Eureka $mart House Energy Efficiency Challenge

I love science fiction, and naturally enjoy the Sci-Fi Channel from time to time. Of course, the new Battlestar Galactica is one of my very favorite shows. Now I have another reason to enjoy the Sci-Fi Channel - their $mart House Energy Efficiency Challenge. It's part of Sci-Fi's Visions for Tomorrow program, which promotes a positive vision of the future enabled by empowered individuals. The challenge highlights energy saving tips and technology by giving one lucky winner a $25,000 home energy makeover, including:

• Overall energy audit to identify energy problems and document what might be undertaken to make the home more energy-efficient by CMC Energy Services


• Whirlpool ENERGY STAR-labeled kitchen and laundry appliances


• Computer and energy-efficient electronics and wiring of the home by Consumer Electronics Association and their member companies


• Energy-efficient compact fluorescent lighting by OSRAM Sylvania


• Sealing of all air leaks by The Dow Chemical Company


• Appropriate insulation for the winner's particular climate


• Programmable thermostat


• Low-flow shower head


• Faucet aerators


• Ventilating fan, and much more

Sounds good. Enter here.

Via Climate Progress

Another Example of the technOrganic Future - C2C Home Winner

Speaking of the technOrganic future in my post yesterday, I'm reminded of another brilliant example - the C2C Home Winner, which I blogged about before. That was six months ago (have I been doing this that long???) so I don't think there's any harm in showing it again. Anyway, it's that awesome. Anyone who hasn't seen it should. For those of you who have, tell me is this not the coolest of cool. Personally, I can never get enough of it.

The most exciting element of the house is the organic skin used to generate electricity:

"Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It is collected and returned. This design utilizes timeless passive solar strategies by shielding unwanted summer sun and absorbing heat from low winter sun through its thermal mass. Active solar collection provides the main source of necessary electrical energy. The core extends vertically, clad with a super-conductive photosynthetic plasma cell skin that is able to generate 200% more electrical voltage per area than contemporary photovoltaics. Building on current research involving extracted spinach protein, this living skin is photosynthetic and phototropic it grows and follows the path of the sun, generating electricity in excess of single family needs. excess power is distributed to neighboring homes and street lighting infrastructure."

Incredible. But why? Plants generate energy from sunlight. Surely we can understand and apply photosynthesis in human structures. Check out the house's other systems, and how they harmonize with nature, here.

Some pics:







Without question, this is one of my favorite homes, ever, period. Amazing.

Image credits C2C Home Winner site

Sycamore Ceiling Fan - Inspired by Nature

It's always been wise to study and duplicate nature, and the recent push by designers to do so is wonderful. Results are often quite amazing. Case in point, look at this elegant ceiling fan from Australia. Modeled on the wing-like shape of a seed pod from a Sycamore tree, the Sycamore Ceiling Fan can create the same airflow as conventional flat-winged fans but at much lower speeds. The result is lower energy consumption, far less noise, and great modern looks. Nice.




Personally, I dislike air conditioning for a lot of reasons. A nice fan or two, in combination with good insulation and shading, proper siting of the house, and cross-ventilating windows, ought to do the trick in many parts of the country for most of the time. This nature-inspired fan would be a nice part of that simple cooling strategy.

Via Your Abode .... Environmentality

Image credit - Sycamore Ceiling Fan site

Lori Ryker's Excellent Off the Grid Books

I just picked up a copy of Lori Ryker's recent book, Off the Grid Homes: Case Studies for Sustainable Living. It's a follow up to the earlier book of the same theme, Off the Grid: Modern Homes + Alternative Energy, which I bought last summer and have really enjoyed. The new book is just as good, maybe even better.

Both texts take an in-depth look at a half dozen or so houses that all employ a variety of green strategies both in design/construction and power generation. You'll see examples of passive and active strategies, PV and wind power, solar hot water systems, rainwater catchment, graywater, geothermal, and natural cooling. Featured homes range from city, to suburbs, to rural locations. Some are big, some are small. They're all really nice homes. Very inspiring.





