Sophab News

Notes on solar-passive living

Nobody will tell you what a sunroom costs

Not because it's complicated. Because the number is bad and they'd rather say it in person.

Homes in Greenhouses

What fifty years of greenhouse homes taught us

Six things every one of these buildings figured out — and the one problem none of them solved.

Homes in Greenhouses

Into the city: rooftops, and an honest failure

The Dutch tried greenhouses on housing at neighbourhood scale. The physics held; the business didn't.

Homes in Greenhouses

The greenhouse grows up: a public building under glass

Uppgrenna Naturhus put a café, a spa and offices inside the same idea — and no sewer connection.

Homes in Greenhouses

Stockholm: glass over a house that was already there

−2°C outside, 15 to 20°C upstairs, and figs ripening in the archipelago.

Homes in Greenhouses

Sweden again: from one-off to product

Anders Solvarm found Warne's book by accident, glassed in his log house, and never left.

Homes in Greenhouses

England: five houses with no heating system

Nineteen metres of south-facing conservatory, a lot of thermal mass, and no furnace at all.

Homes in Greenhouses

Colorado, 1984: bananas at 2,000 metres

Amory Lovins built his greenhouse as the thermal core of the house, not a room bolted on.

Homes in Greenhouses

New Mexico: the greenhouse as a buffer zone

Earthships put a glazed corridor between you and the desert — and grow dinner in it.

Homes in Greenhouses

Prince Edward Island, 1976: the Ark

A greenhouse-and-home built to feed a family through an Atlantic Canadian winter, fossil-fuel free.

Homes in Greenhouses

Sweden, 1974: the house that started it

Bengt Warne built a timber house inside a glass shell — and then waited thirty years for company.

Homes in Greenhouses

Homes in greenhouses: a fifty-year world tour

People have been living inside glass for half a century. Here's what they learned.

Heat pumps + a Sophab: better together

A free DIY plan for a cover over your heat pump — and a head start for your whole home.

Why Canada's existing homes are the real climate challenge

We're #1 for carbon per capita in the G7 — and the fix isn't building new.

Polycarbonate vs. glass for a solar arch

Why the curved shell is glazed in polycarbonate, not glass.

Deciduous vs. evergreen: planting for year-round comfort

The right tree in the right spot shades summer and welcomes winter sun.

Reading your roof: which wall gets the winter sun?

A south-facing wall is the prize — here's how to tell, and why it matters.

Why retrofitting beats rebuilding for a low-carbon home

The lowest-carbon square foot is the one that's already built.

How earth tubes work

Buried pipe, stable ground, tempered air — the simple physics behind the loop.

Beyond earth tubes — how a four-season greenhouse works

A greenhouse that grows food year-round on stored solar heat and tempered air.

How can earth tubes help my home?

The ground below the frost line stays a steady temperature all year. Earth tubes put it to work.