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Old 10-18-10, 07:14 PM   #11
Ryland
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The advantage of a long narrow house is that you can have alot of south facing windows, but the disadvantage of of that shape is that you have alot of surface area plus with all those south widows you need to cover them at night or they let heat out and according to an engineer I worked for for a short time, if you want the most solar gain you don't want low-e glass because it not only stops heat loss at night but also stops heat gain in the day time.
My point with this topic and having light tubes in a house that has only a few widows is that you can then make your house a cube for less surface area and cut out the north facing windows, where normally you can't do that because your north rooms would then be rather dark.

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