Are We Building Our Houses Wrong?
You have to pay for water because for some reason our roofs don’t catch and filter the rain. You can produce your own cooking gas if you simply stuck your kitchen scraps in a biodigester. Heating and cooling your home is expensive, but if you ran pipes underneath your flooring, you can heat your home with hot water produced from a big pile of wood chips.
Since you have those pipes already, if you dug yourself a little backyard pond and ran cold water through it, you can cool your home in the summer. Alternatively, you can heat your Canadian home with one quart of wood if you built a rocket mass heater.
Grow Your Own Insulation and Feed
You know what else is expensive? Insulation. You can grow your own mycelium insulation super easily. Speaking of growing, if you grew duckweed in that little pond, you’d have a high protein feed source for your chickens. Then your chickens can be:
- 🐛 Pest control
- 🌱 Fertilizer for your garden
Toss in some solar or wind and you’re living free. All these techs plus more are included in what I call “Design Home Design”.
Interesting Facts About Sustainable Home Design
- 🌿 Green roofs can reduce energy costs by up to 30% by providing insulation and reducing the urban heat island effect.
- 💧 Rainwater harvesting systems can provide up to 50% of a household’s water needs, reducing reliance on municipal water supplies.
- ☀️ Passive solar design can reduce heating costs by up to 50% by strategically placing windows and using thermal mass to store heat.
