Australian Passive Solar Home

I’ve been interested in energy-efficient home design all my life, and for long time I’ve been collecting books on that topic. Here are some of my older publications. I might do another post with the modern books I have but these are the ones I want to comment on today.

These old books are about homes that are inspiring, cheap, innovative, filled with winter sunshine and are largely owner-built. They show imagination, skill and passion, and for people who believe science and building came together only recently, are filled with science and engineering.

Compared to most modern energy-efficient homes, including ours, many of these homes are startlingly radical. People came up with ideas, thought about them and then built them. They were quite unfussed if no one had built anything like it before.

Yes, when seen through a modern lens, there are some shortcomings. Computers – if even mentioned – were used only for showing sunpaths and angles, not for modelling the performance of whole homes. Datalogging of the thermal results was patchy. Some of the ideas now look a bit misconceived.

But what shines (pun) through is the excitement of building homes that work with climate rather than against it, of getting hands dirty in constructing homes radically different to those all around, and then enjoying the fruits of those labours.

Truly inspiring.