Home: On The Side Of Light
The Independent Weekly, by Kate Dobbs Ariail

Since Earth Day a year ago individuals and companies have responded positively to the exhortations of environ-mentalists. We carry our shopping bags and separate our trash and feel better about the problem. But the Persian Gulf War and ensuing environmental crisis have made it clear that much more drastic steps need to be taken. To put it most simply, we need to use less. Most particularly we need to use less oil and fewer oil-dependent products and processes.

If you are planning to renovate or build a house, you can take advantage of highly developed design tools and technology that will cut your home energy consumption up to 75 percent or even more, while giving you a clean, comfortable and beautiful dwelling.

There has been an unfortunate tendency to believe that conservation necessarily meant discomfort; that solar design was essentially at odds with an architect's aesthetic purpose; and that solar was not really very suitable for our region of the country, anyway. Fifteen or 20 years ago, there was partial truth in each of these beliefs, but no longer. You may be surprised to learn that North Carolina and the Triangle have led the way in development of solar housing.

In fact, North Carolina has one of the five strongest state programs in the country for promoting the use of solar energy. Even after federal programs advocating solar power died during the Reagan administration, the N.C. Energy Division continued to promote solar energy use and established the N.C. Solar Center at N.C. State University. The Solar Center is the most accessible source of information for anyone interested in building a solar home or retrofitting an existing home for greater efficiency.

Freeman Ledbetter in his own solar home.

You may be surprised to learn that North Carolina and the Triangle have led the way in development of solar housing.

The Solar Center distributes a booklet called Solar Homes for North Carolina, which will introduce you to the basics of passive solar design—all the things you can do to make your house use the sun without adding devices that store and convert energy. The booklet shows 12 plans for solar houses suitable for this area. While some of them have that "solar look" several are quite traditional in appearance.

Construction drawings for the houses are available at nominal cost. The Center can even supply you with Builder Guidelines for local use.

Another way to get ideas for your solar home would be to visit some in the area, starting with the NCSU Solar House. In Gary’s Kildaire Farms subdivision you can view several houses that the Raleigh firm Innovative Design built in conjunction with the Carolinas Concrete Masonry Association (block and brick are used to hold heat in many passive solar homes). Or you can look around the Green Mill develop-ment off Dixon Road in Durham.

Green Mill developer Freeman Ledbetter says that this is the first solar subdivision east of the Mississippi. Ledbetter, principal of Sun Space, Ltd., bought the 30-acre tract 10 years ago, subdividing it so that each lot would allow the correct orientation necessary for effective solar design. He designed and built 11 of the 21 houses currently in the neighborhood. Ledbetter, who holds a doctorate in bio-chemistry from Duke, hadn’t really intended to become a solar designer, though he’d always been interested in building and design. In the early ‘80s when he began his development, interest in solar was flagging and he was finding it difficult to keep Green Mill going on the path he had envisioned. So, he started designing the houses himself. He attributes his success partly to his good luck in hooking up with structural engineer Nick Gardner from the very beginning. Ledbetter does the original draw-ings and solar research, and Gardner works out the specs. On a tour of his own recently completed solar home, Ledbetter pointed out features that make it work. Public or living rooms are all on the south side and private rooms are on the north. A tile floor collects the heat from window walls. Rooftop collectors heat water in radiators under the floor, which helps heat the house and provides hot water. High performance glass, which maintains a more constant temperatu is used. All windows and skylights have shades, shutters, window quilts or retractable awnings to control heat loss at night and heat penetration in summer.

Ledbetter’s house also has a rather open design to make use of natural convection currents to circulate warmth in winter and to vent hot air in summer. Other efficient designs make extensive use of air flow as well. The envelope house, which is a kind of house within a house, makes use of energy collected during the day, but also depends on the flow of warm air rising from the earth at night to stabilize the temperature of the inner structure. In the summer, the earth stays cooler than the air, providing natural air conditioning. In the air core system the warmed air that’s risen during the day is drawn off and pumped down through the holes in interior masonry walls, which then radiate heat at night.

Nobody in the Triangle is more enthusiastic about all these solar innovations than Raleigh architect Michael Nicklas. He’s not only an experienced solar architect, but an educator and activist, promoting the use of solar energy at every level from local to international. Ac-cording to Nicklas, his firm, Innovative Design, has done more solar projects than any other in the country—more than 500 passive solar homes and hundreds of other non-residential solar projects. Most of the homes, he says, are 75-85 percent energy efficient, and they have even made houses that require no energy except that of the sun.

It may cost more initially to build an energy efficient solar home, but you will begin to save money in very short order at today’s utility rates. And more importantly, you will be decreasing the demand for non-renewable resources.

For more information about the use of solar energy, contact:
• The N.C. Solar Center, 737-3480.
• The N.C. Energy Division, 733-2230.
• The N.C. Solar Energy Association, 832-7601.
• The Alternative Energy Corp., 361-8000.