An other post that is not just about Amador County Real estate. In my last post I talked about

five elements of passive solar design

But I mentioned a few things that you need to find out about your personal area before you can figure out your solar angles. Now this does get a bit technical for those of us who have been out of geography class for a few years, but we can do it. We just need to find the right help.

Get out a pen or pencil and a sheet of scratch paper, You do have some scratch paper, something only printed on one side…

better yet, “stickies” on a Mac or “scratch pad” on one of those lesser machines (come on, I'm just joking around). Something you can keep some numbers on for a few minutes.

Go to geonames.usgs.gov fill in your City (feature name) and State. Send Query.

Find your area on the list and write down the Longitude and latitude. For this operation you only need the degrees. Also get you elevation. For me in Amador County, Northern California that is around 38 degrees North Latitude and about 120 degrees West Longitude and my area is about 300 ft.

Take those numbers over to Sustainable By Design and punch them into the form. For the date first punch in June 22 for the time enter 1200 and drag down to 24 hr. then enter your time zone, mine (pacific) is GMT-8. For time Basis choose “solar time” leave the daylight savings to “no” and zero azimuth to “South”.

Click “Calculate”.

This will give you your altitude angle. That is what you are looking for. Write this angle down, this is the summer or high angle.

Now go back and change the date to December 22 and re-calculate. This will give you your winter or low angle.

The rest of the job is to measure overhangs, windows, and shades like trees. Draw them out as much “to scale” as you can, then get out your protractor and draw your lines at the summer and winter angles, meeting at the overhang, top and bottom of any shade items, and continuing to the surface of the building (floor, or wall) this should give you a view of how much sun will make it through the window at maximum and minimum.

If you have any trouble with this please feel free to give me a call or zap me an email and I will be happy to talk you through this stuff.