Passive Solar House: The Complete Guide to Heating and Cooling Your Home [Hardcover]

James Kachadorian (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2006

Revised and Expanded Edition-Includes CD-ROM with Custom Design Software

For the past ten years The Passive Solar House has offered proven techniques for building homes that heat and cool themselves, using readily available materials and methods familiar to all building contractors and many do-it-yourself homeowners.

True to this innovative, straightforward approach, the new edition of this best-selling guide includes CSOL passive solar design software, making it easier than ever to heat your home with the power of the sun. Since The Passive Solar House was first published, passive solar construction expert James Kachadorian has perfected user-friendly, Windows-compatible software to supplement the design process explained in the book by allowing homeowners/designers to enter the specifications of their design and see how changing a variable will affect its energy efficiency.

This is the building book for a world of climbing energy costs. Applicable to diverse regions, climates, budgets, and styles of architecture, Kachadorian's techniques translate the essentials of timeless solar design into practical wisdom for today's solar builders. Profiles of successful passive solar design, construction, and retrofit projects from readers of the first edition provide inspiration to first-time homebuilders and renovators alike.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James Kachadorian is a civil engineer with degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T) and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is the founder of Green Mountain Homes, a company which gained national recognition as the first provider of innovative, manufactured solar homes. He has built more than 300 passive solar homes. Kachadorian resides in Woodstock, Vermont.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green (September 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933392037
• ISBN-13: 978-1933392035
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #297,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Subtitle Misleading - This Book is about Passive Solar Heating, November 28, 2006

By 

TJ in Houston (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Passive Solar House: The Complete Guide to Heating and Cooling Your Home (Hardcover)

A more accurate title / subtitle would be: The Passive Solar House: The Complete Guide to Heating Your Home. I say this because there is only a page and a half out of 224 pages given to cooling (that is pages 110-111). I realized that I may have purchased the wrong book when I read in the Preface the following:
"The knowledge imparted in this book has been accumulated from over 30 years of data gathered from several hundred solar homes located in the northern tier of the United States, from North Carolina to and including Canada and west to the mountain states. These are locations that are primarily focused on heating."
I live near the gulf coast, and was interested in learning about passive means to cool my home, in addition to heating. (As I write this just after midnight, at the end of November, my Air Conditioner is necessarily on!) This is probably a 4 to 5 star book for those living in the cooler regions of the country, and I do not intend to discourage those living in such areas from reading this book. And, if I move to a cooler region after retiring, I will probably pull this book out and review it.

57 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous and excellent EXCEPT for..., June 12, 2007

By 

D. Garcia "cordedpoodle" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Passive Solar House: The Complete Guide to Heating and Cooling Your Home (Hardcover)

First to address TJ in Houston's cooling problems. 1) movable awnings over windows and walls exposed to sunlight 2) slit windows at the bottom and top of the north side wall will allow heat to escape at the top which will pull cool air in at the bottom, especially at night and especially in a two story building. You might also explore cooling towers which essentially do the same thing.

I've been involved with building houses for several decades, and I've been thinking passive solar for quite some time too. In fact many of the ideas in this book are very similar to ideas I've developed independently.

I've seen everything on thousands of jobs from everyday homes to ultra gigantic mansions. One thing I've learned from the BEST builders is to avoid the experimental. Avoid extravagant shapes. Build simple buildings. Put your money into quality material and hardware... unless you want problems. And please keep the place neat. Nobody likes tripping over or cleaning up garbage the last guy left. Call your subs BEFORE you need them and ask them what drives them nuts, instead of finding out you made the same goof everyone makes, after you've spent a bunch of TIME and MONEY building it wrong.

I have to say the slab thing, and the ideas about the Sun's inclination etc are ingenious. They've changed my thinking considerably.

WHY THEN ONLY 3 STARS?

Well mainly some small, but galling, typos, and the lack of a website, or at least an obvious website. James needs to get feedback on these problems and the revisions need to be posted somewhere so they don't keep driving people nuts:

1) on page 76, Table 6-10 it says "see appendix 4." If you use appendix 4, like I did, it will totally confuse you and give you a headache. It SHOULD read appendix 5. The data on appendix 4 LOOKS like it MIGHT work which makes the problem worse. This one took me almost an hour to figure out.

2) The book has many pictures and come with even more on a CD, many useless, like a picture of a truck delivering stuff. I've seen trucks on roads before James. This is no help. However there is no CLEAR picture of HOW the slab is CONNECTED to the foundation walls. I'd like to see a close up. The diagrams are not clear enough on this issue. I don't have that much experience in this area and I'd like an answer. It seems to me that if the slab is in contact with the foundation wall there will be heat loss thought transmission from the slab to the foundation wall. Isn't that why the wall is insulated on the inside? If the slab does not contact the wall it seems to me that it's free floating which makes me nervous. In the diagram it looks like plywood ties the slab and wall together which make me think termites. Poured concrete slabs are usually tied together using rebar or similar. What is the secret?

3) on page 67 he goes though a series of equations to derive the elegant end equation I=Btus/hr·ºF. However you don't need the last equation to derive the information on the next pages. You need the NEXT to the last equation. It took me half and hour to get past that confusion. I kept looking for the LAST equation. Where oh where was it? The math is moderately difficult for us non engineer people but this typo made my head hurt. Ouch!

4) the diagram on page 46 appears to have a stud that makes a 45 degree turn and then another 45 degree turn??? I really don't think it does this, but I'll be durned if I can figure what they are trying to illustrate.

Anyway James, if you see this please put up a little tiny website with your email address please, so we can contact you about errors. A web appendix with corrected typos would be nice too. Websites are cheap and easy now days and you don't need much of a website really.

Otherwise great ideas.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Buy This Book Before You Build, September 17, 2006

By 

B. Waggoner "Electrical Engineer" (Nevada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Passive Solar House: The Complete Guide to Heating and Cooling Your Home (Hardcover)

An excellent resource for anybody who plans to build any kind of solar house. Several detailed (yet easy) design examples walk you through all the necessary heat gain and loss calculations which are necessary for all successful (i.e. comfortable and effective) solar structures. Many types of backup heating systems (including wood stoves) are discussed, including how they work together with the solar heating system. Lots of useful tables and other data in the appendices. This book focuses on a single "solar slab" design concept (which precludes the use of a basement), and only mentions other possible solar designs in passing. That said, it would be foolish to design a solar house without having this very affordable and excellent book in your reference library.