Shine Residence, Masontown, Pennsylvania

The Shines were a young couple when they asked us to design an inexpensive passive solar house on a sloped site with good southern exposure. The design included heavy insulation, zoned summer/winter room uses, a south-facing sunroom with a heat-storage pit below its floor, and an auxiliary strategically-placed wood stove. After living there for many years, the Shines indicated their heating costs were about one-third as high as their neighbors.