A to Z of building your own home... S

South FacingSouth Facing is a term used mostly with regards to property and landscaping. If your house is a south facing one, then you will receive warm light all day, although this changes throughout the year. More than usual, the midday sun is usually so bright it flattens everything out. Most of the time, people would tend to have their kitchen and main living areas as the most used, therefore these are the areas in which people want the south facing sun to be aimed towards.According to a recent study by Direct Line, a South facing garden adds less than £800 to the value of a home. These statistics, have shattered a myth from some Estate Agents and Property Experts explaining that a south facing garden is attracting a big premium, however it is worth a mere 0.37% of the average home in Britain. That said, this may not add a huge margin to the property price, but they are much more desirable because they typically are in sunshine for most of the day, making them brighter and warmer, as well as saving money on heating bills. Solar ArchitectureThe term Solar Architecture is the integration of passive solar, active solar or solar panel technology with modern and contemporary building techniques.In order for this to work, the use of flexible thin-film photovoltaic modules provides fluid integration with steel roofing profiles, enhancing the building's design. Positioning a building to the sun, alongside selecting materials with favourable thermal massing or light dispersing properties also constitute solar architecture.One of the first examples of Solar Architecture was a large commercial building in New York at 4 Times Square known as the Conde Nast Building. It has built in solar panels on the 37th through to the 43rd floors and has incorporated more energy efficiency than any other sky scraper of its time of its construction.