Orienting the House: A Study of the Placing of the House with Relation to the Sun's Rays

In selecting a home site, there are a number of very important things to be considered. When once you settle the point of convenient accessibility to your work or place of business, you doubtless think first of the neighborhood in which you and your family are going to live, the kind of people about you, the church, school, and library privileges, and such like questions.

Then you will consider the physical character of the place, its slopes and levels, its trees, its gardens, its outlook, or, in a word, its attractiveness from an aesthetic point of view; to which are closely related the practical questions of pure water supply, good drainage, and shelter from the extremes of weather. No matter how attractive otherwise a locality might be, you would not consider it for a moment unless the conditions of sanitation and healthfulness were fully met; and you would want some natural protection from the severe storms of winter as well as from the blazing heat of summer. In the winter you would want as little breeze and as much sun, and in the summer as little sun and as much breeze as possible.

Finally, in selecting your site, it would be well to have in mind the house you intend to build and the way you want it to face. If possible, get your house plan first and select your lot accordingly. Or, at any rate, picture it all out in your mind to guide you in selecting your location. By a little planning and forethought you may not only secure the outlook you want but the exposures to sun or breeze most desired. You cannot change climatic conditions or topography, but, to an appreciable extent, you can adjust the location of your house to them.

The Orientation Chart, here given, shows the points of sunrise and sunset, on the horizon, midsummer and midwinter, as well as the direction of the sunlight each successive hour of the midsummer and midwinter day. The chart will thus aid you, so far as conditions permit, in facing your house so as to get the sun or shade where you want it.