For your Friday viewing, check out what California architects Karl Wanaselja and Cate Leger used to make a backyard office. They split a 40-foot, refrigerated shipping container and placed the two parts in a T shape with a crane. Then they cut windows into the ends and covered the floor with soy-based, formaldehyde-free Purebond. And the container only set them back $1800.
This video showcases the pH Living Sanctuary, a factory-built home in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The healthy home has been certified by Building Biologists to the IBE Healthy Home Standard, according to California-based pH Living, and has been checked for VOCs, energy efficiency, formaldehyde, mold, electromagnetic fields (EMF’s), communications frequency pollution reductions, and radiation.
Southtown Greenbound is a new, short documentary of an award-winning prototype development — the Biering Project — that’s both affordable and sustainable in San Antonio, Texas. Biering includes two, 1,500 square-foot homes wrapped in a diaphanous aluminum screen that reduces solar heat gain, fosters privacy during the day, and illuminates during the night. The screen truly distinguishes the homes.
This is the next generation of the popular Glidehouse, a home design originally created by Michelle Kaufmann that was later acquired by Blu Homes. Blu tweaked the design to fit the company’s custom fold-up system of construction, and this is the first, new Glidehouse to be delivered.
I like visiting new green homes like this one, the Sungazing House in Park City, Utah. I wrote about the home one year ago today and used some informal photos to create a short video embedded above. Since my initial tour, the net-zero, LEED Platinum project has been featured all over the world in such places as Green Builder Magazine and EcoHome Magazine.
On average, about 18% of home energy consumption is for water heating, the second largest consumer behind space heating. The primary technology used to do this is the tank-type water heater (both gas- and electric-powered), but solar water heating can be a cost-effective way to generate hot water.
Solar hot water systems vary, and one system we’ve mentioned previously is a passive-pump system by Virginia-based Sunnovations. This video explains it.
