Energy Efficiency Designs

If you're not yet giving much thought to how much energy your new house is going to use, and how much it's going to waste, then it's time you started.

It should be one of your top priorities if for no other reason than your own pocketbook.

Energy used for heating and cooling homes is going to continue to get more expensive and as we've seen recently, world politics can quickly and dramatically affect your access to cheap energy.

Saving energy isnt just about saving money. It's also an important part of good design.

A Little History

This isn't the first energy crunch we've had. In the 1970's, when I was a college student studying Environmental Design, world events conspired to create an American energy crisis. It was an interesting time to study architecture, because the buildings we designed were required to respond to the environment by using natural energy sources as much as possible.

The homes we created used technology and inventive design to give them form. We designed solar homes, earth-sheltered homes, thermal-mass homes, and other types in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. They collected heat from the sun and the ground and held it inside as long as possible. They blocked excessive solar radiation with deep overhangs and shading devices, and they were very carefully oriented to the angle of the sun and prevailing winds.

Sure they looked a little weird (some were downright ugly) but we designed homes that stayed warm in the winter and cool in the summer and used almost no energy at all.

But then in the 1980's energy got cheap again, and everybody forgot about low-energy homes.

Zzzzzzz.

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Energy Efficiency Designs