Orientation for passive heating

Orientation is the positioning of a building in relation to seasonal variations in the sun’s path as well as prevailing wind patterns. Good orientation can increase the energy efficiency of your home, making it more comfortable to live in and cheaper to run.

Good orientation, combined with other energy efficiency features, can reduce or even eliminate the need for auxiliary heating and cooling, resulting in lower energy bills, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improved comfort. It takes account of summer and winter variations in the sun’s path as well as the direction and type of winds, such as cooling breezes.

Good orientation can help reduce the need for auxiliary heating and cooling, resulting in lower energy bills, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improved comfort.

Ideally, choose a site or home with good orientation for your climatic and regional conditions and build or renovate to maximise the site’s potential for passive heating and passive cooling, adjusting the focus on each to suit the climate. For those sites that are not ideally orientated, there are strategies for overcoming some of the challenges.

In all other climates a combination of passive solar heating and passive cooling is desirable. The optimum balance between capturing sunlight (solar access) and capturing cooling breezes is determined by heating and cooling needs.

North orientation is generally desirable in climates requiring winter heating, because the position of the sun in the sky allows you to easily shade northern façades and the ground near them in summertime with simple horizontal devices such as eaves, while allowing full sun penetration in winter.

North-facing walls and windows receive more solar radiation in winter than in summer. The opposite is true for other directions — and why, in mixed or heating climates, it is beneficial to have the longer walls of a house facing north to minimise exposure to the sun in summer and maximise it in winter.

Prioritise your heating and cooling needs. Are you in a climate that requires mainly passive heating, passive cooling, or a combination of both?

Compare your summer and winter energy bills, consult an architect or designer, ask your local energy authority or refer to local meteorological records.

Orientation for passive heating is about using the sun as a source of home heating by letting winter sun in and keeping unwanted summer sun out — desirable in the majority of Australian homes. It can be done with relative ease on northern elevations by using horizontal shading devices to exclude high angle summer sun and admit low angle winter sun.

‘Solar access’ is the term used to describe the amount of useful sunshine striking glass in the living spaces of a home. The desired amount of solar access varies with climate.