looking for book on passive solar home design.

[tlhfirelion]

new guy here.  I'm in the planning stages of a new icf home and want to incorporate passive solar.  I seem to be having a hard time finding any useful books.  I have found some but I don't have a degree in engineering so they might as well be in french.    Thank you in advance everyone and have a good day.

Undefined acronyms are heavily discouraged here. Half the responses will be "what is icf?" in this case.

[spinningmagnets]

What does "icf" mean?

What is the general location you want to build on? (City, State, Country)

Will it be very remote, or near a major population center?

There is a months worth of reading over at builditsolar.com,

If you are patient, there is also a great deal of valuable information right here. Keep scrolling back through the posting archives.

"A waitress asked me if I wanted my pizza cut into four slices or eight. I told her four, because I didn't think I could eat eight of them" -Yogi Berra

[GaryGary]

Hi,

You might take a look at some of the guides, books, and refs here:

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SolarHomes/solarhomes.htm

Start with the Guides and Design Examples section.

There are a couple free download books that you can start with.  The  Dan Chiras book is a good one and is not overly technical

The Construction section has some material on ICFs.

Gary

[Rob Beckers]

One of my favorites is "The Solar House" by Daniel D. Chiras. It is written from a very practical perspective. Besides discussing passive solar, the book also goes to some length to point out construction techniques and alternatives that make for energy efficient buildings.

Besides using ICFs, I would also suggest you take a look at using SIPs (that's Structural Insulated Panels, see http://www.greenpowertalk.org/showthread.php?t=5334 for lots more about them). My "dream home" for energy efficiency would be a passive solar house with an ICF foundation/basement and SIP walls/roof.

Best of luck with the design!

-RoB-