Direct-gain floor slabs have long proven to be effective solutions to passive 
solar, low-cost building programs. Remaining problems are:
a.)  the necessity to incorporate additional thermal storage to limit swings, and b.) integration of auxiliary heating systems into the building with minimal redundant construction.


Plenum floors, in use here since WWII, have gained acceptance as highly economical systems for thoroughly integrating the storage and distribution requirements of passive design. My first plenum floor residence (1975) used industrial roof decking to form the "mini -ducts" for air distribution and other similar residences have followed. The charging of the slab from below as well as from above increases the storage efficiency of the masonry slab allowing reduction in the amount of additional storage usually necessary in such buildings Twenty-one such systems have been completed, and additional projects are under construction'. The lay-outs have ranged from the simplest rectangular forms to complex angled schemes with elevational transitions, proving the system to be most adaptable.


Construction details and performance results are discussed. Costs are compared in a general fashion to other plenum floors and conventional systems.  .....

To my way of thinking building a structure with SIPs and not integrating passive solar technologies is like having a car, never turning on the engine, and pushing it around to wherever you have to go.  I am well aware that building design preferences – especially home design preferences – are fraught with imbedded psychological drivers and demons that have painfully little to do with the world of the rational.  At the same time, their owners will go on for hours about all the features that the building does have, and therefore how smart they were to think of them and include them.  Their building obviously has such value that it speaks volumes about their good taste and brilliance.  Most of these features that building owners brag about are strictly cosmetic and have very little to do with the idea that the building might actually perform for them; keep them warm or cool appropriately with minimum energy expenditure, or minimize the time and money required for their maintenance and longevity.  But such reality benchmarks are pushed aside by the rationalizations of the building owner who only has a mind for some kind of fantasy that projects who he might be or thinks himself to be.

All of the above to say that buildings should....