The people fortunate enough to live in a consistently warm and sunny place like Southern California don't need to worry about their heating costs in the winter. But the rest of us are looking for ways to save energy, thereby saving money. Today, being environmentally conscious is trendy anyway, and you'll save money to boot. When thinking about alternative home heating, consider the option of passive solar heating.



The sun's power to heat is high, even on the very cold winter days. If the days were longer during this time the sun would melt the snow. Wouldn't it be great to use the sun's power to heat your home without having to redo your home completely?

Now we have the Trombe wall. It is made of some sort of material (concrete or rock, for instance) which is utilized because of its thermal mass. This means that it holds in the heat of the warmest part of the daytime and releases it gradually throughout the following hours. It has exterior insulation by means of a sheet of glass and also has an airspace which means it avoids losing warmth during the nighttime. Over the glass there is a shade which lets the lower wintertime sunshine in but keeps the higher summertime sunshine out. That results in smaller air conditioning costs also.

True, short of major renovations, such an addition isn't going to be easy to retrofit to your house, and custom designed homes are expensive. But retrofitting a house for other energy efficient heating techniques, like radiant heating, is also expensive and, unlike the other alternatives, passive solar heating, once implemented, costs nothing to continue using.

Consider also the fact that the concept of the Trombe wall is a 19th century invention that was popularized in the 1960's and so has been designed into a number of existing homes. So when you're looking for that new, energy efficient home, know that designs of yesteryear can still be green.

The commonly presented traditional views are viable, but we have all been searching for a long time for ways to economize. Finally nowadays, we have become more ecologically aware and, given the high prices of our usual heat sources, we have begun to think about clever answers found by our forefathers, such as passive solar heating. That allows us to preserve precious, dwindling resources and utilize them alternatively in our struggle to save our beleaguered planet.