Winter Sun

I've mentioned before about how much we really love the sun. When we were investigating ideas for our house, we looked into a lot of options. We thought about a cob house. We were working out a floor plan for a yurt. We knew we wanted something that was efficient in some way - and that's what sold us on passive solar.

We literally live on top of a hill. We see no other houses and the only thing we do see other than trees is the stacks of a local power plant in the distance. And that's on the east side of our house, where we don't frequently look out the windows. It makes us laugh, because people think we live in a huge house because the whole south side is windows. It's really not that big! But, it certainly does look that way from the south.

For the passive solar design to be effective, there are some elements built into the design. An important one, especially for the winter, is the length of the overhang. Our roof has a two foot overhang! I'm used to it now, but when I drive by houses with no overhang at all, it looks weird :-)

The overhang keeps the sun out in the summer and allows for lots of sunlight to enter in the winter! We were skeptical at first, but were quickly proven wrong our first winter here. The sun can reach our woodstove and even the pennisula in the kitchen!

As the solstice approaches, we garner an even deeper appreciation of the sun. And look forward to the return of the light!

On The Needles - November 8

It's definitely getting to be knitting weather round these parts. Dark early and chilly = cuddled under the blanket knitting. It will be even better with the woodstove going :-)

I'm trying to get Dan's slippers done before it gets too much colder. I am a l m o s t there!

For an idea of just how big these puppies are, check out the picture of Kole's 4 year old sized hand next to one.

And do you see the sun in that picture!? When you live in a passive solar house,  you hope for the sun. It makes such a difference in the comfort level of the house. It can raise the house a good 10 degrees on a nice sunny day. We love free heat!

What's on your needles this week?

Taking advantage of the view

We are so excited for the view that we have at the new house.  We have nothing the obstructs it, sans the towers from the nearby power plants which are pretty tiny in the distance.  The design of our house is passive solar, which means we are trying to harness the power of the sun to heat our home.  We have a 2 story concrete wall, which will be faced with brick.  The purpose of this wall is to retain thermal mass during the day, which will be released through the night.  This will hopefully eliminate the need for heat over the winter, other than supplemental heat from our woodstove.

The other feature of the house, which we both really love, is a lot of south facing glass.  This equals a LOT of windows on the south side of our house.  Our master bedroom especially has some nice large windows.  Today while we were out there, I was day dreaming of putting a window seat with built in bookcases in.  I could just imagine myself sipping hot tea while knitting or reading and enjoying the snow fall or sun shining outside.  Dan is on board with this, so now I just have to figure out how to make it all work in the room layout wise!  Does anyone have a window seat?