Synopsis: This article would be helpful for anyone wondering how to locate a new house on its site to best work with wind patterns, existing terrain, and sun orientation. The author also discusses how geographic location can affect house design.

We architecture professors love a good riddle. Here’s one: How do ancient Greek town grids, Anasazi Indian pueblos and New England saltbox houses differ from most residential construction today? Give up? The ancient Greeks oriented their town grids to receive winter sun and summer shade. The Anasazi Indians located their dwellings beneath cliff overhangs to take advantage of natural shading. Early American settlers oriented and configured their saltbox houses to minimize the cold northern facade and maximize the warm southern facade. In other words, each culture understood how to site a house.

Regrettably, the siting lore known to our ancestors has practically disappeared because of cheap energy and central-heating and central cooling systems. That’s too bad because a house’s energy efficiency, comfort and marketability are all affected by its siting. A house that’s sited to take advantage of the sun, the wind and the topography costs less to heat and cool and lets you enjoy indoors and outdoors longer, two strong selling points.

In my site-design classes, we break up solar-siting strategies into three categories: orientation, or which way the house faces; location, or where the house sits; and configuration, or how it’s shaped. Figuring out the best orientation, location and configuration requires a little knowledge of local climatic conditions and an analysis of the site and its surroundings. Here, I’ll discuss what to look for and where to find the information you need to reap the benefits of a properly sited house.

Long side faces south

When siting a house, the most effective strategy you can use is to orient your building with the long side aligned on the east-west axis. This orientation places the long side of the building where it can be reached and heated by the low-angle rays of the winter sun. Conversely, it places the short sides of the building to the east and the west to minimize solar gains during the overheated periods of summer.

Your building doesn’t have to be exactly on the east-west axis; somewhere within 15° of this axis is fine. What’s more important is that you orient toward true south, not magnetic south. Compass needles point to magnetic north, which deviates from true north by as much as 20°. The difference between magnetic north and true north is declination, and it varies across the United States. Information on declination can be found on U.S. Geological Survey topological maps. Most state energy offices also supply this information.

Once you know your area’s declination angle, it’s a matter of spinning the dial on a compass. For example, in Boise, Idaho, the declination angle is approximately 19° east, so you line up your compass on magnetic north and then rotate the dial until the needle is pointing to 19° east of the north mark on the dial. Now, the dial markings point to true north.

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