The Lot Selection

Well, now it's my turn to write a post for all of you. Ali asked me to talk about our lot, and all of the factors that went into choosing it. We can't really talk about the lot without first going through the technology used in the Vereco home. 

The Vereco design uses passive solar heating to absorb sun during the day, and radiate it at night. The home contains a huge amount of solar mass, primarily the concrete in the home, which heats up during the day while sun is out. The solar mass radiates the solar energy that was absorbed at night when it is cooler. This reduces the heating required by the mechanical system, especially during the winter. In order to absorb the sun, the house itself needs to be in the sun.

In Saskatchewan, the sun is predominantly in the southern portion of the sky, and its height in the sky depends on the time of the year. This sun is higher in the sky in the summer, and lower in the sky in the winter; so some conveniently-placed awnings will reduce the sun intake in the summer, and keep the house cooler.

Now, the best way to maximize the sun intake is to have plenty of windows on the south side of the house. That works great on paper, but in a city, there are trees, bushes, and other houses that block the sun (interestingly hills aren’t a problem in Saskatchewan).

Clearly, a west or east-facing lot is out then? Well, it’s not out, but it’s just less desirable, and might require more creativity or planning to be really great for a Vereco house. If your lot faces east or west, you’re going to have a neighbouring house and trees on your south side which is going to block the sun. They’re not all bad though. If your lot is on a corner, there might only be an empty street on your south side, so you may get enough sun. Or, your lot might be wide, and so there’ll be enough room to get some sun.

Our West-Facing Lot

So then a south-facing lot! Maybe. The trouble with a south-facing lot comes in an older neighbourhood (where we were looking for a lot). In many of the older neighbourhoods in Saskatoon, there are City-owned trees lining the streets. While these trees are beautiful, they pretty substantially block the sun, and you can’t get rid of them.

A north-facing lot, provided it is deep enough, should give you the most amount of sun. With a north-facing lot, you can control the trees in your backyard, and ensure the proper amount of sun gets to the south side of your house.

Every lot is unique. Our lot for example faces west. This works well for us though because the lot is 50 feet wide, and we’re going to build on the most northern half. We have plenty of space for our house to bask in the sun that’s outside of our neighbour’s shade. Depending on the size of the lot, the surrounding trees, the neighbouring houses, or something else I haven’t thought of, it might make a lot better or worse for building a Vereco home on.