green home
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There’s never been a better time to build a hobbit house
If you're anything like me, i.e. friends with dozens of nerds, your Twitter stream was aflame with talk of the Hobbit trailer last night. I'm psyched about it! It's the only Tolkien book I read, and will therefore probably be the only one of the movies I can stay awake through. Anyway, hobbits are cool […]
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Minneapolis house gets by without a furnace or fireplace
A lot of people talk a good game about passive heating, but are they willing to face getting through a Minneapolis winter with no furnace and no fireplace? Paul Brazelton is. He recently finished retrofitting his home to become one of less than two dozen passivhauses in the U.S., which will mean facing 20-below winters […]
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The kitchen of the future runs on leftovers
The kitchen of Philips Design's "Microbial Home" turns food waste into compost and cooking gas. Organic waste gets thrown in a "bio-digester," where specialized bacteria processes it into methane gas to fuel the range. Then the remaining solid matter is turned into compost. So the peelings from a potato might provide the heat to cook […]
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Which green home solutions pay for themselves?
Trick question: They basically all pay for themselves in the long run! But a new infographic from One Block Off the Grid helps you choose home energy improvement projects based on up-front cost and how long they'll take to start paying you back. The quickest payback is a smart thermostat, with a payback time of […]
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This amazing off-grid hobbit house cost less than $5,000 to build
Self-taught builder Simon Dale constructed this straight-out-of-a-fantasy-novel house in four months for less than $5,000. The house is designed for low-impact building and low-impact living: it was made from reclaimed lumber and salvaged materials, and the Dales live off the grid, with a compost toilet, a green roof, spring-sourced water, and natural heating and cooling. […]
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Take a video tour of UMD’s prize-winning Solar Decathlon house
The Chesapeake Bay's sad state has yielded on positive result: the bay ecosystem inspired the University of Maryland's "WaterShed" house, which won the Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon over the weekend.
You can take a tour of the house above. WaterShed features solar panels, a green roof, a rain harvesting system, solar thermal water heating, sink and shower water filtration, "constructed wetlands" instead of gardens, and an indoor waterfall (!) that helps control humidity.
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Drool-worthy homes from this year's Solar Decathlon, part 1 [VIDEO]
For those of you who won't have the opportunity to see these homes in person on the National Mall in Washington, DC from Sept. 23-Oct. 2, we've decided to gather up all the video walk-throughs of this year's entries in the Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon.