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OUR SOLAR HOME
An ebook about a Colorado solar home
The unique concepts presented in this ebook will help you design any solar home!!!

by Mike and Lisa Kraft

Regularly $21.95
Now $14.95
SAVE 25%

Our Solar Home will offer you some amazing ideas for building any solar design.  It takes anyone, from solar beginner to solar novice, and walks them through the simple and more complex parts of solar design, when building a home.  Our Solar Home is a plan of a solar house that was designed and built in Colorado. The home was built in 1981 around the passive solar model, and the book includes pictures of what the house looked like when it was built, and what it looks like today, nearly 25 years later!

From the book..."Our solar home was actually started in the Spring of 1979 with a growing concern for future energy costs and the need for more room, as our family was also growing. We did lots of looking, attended seminars, took home tours, read books, and supplemented it all with a couple of classes...The more we learned, the more convinced we became that the key was (and is) to use as much passive solar heating as possible in our plan...We are very excited about and grateful for what we have been able to accomplish, and will be happy to share whatever solar knowledge we have and are continuing to gain."

In this book, you will learn how to incorporate the following into your solar plans:

  • overhangs to protect against summer sun
  • solar water heating
  • passive solar flooring and heating
  • window design and layout to maximize solar efficiency
  • insulation
  • draping/shades

 

Here are a few examples of graphics pages from Our Solar Home.

          

          
The above are all clickable, but bear in mind
that the writing and graphics are much clearer in the book.

This is an awesome one-of-a-kind plan for a unique solar home, and includes hundreds of concepts which can be incorporated into the design of any solar plan.

Some examples of comments in Our Solar Home:

o        We didn’t follow all of the Passive Solar design rules exactly because we didn’t want a house of fanatical design.  The adjustments we made allow our home to look fairly traditional, however, the house calculates out to achieve approximately 70% of its’ winter heating and almost all of it's summer cooling needs directly from the Sun, once all of the elements are in place.

o        Every living area, except for the recreation level sink area, has a natural lighting source.  We don’t need to use any energy turning on lights during daylight hours.

o        The house is totally electric as we chose not to have propane trucked in and in 1982 we were still ‘out in the country’.  At that point, natural gas lines were simply not available. The ‘traditional’ back-up heating system is an electric radiant film located in the ceilings behind standard drywall.  Each living area has its own thermostat, 13 in all, which allows us to control the temperature (and energy use) throughout the house as we desire and need to.  We chose this type of backup electrical heating system because it works on the same principles as Sunshine.  In other words as the infrared rays strike an object they are converted into heat. By utilizing this type of system we avoid unwanted moving air (drafts) and also contribute to / leverage the collection and storage capabilities of the mass of the materials used in the house.

o        Initially we were going to build our Active solar domestic hot water system.  However, time & personal physical energy just ran out. To those who might question whether a solar heated domestic water system really works, we can only say that we generally shut off the traditional water heater somewhere around June 1st until about September 15th and our family never runs out of hot water.

So should you buy Our Solar Home?

Ask yourself the following:

  • Do I want to save money?
    Do I want to let my home be an energy collector  (If you answer no, you are saying that you would prefer your house to be an energy drain, because you are letting your house continue to suck on your finances.)

  • Do I want to learn about concepts that any person can, and should, incorporate into any home design.

  • Do I want to learn how the sun is the best way to both heat and cool my home.  How is that possible? 

If you answered yes to ANY of the above questions, you should definitely spend the $21.95 to buy Our Solar Home.  It is well worth it for what you will learn and be able to put into practice.

Purchase Our Solar Home today at a discounted plan rate!


Pay with Visa, MC, Amex, Paypal
Regularly $21.95
Now $14.95
SAVE $5.00!

Our preferred method of payment is PayPal, but other options can be arranged if necessary.  Please Contact Us for more options.

Mike and Lisa Kraft wanted to add pictures to this page of their solar home, and pictures of their family enjoying their solar home.  You can see in the pictures that a solar home can be designed like any other home, as a place of comfort, protection, gathering, warmth, health, fun, and lifestyle. 

One of the differences in building solar is that you are using the sun to create warmth and light, leaving you more money saved in electricity costs to spend on things that really matter, like spending time with family.  Plus, Lisa says (and we agree), "There is nothing better than lying in a sun-filled room, letting your body heat up using the sun on a cold fall or winter day!"

 

    

Purchase this Colorado solar home plan today.   25% discount may end soon!

Regularly $21.95
Now $14.95
SAVE 25%

Our preferred method of payment is PayPal, but other options can be arranged if necessary.  Please Contact Us for more options.

 

 

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