The next generation of "solar' houses

"It looks like a regular house!' is something architect David Wright often hears when visitors arrive at his solar house in northern California's Sierra foothills. That reaction indicates how far solar--or energy-efficient--design has come.

Solar houses first came to the public's attention in the early 1970s, received increasing publicity for the next 10 years, then all but disappeared. Several factors --the end of the energy crisis, the withdrawal of tax credits, and the public's perception that solar houses were complex or unattractive--all contributed to the evaporation of their popularity.

On these four pages, we show five recently built solar houses from California's gold country. All are energy efficient (wellplanned mass stores heat; double-glazed windows and insulation hold it), but each has its own architectural style. Together, they show that no rules dictate what today's solar houses must look like. Esthetics now come first.

Storage mass is now integrated discreetly into the houses--much more pleasing than the cumbersome water-filled barrels and columns that characterized much early solar design. Those are replaced by tile floors, plaster-covered concrete-block walls, and out-of-sight plaster storage in ceilings.

A winner from the AIA-Sunset Western Home Awards program

Crisp lines and bright, wide-open interior spaces disguise the hardworking solar design of the award-winning house at left. Beveled cedar siding, carefully considered size and location of windows, and white trim would make it fit unobtrusively into almost any neighborhood.

Architect Lynn Pomeroy designed the house. As with many solar houses being built now, a computer had a lot to do with the success of its energy efficiency. Fed information about window size and orientation, the computer calculated the volume of heat-storage mass needed to make the house perform reliably throughout the year.

Other houses, other ideas

The other four houses also face the gold country's hot, dry summers and cold, clear winters, but they go beyond the passive, direct-gain design Pomeroy used.

To heat his Victorian-style house, architect Paul Fellers built in an active system --radiant-heated floors. The only hint of its solar soul is the array of collectors on the south-facing roof.

In all of these homes, woodstoves provide backup heat. To get the most out of the one at left, David Wright encased it in a granite surround; the rock stores and slowly releases heat from both the sun and the stove.

In parts of the house away from the sunny south side, Wright fit bags of "phasechange' chemicals between the floor joists beneath the second-floor bedrooms. Like the rock fireplace, the chemicals absorb excess heat and radiate it at night.

It's a winner in our Western Home Awards program. Glass doors, tiled slab, block wall make it energy efficient

Built on a limited budget to be energy efficient, this 2,400-square-foot house received a citation in the recent AIA-Sunset Western Home Awards program. Architect Lynn Pomeroy of Foothill Design Group in Sacramento designed the house; it uses prefabricated components, common building materials, and inventive storage solutions. Sitting side-by side, three 16-foot-long sets of sliding glass doors face south, allowing winter sunlight to penetrate deep into the house; tiled concrete slab and plastered concrete-block wall store the heat. Adding mass, a 1 1/2-inch-thick layer of aggregate plaster hangs from the second-floor joists (it's masked below by the ceiling gypsum board), storing rising heat and releasing it to second-floor bedrooms.

Victorian in front, part solar in back

You have to look behind architect Paul Feelers' Nevada City house to see any trace of its solar nature. Above a tile-floored greenhouse space (for passive solar gain) sits an array of roof-mounted collectors that gather heat for domestic hot water and a radiant-heated concrete-slab floor. Fellers masked the slab with oak flooring nailed to sleepers embedded in the slab at pouring.

Slender sunroom can be isolated from rest of house

A sliding glass door and five large sets of windows fill the outside wall of this slender sunroom. Its tiled floor stores gathered heat. In the daytime, windows from the lower-level kitchen and upperlevel bedrooms open on the space to establish a heat-circulating loop. At night, the room can be isolated from the rest of the house. Architect Brent Daggett of Grass Valley designed it for Mary and Jim Stradinger.

Lessons in air circulation, winter and summer

Few windows perforate the north-facing walls of Cathy and David Wright's shingle-sided house. Architect Wright put most of the glass in the walls facing south to allow sun to reach deep into the house and warm its tile-covered slab floor. The house's main room combines kitchen, living, and dining areas; a change in level is marked by the 4-foot-wide, 8-foot-long granite surround for a woodstove that adds warmth and preheats the house's hot water. Heat rises to the three-story house's peak, where fans and ducts either recirculate it (in winter) or dump it outside (in summer)