Capture our most powerful and abundant energy source, and use it to directly heat your home. Welcome to the world of passive solar design. 

Bumping along a gravel road on the south end of Salt Spring Island en route to Dennis Hoddinott's cottage, the temperature outside is lukewarm at best. It's early spring, a few flowers poke through the soil and the sun is still relatively high, even though it's well into the afternoon. 

Of course, Hoddinott knows all of this. The cottage owner, a retired schoolteacher originally from Calgary, is acutely aware of the angle of the sun and the amount of rays it casts on his property - a plot that houses his organic tea farm and the passive solar cottage he lives in. 

By Rob McMahon