Design Comments And Construction

Located in Indiana, this passive solar home features an open two-floor plan (no basement) designed to have very low energy and maintenance costs. The 1,216 sq. ft. first floor has a bedroom, two baths, a laundry, kitchen and great room, plus a sunspace. The 826 sq. ft. second floor is mostly open and used for business and recreation.

The passive solar design is in four parts.

• First, large south facing picture windows in the great room, admit solar heat during winter. Warmed air rises with the vaulted ceiling into the loft. Sunbeams striking the great room's masonry floor result in thermal storage for cooler times. The exterior overhangs block most of the direct sun during summer.
• Second, a separately zoned two-story sunspace is on the SW (South West) corner. Air movement, thermal storage and overhangs are the same here, except that windows and doors to this room can be opened and closed to control the flow of solar heat from this otherwise unconditioned space. Low positioned windows on the south, and high positioned windows on the north are used to create chimney-like ventilation in summer.
• Third, this home was designed for a passive solar hot water heater. With the water storage tank and heat exchanger located on the second floor (higher than the roof collector), the heated fluids rise up to the tank without pumps.
• Fourth, the steep, south-facing roof, one of the most prominent features of this home's exterior, is designed so that the owner can someday add solar photovoltaic electric panels.

The Fangmeyer home was designed in 1993 by John F. Robbins of Robbins Alternate Energies and built in 1995 by Glenn Tepe of Living Space Construction. Randy Sizemore of Entropy Ltd. did the solar water heater engineering and installation. Special building materials including foam-core panel walls, raised heel roof trusses with blown fiberglass insulation, I-joist 2nd floor joists and high slope rafters with radiant barrier and fiberglass batts, extruded polystyrene slab insulatin, rip-resistant polyethylene and low-perm paint vapor retarders, low-UVglass and exterior synthetic stucco over foam sheath were used. Other features include an efficient heat pump, central heat recovery ventilation and fluorescent lamps.

The first full-year utility bill (1996) was $783.37. Less than $100/ month!