So you purchased some land and you are wondering where and in which direction to place your home?
We currently know of three considerations which pretty much answer this question:
- We sleep with our heads in the east and our feet in the west.
- We’d like to benefit from passive-solar heat – which means most of our windows (and thermal mass considerations) will be facing south
- We’d like to have a great view
The order they are in is not random – it reflects our priorities. It’s hard to enjoy a nice view from a cold house. It’s also hard to enjoy a nice view in a warm house unless we sleep well. So sleep, warmth and view is how it goes.
Once that is set it can be useful to get more specific about the actual position of the sun over the months and seasons of a year. You can then place the sun relative to other natural elements in the landscape (hills, trees,etc.) and then decide where is best to place windows to make the best of what sunlight is available.
One way to do this is to actually be on-site for a year and make measurements. When this is not possible there are solar calculators to do the trick for you.
To do this you will need a solar map calculator – a few of which are available online:
- I think the easiest and friendliest calculator is at PVEducation – where you can easily shift the time of year to see the solar path change.
- A simple and useful charting tool I found (so far) is SunPosition Calculator which has basic free functionality and extended paid options.
- A more complex and elaborate tools can be found at SunEarthTools.
To use these tools you will need to find the latitude and longitude of your site location. You can do that here or just search the Internet as there are many freely available online options.