That’s right, the sun can heat and cool your home and reduce its energy use. More importantly, the energy from the sun can make your home comfortable year round.
There are two types of solar design systems -passive and active.
Homes constructed as passive solar design use the natural movement of heat and air to maintain comfortable temperatures, operating with little or no mechanical assistance. It’s called passive solar because the design of the home maximizes the benefits it receives from the sun with standard construction features. Passive solar takes advantage of local breezes and landscape features such as shade trees and windbreaks, and uses a simple system to collect and store solar energy with no switches or controls.
On the other hand, active solar systems use mechanical devices such as pumps and fans to move heat from collectors to storage or from storage to use. Photovoltaic panels that collect solar energy, turning it into electricity, are also considered an active solar system.
Although, building a passively designed solar home takes careful planning, the task is relatively simple - if you use the five basic solar design principles:
Orientation
Overhangs and shading
Insulation
Windows
Thermal Mass
Actually, the first four principles shouldn’t be reserved for only the passive solar home - they work well with any home, custom-built or tract. Passive design features, such as shading or insulation, can be used to improve your home without major renovation. Windows and thermal mass, however, are best done during new construction or major remodeling.
Passive systems can be built with different configurations of energy-saving features and a variety of conventional and unique architectural styles. Rather than being totally different, a carefully designed and constructed solar home is more of a “rearrangement” of the same construction materials needed to build any home. Most new homes in California, for example, are constructed on a concrete slab - one of the basic design elements of a passive solar house.

Building to take advantage of solar energy need not cost any more than building a comparably sized non-solar conventional home. A home that is properly oriented, tightly constructed, well insulated, and has operable windows for air circulation is both comfortable for the occupants and easy on the wallet. You can call it passive design or just smart construction.

I have developed an alternative to ebay. Well maybe that is an exaggeration as ebay is a great site that I use it everyday to buy and sell and fund the promotion of my own auction site. Maybe now is the time for new sites to rise on the shirttails of ebay. Niche sites that are robust, trustworthy and most of all focused on the needs of a particular group of people.

Why is this possible now? Well auction software is evolving everyday to become low cost, easy to install and above all a pleasant experience for buyers and sellers. We use rainworx - software that just wasn’t around a few years ago. A problem that I learnt at cost.

Back in the dot com boom days I created with a few friends a company inside one of the then Big Six consultancies called waterexchange. A UK based company facilitating the buying and selling of tangible and intangible assets associated with the water industry. We spent literally millions of pounds developing bespoke software with a company called Moai to facilitate trades in abstraction licenses and the materials and tools used in the water industry. So much money in fact that the company was essentially insolvent - couple this with a conflict of interest with our host’ company it was time to move call it day. Although the website waterexchangeuk.com still exists.

It we started now we could exploit the functionality of rainworx and get things off the ground for a few thousand dollars. Indeed that is what I have done with energybook (www.EnergyBook.co.uk) a site focused on green energy and sustainable living. It’s free to use for a start and can host auctions and classifieds as well as trade sales and reverse auctions. So will my new site be a success and a rival to ebay?.. Well you will need to be the judge.

But what I can say is that software is no longer the barrier and the success of the site will hinge on advertising and promotion. And so back to my first contention for if there are to be any successful rivals to ebay it will be in the niche area where users and promotions can be concentrated into a story of success. Beware ebay the niche players are growing and ready to take a slice of the action.

Please pop along  - www.EnergyBook.co.uk