Dear Jim: We have a large family and use much hot water. I cannot afford to have a solar water heating system installed, but I would like to make some type of solar water heater myself. What do you ...

Dear Jim: We have a large family and use much hot water. I cannot afford to have a solar water heating system installed, but I would like to make some type of solar water heater myself. What do you ...

Heating houses is a major energy suck. Behind passenger cars and trucking, it’s the largest energy draw in the United States. But it turns out homeowners looking to stay warm don’t need to rely just ...

Passive solar heating and cooling was omitted from the interesting article on "Building Green" (C&EN, July 16, page 11). This technique can save 50% of the heating and cooling costs of a home in the ...

Over the past two weeks, I’ve written about two relatively obscure passive solar heating strategies: Isolated gain using sunspaces, and; indirect gain using a Trombe walls. This week I’ll cover a far ...

The pre-Columbian ancestors of today's Indians used it. So did the ancient Romans, the medieval Arabs and many other preindustrial peoples around the world. It's still widely used in less-developed ...

Do you enjoy coming home to a warm home in the dead of winter? Do you leave your furnace running in cold weather even if no one’s home? If you want to keep the house warm for when you return later in ...

Passive cooling, like the shade a tree provides, has been around forever. Recently, researchers have been exploring how to turbo charge a passive cooling technique — known as radiative or sky cooling ...

The author’s home boasts numerous large south-facing windows that enable passive solar heating of the entire house, even in single-digit temps. In the early 1980s, an American energy crisis had passed ...

As a former realtor, general contractor and greenhouse operator, Kristi has touched nearly all aspects of homeownership, from the foundation up. Today, Kristi is a full-time investing and real estate ...

When it comes to renewable energy at home, solar panels are often the first option that comes to mind, leaving homeowners with the choice between monocrystalline or polycrystalline solar panels, and ...