Let technology work for you…helpful tools on your phone which allow you to track the sun path are just one of the clever widgets you should use when buying a section, walking through open homes or building your dream home. Most of these apps have clever functionality allowing you to view through your phones camera to get an interactive experience of a real-world environment. Suitable for iPhone and Android platforms.
We used the SUN POSITION app designed by Stonekick, a FREE app which worked very well on my android phone. It has three functions 1. Sunrise/sunset data 2. Sun and moon path tracking using your camera and 3. Solar/luna map using your Google GPS. It also allowed us to change the time of year for different sun path views, lock in our location and load preferred locations.
To find our more about Sun Position’s free app visit https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andymstone.sunposition&hl=en
How to use this app to your advantage? We used this app when looking at our new house plan and how much sun would be utilised once it was built. Looking from sunrise to sunset at almost anytime of year (by adjusting the date) we could see where the sun would enter our home and help us to best place windows and sliders to make the most of our house design. You can literally stand on any spot of your section and see what the sun is doing!
We could see that the sun would rise and give morning sun to our bedrooms and offer all day sun to living spaces. It also gave us the insight to move our house further away from our next door build as we could see their roof line would affect our living room afternoon sun in the summer. A decision we would not have even considered if we didn’t have these clever technology tools.
From there we could also determine the best layout of patios to capture morning sun coffees and sunset vino’s! When it comes to looking at your landscaping plan ahead of time the sun path apps help you determine plant types and garden layout according to how much sun they will see.
Other apps to try are Sunseeker, Sun Calc, Sun Survey and light track with some of these applications charging you for certain services.
