Going solar?

We decided we would start with the idea of a Passive Solar home because we want the sun to take care of a good portion of our space heating needs. Unfortunately there is very little information about passive solar houses for northern climates. Plus, while reading up on the topic, I learned that it often does not work as hoped, so we decided to look for people who knew what they were doing to help us out... But where do you find someone like that?

Adobes are great passive solar buildings if you live in the South-West (not so great in Canada)

We met Chris Weissflog from ECOGEN last August at the Ecosphere Show in Ottawa and discussed renewable energies with him for quite a while. He was very nice and seemed very knowledgeable so we decided to ask him if he was aware of any architects in the region who knew about passive solar houses and green building. He forwarded 5 names to us within a few days and that's how we started our search for an architect. We figured that architects who build houses suited for solar water heating and solar electric panels might know something about passive solar houses as well.

We started off with telephone interviews, then face to face interviews and then we asked for proposals from our two favorites. I'll have to keep to keep you posted on this step because we are still in the process of asking questions and getting answers about the proposals. Hopefully, we will make up our minds soon!