I thought passive solar design was just hype until I tracked my heating bills

I lived in a drafty old house in Portland for 3 years and my December gas bill was always around $180. After I added some simple thermal mass and south-facing window shades, my latest bill dropped to $95. Has anyone else tried basic passive solar tweaks and seen real savings?

2 comments

2 Comments

kelly.parker12d ago

My buddy Mike tried this in his 1920s bungalow in Denver. He was skeptical too but he put in a big dark tile floor in his living room that gets direct sun from like 10am to 3pm in winter. First January after he did it, his furnace ran maybe 20% less compared to the year before. He said his utility bills dropped by around $40 a month just from that one change. Now he's convinced and he's been adding more thermal mass in other rooms.

robertb3011d ago

That line about his furnace running "maybe 20% less" is pretty wild. @kelly.parker, you know, I had a similar experience but in a totally different way. My uncle in Phoenix tried this with a concrete floor in his sunroom (like a super hot version of the same idea) and he said his AC ran less in the summer because the floor soaked up the heat during the day and released it at night when it was cooler. He even put in these dark red tiles that look like terracotta, which I thought was ugly at first but now it's grown on me. Anyway, his electric bill dropped about $30 a month during the worst part of the summer, so I guess it works both ways if you have the right sun angles.