Deconstruct Sun

New: group sites into projects and export one combined PDF for a whole property. Every US site now shows its plant hardiness zone, worked out offline on your phone.

Know the sun before you build, plant, or place a panel.

Deconstruct Sun turns your phone into a solar site-analysis tool. Stand where a garden bed, greenhouse, patio, or solar array will go, trace the buildings and trees on the horizon, and get the number that actually matters: how many hours of direct sunlight that exact spot receives, today, at the solstices, and at the equinoxes.

It works the way a designer thinks. The sun's path is drawn as an arc across a sky chart; your obstructions are a skyline you paint over it. Where the sun clears your skyline, it shines. Where a building or a tree blocks it, it doesn't. The math is honest, a five-minute-step calculation over the real solar geometry for your latitude and date.

THE NUMBER BEHIND THE PLANT TAG Full sun, part sun, part shade, full shade. Every one of those is a claim about hours of direct sun, and almost every site is guessed at rather than measured. Deconstruct Sun gives you the real figure for one spot, so you can put the right plant in the right place instead of hoping.

TRACE THE REAL HORIZON Don't guess the skyline, trace it. Photograph the view, or import a wide shot, and paint the obstructions directly over your own photo. A guided sun-arc sweep walks you through a few framed shots that follow the sun's band across the sky, and a live overlay projects the sun's path onto the camera so you can see where it will travel before you capture.

SEE THE WHOLE YEAR One tap shows direct-sun hours for the summer solstice, winter solstice, and both equinoxes, and today, so you can tell a spot that bakes in June but goes dark in December from one that works year-round.

WORK A WHOLE PROPERTY Group sites into a project: a foundation bed, a vegetable garden, the pool surround, all under one address or client. Then export a single combined PDF covering every site. It is the difference between a stack of separate studies and one document you can hand over.

KNOW THE HARDINESS ZONE Every US site shows its plant hardiness zone, derived from the 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map and read from a copy stored inside the app. No connection needed, and your coordinates are never sent anywhere to look it up. A site near a zone boundary is told so, rather than claiming a precision the data doesn't have.

SHARE A REAL STUDY Export a clean, branded PDF sun study for a client or your own records, one site at a time or a whole project at once. Or share a photo-real composite of the site with the sun arcs drawn over your skyline.

PRIVATE BY DESIGN Everything stays on your device. Your sites, coordinates, skylines, and photos are never uploaded. No accounts, no ads, no analytics, no tracking. You can also hide precise coordinates from the app's own screens, and every PDF export asks before printing them, so a study you send to a client need not carry the exact location of someone's home.

FREE • Sun-path charts for any location and date • Hand-paint the obstruction skyline • Today's direct-sun, daylight, first-light, and last-light hours • Plant hardiness zone for US sites, offline • Projects, to group sites by property or client • Privacy controls for precise coordinates

PRO: a one-time unlock, no subscription • Trace the skyline over your own photos (camera + import) • Guided sun-arc capture with a live sun-path overlay • Full-year seasonal breakdown (solstices and equinoxes) • Photo-real composite and a landscape trace view • Branded PDF sun-study export • Combined multi-site PDF for an entire project

Deconstruct Sun does not need an internet connection to do its analysis. Sun position is computed on your device from published astronomical formulas. Hardiness zones are derived from the 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map (USDA Agricultural Research Service with PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University) and are not the official map.

Built by a landscape architect in North Carolina. Questions or feedback: design@deconstructterrain.com