[twawaaay]

This sounds great but there are alternatives.

One nice trick I have seen is windows offset so that the light penetrates deep into rooms during winter but does not penetrate in at all during summer. And then the floors acting as thermal mass and made to distribute the heat throughout the house. And so on.

I wish I could find this youtube video again. The house was built probably a hundred years ago or so by an American architect for himself.

There is a lot that can be done with mundane materials with a little bit of thoughtful design.

[schiffern]

Using sun angles to design proper overhang is a key insight of passive solar design. Shame it gets overlooked so often!

https://greenpassivesolar.com/passive-solar/building-charact...

https://www.susdesign.com/tools.php

https://youtu.be/OR8EQ0DWpPw

[swader999]

My house is set up this way. Many south facing triple pane windows, very few north. The overhang gives us direct sun into the house in the winter and very little in the summer. We have 11 inch concrete walls with 4 inch styrofoam insulation on each side of our walls (ICF construction). Costs about 40-80 dollars a month natural gas to heat in Alberta Canada.

[idiotsecant]

At your latitude and climate zone those windows are almost certainly either costing your more than the equivalent wall would have or are providing a benefit on the order of less than $20 per year. I've done exhaustive studies at my latitude and climate zone (which is quote similar to yours) with a wide variety of parameters and the numbers just don't pencil out in a significant way. My analysis was exhaustive and included actual weather data and solar irradiance data. In slightly warmer climates this is less the case, though.

[swader999]

Maybe, but the thick walls and styrofoam insulation give it a high r value. The furnace doesn't run much when the sun is out.

And the view is priceless :)

[patrickk]

Possibly this one:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qq-3cZ0cbws&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

[twawaaay]

Thank you, sir! That's exactly this one!

[patrickk]

You're welcome!

It's amazing what creative designs are dreamt up prior to having AC as a crutch, including examples much older than that. For example, water pools in the centre of Roman courtyards[1], which lowered the temperately passively. Another example are windcatchers common the Middle East[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impluvium

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher

[3] More examples: https://engineeringrome.org/2022/09/26/methods-of-temperatur...

[twawaaay]

I live in a cold climate so maybe less examples on how to keep your house cool and more about how to keep it warm.

I think I have seen a primitive but very effective heat exchanger in an old house. Normally, when you have a stove and chimney and hot gasses escape the house you also have a lot of cold air rushing in. In this house the hot air was directed around the whole length of the chimney and then through the mass of bricks that formed the stove so that the air coming in was already warm.

This allowed to very efficiently keep the entire house very warm while also nicely ventilated even in very, very cold weather with very little wood needed.

[breischl]

You can do something similar with an appropriately sized & angled awning/overhang. eg the visitor center at Zion NP does that, along with a number of other clever things. PDF: https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/upload/DOE%20Brochure....

But for commercial buildings where they're trying to squeeze out every square foot of rentable space, and probably are not allowed to overhang their property lines, it's likely not an option.

[twawaaay]

The overhangs don't have to take away from rentable space. It is in effect just a sun shade sticking out of the house horizontally blocking the sun without blocking the view like a baseball cap.

I am looking to buy a property right now and I have resigned myself that if I want a nicely designed house I will probably have to do it myself.

A well designed house does not have to be more expensive, it is just engineering -- and engineering is about knowledge, experience and ability to use both to make tradeoffs for a better result.

The knowledge is there but very few seem to be making use of it. Everybody tries to squeeze a lot of new tech but forget about old lessons -- just like in software development...

[toast0]

It depends on your building rules. If you're in a zero lot line environment, you can't build an overhang that encroaches on the neighboring lot.

The overhang may also count as your footprint in case of any other setback rules.

[ph0rque]

There's a neat overhang calculator that I used to size my window and door overhangs on the south side:

https://www.susdesign.com/overhang/