Improving your Home?
Are You a Home Owner Looking For a
Great Home Solar Energy System?

The ideas about a new Home Solar Energy System you will find here are all about giving you, the proud home owner, an in depth look into the advantages of using solar energy. I want to make sure that the investment you make today, will result into a greener tomorrow for generations to come.

I am not only talking about your conscience here. We all hear these popular phrases "going green", "green living", etcetera etcetera, but what does it really mean?

• Do we do it because it is the latest craze?
• Do we do it because we want to save money?

Maybe, but for me the real reason to "go green" so to speak, is to provide a sustainable future for generations to come.

For us as homeowners, the only really contribution we can make towards a sustainable future, as it is financially the only viable option at this stage, is to make use of solar energy.

There are other methods, like wind power, hydro energy etcetera, but these aren't really an option at this stage because of the cost and the physical limitations of space we experience at our homes.

The definition of sustainable energy is the following:

Isn't this the REAL reason we should do this?

• Yes, of course we want to improve the value of our home!
• Yes, of course we want to do the right thing and "live green",

but the real reason I want to tell you about how to go about implementing an effective home solar energy system, is for the reason mentioned above.

Before we go further into the nitty gritty on how to implement an effective home solar energy system, let's explore the technical detail of: 

"How is solar energy used?" (pssssst...... for those of you that are not really interested in the detail, you may skip this page!)

OK, now that that is out of the way, let's see how we:

1. Make use of Passive Solar Energy.....

A part of utilising the sun, or solar energy, are techniques used by architects and designers and what is called passive solar.

This technique is extremely important when you design your home from scratch; and also when you renovate and want to make effective use of all available natural resources to reduce your carbon footprint.

Passive solar techniques include the following:

• To orientate a building towards the sun,
• Selecting materials with a favourable thermal mass or light dispersing properties, and
• Designing a building so that the air moves naturally from room to room for effective circulation.

The advantage of this is that it reduces the need for "dirty" alternate resources like coal generated electricity as used extensively in South Africa.

So it is very important that you as a Do it Yourself Home Improvements "fanatic", make sure that every aspect of these techniques are considered and used to the maximum, in order for us as the "DIY breed" to contribute towards a better future for our children.

By orientating a building towards the south, in the northern hemisphere, and towards the north, in the southern hemisphere, an architect can then design a building that is tailored to the local climate and natural environment. This means that the solar energy is used optimally and the inside of the building can stay comfortably warm in winter and comfortably cool in summer.

Using passive solar techniques, together with modern computer technology, an architect can tailor make a solution that integrates this design methods with active solar techniques, to combine solar lighting, solar heating, and solar ventilation as a complete home solar energy system package for an effective low impact and environmentally friendly home.

2. Make use of Active Solar Energy.....

The sun radiates heat and light, and this constitutes what we call solar energy. This solar energy is then harnessed using different active solar technologies which we will explore here.....

• DIY solar water heating,
• Solar heating pumps,
• Solar water heaters,
• How to heat your pool,
• How to power your home using the sun's energy, and 
• The cost of solar energy,
• What you can expect to save in monetary terms by using solar technology!
• A review of the "best" Solar Power Water Heater.

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