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Eco Friendly Homes
As we move forward as a society the interest in eco friendly homes will continue to rise. This article will both show you some extreme ideas on what the leading edge of this movement is doing as well as offer some practical tips on how your community can move towards more eco friendly homes.
The avant garde, leading edge type eco homes, those houses that are verging on bizarre may not realistically be something that you can implement, it’s not likely that you’ll be constructing your own rammed earth foundation, but they help to publicize technological possibilities. It is very similar to a space voyage. It’s not likely that you’ll be going into orbit any time soon but the gadgets and discoveries made do make it into real world settings. It is these extreme, radical ideas that push the envelope. Eventually the radical becomes mainstream and with that, here’s hoping that we all end up living in eco friendly homes.
I’d like to start off with the king of eco living, in my opinion the best of the best in the realm of self-sustaining habitats – Earthships. Earthships were conceived by super-builder Michael Reynolds. He has built up an entire community of these amazing, fully self-sustainable, totally eco friendly homes near Taos, New Mexico. Here is a video showcasing his designs.
Imagine that – An eco friendly home completely off the grid, no municipal energy used. The Earthships take care of each major factor that is central to a self-sustained home. Intelligent use of water, on-site waste management, on-site power and finally personal comfort. If we didn’t have the comfort then all the rest would be pointless. After over thirty years of self-education and trial and error, Michael Reynolds seems to have found the ideal eco friendly home construction model. But he is not the only one working towards greener homes. Here are a few more pioneers.
EARTHSHIPS: Off-grid, zero-emission, recycled-content homes – not science fiction, they’re here now ow.ly/b20V1
— pdjmoo (@pdjmoo) May 20, 2012
Give it up for the hobbit. No seriously, here is a very different example of an eco friendly home by Simon Dale of Wales. His house, though not built to the extreme specifications of an Earthship still offers a lot in the way of energy savings. The same characteristic of building into the ground is evident as is the collection of solar power, intelligent use of water and building from recycled materials. Simon’s website gives a lot of details into how he went about building this unique home. We think it is truly a work of art. If you have some land in the country this may be a great idea for you. You can contact Simon for some more info.
Not all eco friendly homes need to be built into the earth. We have plenty of examples of modern homes that have made great use of some of the latest green architectural trends. Let’s take a look at a couple. First up is the Living Green home. This home features a lot of glass. This provides two functions, it both helps a great deal with energy costs – allowing the sun to do a lot of the heating – and gives the place a very modern, airy look. This passive heating, along with a thermal water heater drives the energy costs down considerably. Also like the Earthship this house uses a grey water system, using shower water to irrigate plants. This concept I am sure will be one of the avant garde items mentioned at the beginning of this article that will likely become an everyday feature found in most homes of the future. Unlike the previous two examples, this home is not built from recycled materials but is factory built. Building this way greatly reduces the waste found on most traditional construction sites.
One of the leaders of the underground architecture movement was Malcolm Wells. I sadly say was as Mr. Wells passed away last November. Below I’ll share a few images of his beautiful designs. I urge you to check MalcomWells.com for much more information on the man – he will be missed quite a bit but his drawings and ideas live on.
“In 1964, after 10 years spent spreading corporate asphalt on America in the name of architecture, I woke up one day to the fact that the earth’s surface was made for living plants, not industrial plants. I’ve been an underground architect ever since. I live on Cape Cod, and I’m writing this in the dry, sunny silence of the Underground Art Gallery.”
And finally to wrap this up a terrific video showing many different eco friendly homes, some leaning towards the traditional and some that are way out there..hope you enjoyed this sneak peak into green homes.
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