One of the best things you could do for your family and the world environment is to make a switch to a solar home and the resultant living green lifestyle. Historically we have relied on fossil fuels to provide us with power and light for our homes but unfortunately they come at a price to the environment in the form of pollution in the air.

Today we have options that are becoming more and more attractive as not only pollution reducing options but also in terms of saving money. Sure there is an investment in the beginning but for many things that are good for you and the planet that is the case.

One of these alternatives is the sun. One that is free and abundant and will be available for a long time to come. There is nothing that has to be done to ready this resource for use and it is delivered right to your doorstep or more accurately your windows and rooftop free of charge every day or at least most days depending on where you live. No one has to truck it to your city or pipe it along it's way across the country it is at your door free of charge.

Solar houses are made from the start to deflect or collect heat and facilitate air circulation by orientating the home properly, insulating adequately, using shading enough in the summer and providing for sufficient thermal mass. If these and other technologies are taken advantage of solar will probably cost more to start with but eventually it will save money and that is over and above the benefits that the environment will get.

To start with solar homes are designed to be very energy efficient starting at the drawing board. They can use photovoltaic modules. That is a fancy way to say they have panels that harvest the sun and turn it into power. In this way the solar home is sustainable because it meets some if not all it energy needs from the sun,

A solar home optimizes the floor, wall and window configuration to collect, distribute and store the suns energy for heat in the winter months and at the same time it rejects the suns heat in the summer making it the optimal living environment for humans without leaving such a large carbon footprint.

Passive solar works best in an house that is made energy efficient with a well thought out mechanical system. It is a piece of the energy-efficient home and usually should not be thought of as a stand-alone solution to going green and saving energy.

Passive solar homes revolve around these simple facts: In winter, our sun in the northern hemisphere rises in the southeast, stays low in the southern sky, then sunset is in the southwest. Only the southern facing wall of the home gets the full sun during the day, and it will let the sun shine into the home. In the summer our sun will raise and follow a path that is more northeast to northwest making the sun overhead during midday. It is during the summer that the design will take advantage of shade and protective systems that repel the heat and shield the house from the sun.

One of the easiest things that can be accomplished in the area of a solar home is to use the sun to heat the water used in the home. Often it will be a closed loop system which works best in places that are not prone to freezing and those tubes are then heated by the direct exposure to the sun.

When a person builds to take advantage of the power of the sun it doesn’t have to cost a lot more than the same size home that is built with conventional methods but it takes some planning and expertise. The science to make sunshine into energy to run your home has been around for a long time but within the last few decades the economics and the technology have vastly improved to the point where using photovoltaics are moving at least a little closer to mainstream building methods.

There is a sort of spiraling effect that happens when one starts to invest in renewable energy because the passive solar allows one to reduce the heating and cooling systems thereby saving money that can be reinvested into other cost saving efficiency systems. You can see how this can continue until you end up with a house that is very efficient and is either within the original budget or very close.

Smart construction today is a matter of arranging the building materials that are required for a home in a new way so that they produce a home that makes far less impression on our environment and solar plays a big part of that change. When a home is constructed in a fashion where it is tight and insulated well with windows that allow for proper air flow to make it both comfortable and cost savings you end up with a design that meets many goals of the environmentally conscious consumer and it just makes sense.

A passive solar power home collects the heat from the sun and uses it to heat the home and sometimes the water where active solar powered home will collect that same sun and convert it into power to use in the home for other uses. For obvious reasons the first is easier to do because it can be built right into the design of the home where the active type of solar is more costly and requires more complicated systems to accomplish. Just by orientating the home correctly to take advantage of the sun and installing the right windows and window treatments and providing for some sort of internal heat collectors can save 20-40 percent of the energy cost of running the home.

Active solar uses special equipment to collect the sun that may be mounted on the roof of the home to use all the sun even in the winter. The technology of that conversion into power is beyond the scope of this article but what you need to know is it can be done. The suns heat converted into power to run the home is no longer a dream but is today being done in many parts of the world.

Here is a quick and easy explanation of the process. The sun is captured with photovoltaic cells and then it converted into electricity. It is then converted into ac power by using an inverter that changes it from dc power to ac power. It is possible to supply the complete needs of a home this way but more often it is used to supplement the power of metered electricity. Far more work and investment has to generally be made to take a home completely off the grid along with sometimes changing some lifestyle habits to lower the power consumption.

Passive solar energy does not aspire to such lofty goals but aspires to supplement the power needs of the home by replacing heat that is generated to heat that is acquired from the sun. So it is mainly used to heat the home and heat the water used in the home. The living space in the home is designed along a east west axis so the long face of the home faces south and those spaces that require less lighting and heat like garages, closets, workshops and utility rooms will be arranged along the north side of the home. This all works best when the home is designed from the beginning to be energy efficient and has a mechanical system that designed for efficiency too.

The primary goals are to increase the insulation and cut back on the heat loss. This positively changes the ratio of the relationship of the floor area to the solar gain needs so the amount of thermal mass is reduced. In simpler terms one would increase the insulation and stop the heat leaks in the home so that there is less sun needed to heat the home making for less impact on the home design and possible cost of building it.

In conclusion there has been some parallels drawn between a home that is powered by solar to that of sailing a boat. Sailing a boat to any destination takes much more skill than getting a power boat there. The process takes far more engagement and effort but one can reach the destination just the same and save a lot of fuel on the journey. Maybe you will be the one that today decides to join the ranks of those that bid farewell to high power bills and make a change to do your part to save our planet too.

I am considering several topics for new hubs related to this one and wondered if you would like to comment on which one you would like to see. Below is a list of topics or questions that I would like to answer sometime. Which would you like me to do first? Please comment below.

what generates more power wind or solar panels
how much solar power is needed to operate a drill
how does electric wires from a solar cell connect to household power
how to have solar power installed for free
free how to install solar power
how to install a power inverter and solar panal to electrical panel
how much does it cost to build a solar power plant 'solar power plant'
science fair projects on solar power when meals
what is the cost for solar power in your home
how make your own solar power generator
how does home solar power systems work
how is solar power better for environment
how to build solar power on the cheap
where is a solar power plant ?
how fast dose a solar power car go
what gose faster a solar power car or a regular car
what countries use the most solar power
how much solar power is needed to operate a small ac appliance
why solar power needs to exist
how holland uses solar power
where solar power used the most

To make this process of helping me decide easier for all you lazy ones like me I have added voting capsule below so now you can pick from the list above and comment or you can vote below if all you want to do it cast your vote.