Dear Jim: We have teenage daughters who take long showers. Our water heating costs are sky high. We are on a tight budget, but want to use some solar water heating. Is there a do-it-yourself system we ...

• Hot-water usage: Since the more hot water you use the more money you save with a solar heating system, large households will save a lot more by going solar. For example, a family of four will save a ...

Since ancient times, people have found ways to use the sun’s heat to stay warm or keep cool. They built homes from clay and other materials that hold heat well, and they placed them in ways that ...

Passive cooling, like the shade a tree provides, has been around forever. Recently, researchers have been exploring how to turbo charge a passive cooling technique — known as radiative or sky cooling ...

Learn how to make solar water heater panels by building this thermosiphon outdoor shower system that can even water your greenhouse. A few years back, a friend donated a Sunvelope solar hot water ...

A passive solar-heated home needs no solar panels to heat or cool it. Rather, the energy used to heat and cool a house comes directly from the sun through skylights and windows. Some of that energy is ...

Some or all of the mortgage lenders featured on our site are advertising partners of NerdWallet, but this does not influence our evaluations, lender star ratings or the order in which lenders are ...

Solar water heaters work by absorbing sunlight in solar collectors and saving the heated water in a storage tank. Both active and passive solar water heaters are available. Active systems are ...

From a distance, the energy system on top of a college residence hall in Omaha, Nebraska looks like photovoltaic panels. But as you get closer, it becomes clear that this is something different, with ...

As a former realtor, general contractor and greenhouse operator, Kristi has touched nearly all aspects of homeownership, from the foundation up. Today, Kristi is a full-time investing and real estate ...