Editor's note: Below is a guest post by Will Stewart on practical passive solar improvements that we might implement right now. Please also see his series of Passive Solar fundamentals

While you are absorbing the fundamentals of passive solar design, you might also be itching to put some of you new found knowledge into action to realize lower energy bills, help a son/daughter with a school science project, or simply have a winter project to occupy you enough to keep you out of the Mayberry jail. With that in mind, the first project we will look at is one that has applicability across a wide range of homes, whether owned or rented. And if you move, you can take it with you. You can even configure it as a solar dehydrator for your garden and fruit tree produce. And once you gather the materials, you should be able to put it together in a couple of hours.

This is Part 3 in a series on Passive Solar Design by Will Stewart, a Systems Engineer in the energy industry and longtime reader of theoildrum.com. As a new administration considers how best to make future infrastructure investments, it seems like some of the lowest hanging fruit is better utilization of the daily solar flux, not only directly with photovoltaic and hot water, but also in building construction and placement. I encourage our readers to further their understanding of passive solar concepts by reading/bookmarking this series.

Earlier this week we had a post on Passive Solar by Will Stewart. Today we have another post on Passive Solar Houses by TOD poster, Majorian, giving an overview of how much energy can be saved by building passive solar homes.