Ryker is an architect, and the latest book features her own home, the RN House or Outside/In House (pictured on the new book's cover). It's a green, off the grid marvel that lives very large for its modest 2,200 square feet. You can read a little about it at this post on treehugger, and you can see a slide show of the house on Outside Magazine's website.

Other architects' works featured include Pugh+Scarpa, Arkin-Tilt, and Lake/Flato. Color pictures throughout will make you drool, and keep you coming back to pull these books from your bookcase again and again.

The Off the Grid books are really great. You'll learn a lot about how truly green homes are built, and how varying strategies work together to compliment the site's location and characteristics, and the needs of the homeowners. Highly recommended for your green home library.

Image credits - Amazon.com listings

Futuristic Kitchen Module from Gorenje Ora-ito

This is certainly interesting. It looks like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I like it!



It's a futuristic, modular kitchen by European appliance giant, Gorenje, designed by Frenchman Ora Ito, the "Enfant terrible of Industrial Design." I love that. Somebody told me I was "subversive" once, and to this day that was the highest compliment I have ever been paid. I only wish I could be more subversive every day.

I like the inspiration:

"Simplexity. Simple and complex. With unnecessary surplus taken away, only the clean design lines remain. The simple design that surrounds us is the futuristic kitchen today and tomorrow. Simple clean lines mirror design for the future when vision becomes reality."

Via Materialicio.us

Image credit - Gorenje site

Soliant Energy's Heliotube PV Panels - Solar Power at Half the Cost

Green energy is finally starting to hit the mainstream. We're literally on the cusp of a revolution in technology that will bring affordable, clean power to the masses. Case in point, Soliant Energy, Inc. has introduced a roof mounted solar panel called the Heliotube that tracks the sun throughout the day and concentrates light onto a small area, reducing the number of photovoltaic cells needed to generate electricity. In fact, Heliotube panels use 88 percent less silicon than regular PV panels. Silicon is the expensive material that keeps the cost of PV high, and more costly than grid power. So here's the best part: because the Heliotube is very efficient, and thus uses far less silicon, it costs only about half as much as a regular PV panel that produces the same power.

The result is solar power at about half the cost of traditional PV panels - a cost that makes it very competitive with grid power. Folks, this is not a pipedream. The Heliotube panels are set to begin production and start shipping to customers this year. Pretty exciting, isn't it!






Read a great article on the panels here: Technology Review.

Via World Changing

Image credits - Soliant Energy site

Don't Forget to Turn Your House Off

Here's a great idea, a whole house on-off switch. So many of our appliances are really still on and using power even when they're supposedly "off." This nifty switch lets you truly turn off the whole house when you leave or go to bed. Critical appliances can be plugged into a few particular outlets outside the whole house switch's circuit. We're in a wired world, and you'd have to plan carefully what could and couldn't be placed on such a circuit, for practical purposes. But just like anything else, clever design and careful planning are what make the difference between good and great. This is a really clever idea that's worth more consideration. It just shows how we could make a real difference by just taking a fresh look at the things we take as a given.




Via treehugger. Also see Yanko Design.

Image credit - Yanko Design post

Daylighting Article in Innovative Home Magazine - Parans Solar Lighting

I'm one of those people who suffers bad from seasonal affective disorder. In the summertime I can go on very little sleep and always feel great. In the winter I can hardly stay awake an hour after the sun goes down, which is only about 5:00 PM here in Michigan. It's like I run on sunlight. When I don't get enough I'm a totally different person.

As a "light person" I tend to like really bright rooms. I want all the lights on all the time (which drives my wife nuts). Of course, that can be hard on the wallet and on the planet. I like houses that let the light pour in, which is probably a big part of what draws me to modern homes. But you've got to design for it. Daylighting is an all too often overlooked aspect of home design that makes a huge difference in how the house feels to live in.

The new summer 2007 issue of Innovative Home Magazine has a great article on daylighting called "Here Comes the Sun." It talks about insulated daylighting panels (IDPs) that let in soft light yet don't overheat the house, the good old Solatube, and a slick new take on skylighting, the Parans Solar Panel. With this system, special rooftop mounted panels collect sunlight, which is then distributed through a house via fiber optic cables. It is eventually diffused and distributed into a room by a Parans Luminaire, which helps recreate the feeling of natural sunlight indoors.




