One of the first decisions a house builder has to make is the form and its orientation on the building site. While many of the analyzed projects are oriented exactly to the south, some deviate by as much as 45° off south. It appears that such deviation can be easily compensated by other design features in highly insulated houses, as can be seen in Fig. 7.

Building compactness is, however, important. The surface area to volume ratio (A/V) for all projects is 0.63. For the single family houses the average A/V is 0.73; for apartment buildings the A/V averages 0.49. There are two buildings with a relatively high A/V of 0.91 and 0.99, circled in Both of these buildings compensate their lack of compactness

by the heat gains of solar wall systems. The one house has the wooden Lucido-System: slotted wood acting as a solar buffer, between an exterior glass facade and the opaque insulated wall. The other house has a translucent solar storage wall of paraffin phase change material in a glass facade.