Turning Your Home Into A Solar Home

TURNING YOUR HOME INTO A SOLAR HOME

There a lot of choices when it comes to making your home a solar-energy-powered home.  You can get heat, cooling, and natural light from passive solar design. Solar energy can be used for powering home appliances and a solar water heater can give you hot water for laundry and normal household use (bathing, preparing meals, cleaning). Look for the most efficient and cost effective options for your solar home.

You can have a passive solar home without having to use special equipment.  You can use the environment to accomplish great reductions in energy use.  Passive solar homes use material to use the sun’s heat during the winter and block the heat during the summer. Radiant heat, indirect gain, thermal mass, and passive cooling define the four ways a home owner might employ solar energy within a home, and each has its benefits: With radiant heat, the sun flows through the southern facing windows and is absorbed by the inanimate objects it shines upon, like furniture, floors, curtains, etc.; An example of indirect gain would be a solar wall installation which collects and distributes heat throughout the home; Thermal Mass describes the use of natural elements, like brick and stone, advantageously placed in a home’s structure to store heat and Passive Cooling describes measures used to cool a home and block the sun during the warm summer.

Solar panels produce energy, but it must be converted to DC   (household power) with the help of an inverter.  Solar electricity can be used to supplement metered power or use on its own, provided you have a battery storage bank to store it.

Solar energy is often used to heat water in the home.  Two kinds of solar water heating exist. First, there is the closed loop system which should be used in areas that won’t freeze. This kind of system uses the sun’s energy to heat water-filled tubes directly.  The definition of a closed loop system is one that is able to use an anti-freeze type of liquid which is able to absorb heat from the sun; in turn this heated liquid can heat your household water by the use of a heat exchanger.

Energy efficiency is the most important consideration when converting your home to solar power, regardless of which option you choose. This kind of passive energy diminishes the need for heating, cooling and electricity. You will save yourself a lot—in both energy and money – by using better insulation and more energy efficient windows than are normally used. These changes that may not be possible for you to use when you are trying to convert an already existing home into a solar home, but you should make as many changes as possible to turn your existing home into a solar home by adapting some of these solar ideas.