![[Home]](sustain_t.png)
Shelter is one of the Basic Human Needs.
Even in Nova Scotia's somewhat northern (45°N) latitude, a heat-tight home can collect most of its energy from the sun.
Your solar home will be very handy
For much more information about how to [[build_a_solar_home?]], and to see lots of examples, visit http://solarns.ca/. Solar Nova Scotia has published a book on how to build your own solar home, called the Solar Shelter Manual.
Your energy efficient home needs to do four things. It won't work without all four.
Ths is the big one. Plan B -- replacing current energy use with renewables -- won't work. There aren't enough renewables.
What will work is vastly cutting the energy use of your home through better insulation, windproofing, using efficient lighting, cutting your water heating costs and large electric appliance costs. You will need a home a bit better better than an R2000 (EnerGuide Rating 80) home before any solar energy collection will have any impact. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's fairly easy and not substantially more expensive than "traditional" house construction to do.
The other good part of this is that these extremely efficient homes are very cozy.
If your house leaks heat - fix it first before adding Solar Collectors.
Exercise for the reader: Think about having a leaky gas tank for your car. The expensive gasoline is dripping out onto the ground 24 hours a day. How much work should you put into getting more droplets of gasoline into your tank? Is there a better thing to be doing?
Once you have a home that doesn't need much energy, the sun can contribute a significant amount. Passive energy collection uses windows; active uses some kind of Solar Collectors.
You also want to design the home to not collect much energy in June, July, and August. Currently, no [[seasonal_storage?]] technologies work particularly well.
It doesn't help to have your home so hot that you have to open the windows at 4PM on January 10th, if you have to turn on the furnace at 8PM. You need a system to store the daylight energy overnight.
It doesn't help much to have the Solar south rooms of your home roasting hot if you have to turn on the heat for the north side rooms. Your home needs a heat distribution system.