This is soooo me. What a great technology. High tech innovation has finally come to housing in a big way. By the way, the Parans system can include, as an option, tracking systems to help the rooftop panels collect maximum sun, and Luminaires paired with fluorescent lighting for the hours when the sun isn't shining. Pretty slick.

Our houses today may be the modern manifestations of our primitive ancestor's cave dwellings, but there's no need to live in the dark. Thankfully, there's some great technology out there to make your house sunny and bright, naturally.

Oh yeah - I almost forgot, the article in Innovative Home also talks about Shigeru Ban's Naked House, the ultimate example of a daylit home (and one of my favorite houses - it's just amazing).

Image credit - Parans site

The Future is Here - OpenHouse Exhibition via Wired

Wired has a couple of great pieces on their site about OpenHouse - an exhibition dedicated to "architecture and technology for intelligent living." The homes are spectacular and innovative. I think it is safe to say you have never seen anything quite like them. Radical. I was blown away.

Here are just two of the ten featured projects: The Dunehouse (top) and the ThinkingAhead! House (bottom). Note the ThinkingAhead! house is by the Mexican firm Rojkind Arquitectos, who I mentioned in an earlier post.




If OpenHouse doesn't get you excited about the future of housing I don't know what will.

See the Wired articles:
"Inside OpenHouse's Blueprint for the Future"
"House of the Future Taps Nature for Novel Designs"

Image Credits - OpenHouse site

The Zero Carbon House Project

My friend Justin pointed out a great Sundance/treehugger post on the Zero Energy House over on his great blog, materialicio.us (see his post). It's so on topic for Future House Now that I feel I must also encourage my readers to get on over to treehugger to check this out.

What's great about the project is how many different building strategies are being employed to make this house green. There really is no simple answer. A total re-think of how we build our homes is required to truly make them green. It also shows you how a mix of smart design, natural materials, and new technology - all three in working in concert - is required to make a whole system that works.




I also like that the project includes transportation in the equation. In the past, unsightly garages were the only link between car and house. Now the house and the car, our two biggest sources of energy consumption, will have to start working together in integrated energy systems.

This isn't just a conceptual project - the house is being built. Please visit the Zero Carbon House site.

Image credit - zerocarbonhouse.com

Cool Post on WorldChanging.com - Technology Helps Make Homes Green

I saw this interesting post today on WorldChanging.com about the use of technology in the home of tomorrow. It gives a fascinating peek at what is just around the corner in terms of living in a "smart house" that helps take care of itself by monitoring and actively adapting to changing conditions - a house that operates itself and that actively gives its occupants feedback to help them make smarter choices about resource consumption. It touches a little bit on prefab too, and gives a link to a house in London that's been constructed to demonstrate these new home-tech concepts. It's a really interesting piece and I highly recommend it.

C2C Home Winner - One of My Favorite Homes & Floorplans

Here's a favorite home of mine that stands for everything FHN is about. It has been out there for quite a while, and you've probably seen it talked about at a number of sites, but I just love this house and always find myself going back to it. There's a dedicated website for this house, which has a number of interior and exterior renderings (some of which I've sampled below).




I like how different this house is, and not just different for the sake of being different, but with a functionality and a purpose. It is modern, minimalist, and green. Obviously it is a very conceptual and forward-looking home. I don't know what it would cost to actually build it, if it can really be built today. I don't believe the photosythetic/phototropic spinach "skin" used to generate electicity is on the market, though it is a subject of significant research. But certainly the use of a living roof, rainwater catchment, greywater systems and solar orientation are well within reach.





What I think I like the most about this house, however, what I find myself very drawn to, is its simple floorplan and the scale of the rooms. This house fits my ideal for a modest family home nicely. Setting aside the particular exterior aesthetic and the high-tech aspects of the design, I think this is a great, simple floorplan that can be easily adapted to fit almost any reasonable budget and a variety of construction methods, including prefab.




Also see C2C-Home.org for info on the competition and other top entries.

Image Credit: cradletocradlehome.com