I think I have convinced my wife to do a passive solar 'modern' house instead of a typical cookie cutter craftsman style that are being thrown up all around here. I can up with a few designs and modeled them in Revit so she could see that they do not have to be boxes with flat roofs.  I dug out my old solar design book from college from when I studied under a renown solar designer to check my glass to mass ratios.
We both want a basement, so that will be a challenge getting a main mass collector via slab on grade and working the basement around it without introducing a steel structure.  However we both love wood floors and really want them in the space. SO my thought is to try and get a collector source as a vertical wall instead of the floor. We want to use some sort of limestone on the exterior, so my thought was to clad the 4-6" thick concrete wall with a limestone veneer in the living room and make it more of a "feature" wall and disguise its real purpose.  Digging through my book, I am assuming that the stone veneer will simply add additional mass and not alter the absorbing properties of the mass wall?

In the case of your wall, masonry is generally masonry.  The rougher surface of natural stone might absorb a bit more (than smooth concrete), but a lighter color (like some limestone) might reflect a bit more, however the scattered energy might end up in some other material inside the house and a side benefit is that the scattering might help brighten the interior.

If you haven't already done this, you might get a print out of your local solar angles and shoot them into your house using the software.  When I did this, I found, in many cases, the direct sunlight was transient enough that relatively "normal" masses were adequate to receive the energy that fell on them.  Knowing the incident radiation will definitely help you size your walls and slab more efficiently.

In the case of your wall, masonry is generally masonry. The rougher surface of natural stone might absorb a bit more (than smooth concrete), but a lighter color (like some limestone) might reflect a bit more, however the scattered energy might end up in some other material inside the house and a side benefit is that the scattering might help brighten the interior.

Hi,
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Thanks for the information you shared with us here..

Posted By lzerarc on 14 Nov 2010 10:53 PM
I think I have convinced my wife to do a passive solar 'modern' house instead of a typical cookie cutter craftsman style that are being thrown up all around here. I can up with a few designs and modeled them in Revit so she could see that they do not have to be boxes with flat roofs.  I dug out my old solar design book from college from when I studied under a renown solar designer to check my glass to mass ratios.
We both want a basement, so that will be a challenge getting a main mass collector via slab on grade and working the basement around it without introducing a steel structure.  However we both love wood floors and really want them in the space. SO my thought is to try and get a collector source as a vertical wall instead of the floor. We want to use some sort of limestone on the exterior, so my thought was to clad the 4-6" thick concrete wall with a limestone veneer in the living room and make it more of a "feature" wall and disguise its real purpose.  Digging through my book, I am assuming that the stone veneer will simply add additional mass and not alter the absorbing properties of the mass wall?

I currently have plans for a passive solar house with a basement and have not seen any issues with placing a 1-1/2" to 2" thin slab on the main floor. I.e. normal wooden floor joists.