a wood-burning appliance/stove. With only a couple cords of wood per year, the house stays warm and cosy. Obviously, this means that heating costs are very low, and wood is a renewable resource, so it’s a win-win. Sure, wood may not be the cleanest burning fuel, but it’s better than using electric and supporting the coal plants Nova Scotia Power uses to create electricity in this province.
We recently purchased a book called Passive Solar House: The Complete Guide to Heating and Cooling Your Home. In this book are numerous tips and trick for taking full advantage of the sun as a heating and cooling mechanism. There are also formulas for calculating appropriate amounts of glazing, vs depth of concrete floor, and amount of shading required to take advantage of the winter sun, yet not overheat in the summer. If you looked at the Third Design, you’ll see the use of an overhang to shade the left and right windows and a trellis type thing to shade the core windows.
When we first decided to buy the lot, we called quite a few people for advice. Knowing how much we liked Roscoe’s solar homes, we called him first. We were actually quite surprised by the reception we got from him. As it turns out, he doesn’t want our business. He is only interested in working for people who are planning to live in their home forever and are planning to design it for eventual one floor living (we are). His workers are apparently very delicate people who perform well only when presented with gifts and frequent days off to enjoy the sun (say what?). Throughout the 40 minute conversation with my wife, Don was rude, conceited and clearly disinterested in ever working with us. From talking with other people, apparently, that’s just how he is, until he gets to know you and deigns to take on your project, and only then if it strikes his fancy.
I don’t understand that. If you are good at your job, and you know it, by all means take pride in your work and feel comfort in the stability that notoriety provides. But why treat people badly just so that you only have to take on the single project a year that appeals to you? Just tell us up-front that you are very choosy about what you work on, we’re grownups, we can deal with it!
We’re very happy to be working with a designer who ‘gets’ passive solar design and doesn’t wear their ego on their sleeve, despite having phenomenal abilities. I expect that throughout the course of this project we’ll come to meet plenty of super cool people who love what they do and are enjoyable to work with. I also expect to meet lots of people who are the exact opposite. I intend to fully disclose absolutely every detail of these meetings, the prices on the quotes (when possible) and our impression of our contractors. Isn’t blogging all about being honest?
Comments
5 Responses to “Passive Solar House Design”
Leave a Reply
August 28th, 2008 @ 8:29 am
Ummm Jeff, you made some negative comments about Don, yet you are going to attend his course?… what he happens to read your blog! Surely you’ll get an F in the course!
August 28th, 2008 @ 8:36 am
I still think we can learn from him.
Even if he does treat people badly.
August 28th, 2008 @ 12:02 pm
Jeff,
I have to really commend you on the “full disclosure” approach you are taking with this blog. I firmly believe that word of mouth is the best (or worst) advertising that can be had. It really shocks me how unprofessional some businesspeople can be, and they should fully expect this behaviour to be known!
April 19th, 2009 @ 10:20 pm
While I understand the reception you received from Don, I do not agree with your opinion of him. My wife and I had the pleasure of taking Don’s course and he subsequently designed our home. He simply is one of the best designers of efficient and functional solar homes available. What may come across as conceit, I believe, is his knowledge of “been-there-done-that”. He is not a sub-division type home builder of cookie-cutter homes. He spends a significant amount of time with clients to design the best home possible. While you, or your wife, obviously had a personality conflict with Don, I would suggest that you may have misread his professionalism and personality.
April 20th, 2009 @ 6:17 am
Thank you for your comment. I’m glad you had a good experience with Don. However, our interpretation of Don’s professionalism is not an isolated experience. Throughout this process, we’ve spoken with people who have one of Don’s houses, people who have taken his course, other builders who have worked with him or know him and the universal opinion has been that he’s arrogant, difficult to work with and opinionated.
While I can understand a certain level of arrogance when you’ve achieved what Don has achieved, but there is a level of professionalism in how you deal with people that Don is quite simply, lacking. I regularly am approached by people whose projects I do not wish to take on or people’s whose views do not align with mine as a designer. I treat each and every one of them with respect, and explain our position and pricing and why we don’t see it as a good fit. Or, I give them enough information to reach this decision for themselves.
I expect the same level of professionalism with everyone I deal with. Don lacks this ability. I don’t doubt that he will continue to design amazing homes, and I’m sure he’ll continue to do it for as long as he wishes until he retires as he really knows his stuff. It’s too bad he can’t be polite about it though when he doesn’t want your project.