Microhomes - small pre-fab houses for little money.....

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2360513

Quite interesting......

The one above is designed by Colani:

They're not micro homes, they are blooming massive! Good grief, that one on the video is bigger than my pad, and mine's supposedly quite big.....obviously in the usa they are used to having mansions!

Have a look here:



...but this is not quite a Microhome...this is a zero-energy house.

That's right. But it does produce more energy then it consumes....so it is rather a "positive energy" house. If every house did that you could get rid of power plants....and I am sure there are also less ugly houses with the same energy-coefficient.

It is made of glass&concrete...no metal however. The transparency of the windows is controlled electronically...


There is also more and more people who built houses of "straw", wood and clay - that have the same stability as a concrete building and that do not need any traditional heating system. So 100% recycable and Co2 neutral.

http://www.strohhaus.com/strohhaus.htm

[img]
http://www.strohhaus.com/bau/Bilder/d94_p1_jpg.jpg[/img]

I remember seeing that house made out of straw in the paper :O
Supposed to be nice and cheap to build

I like that "Zero Energy" house.

A "true" zero energy house would be built in a temperate climate, with locally available, renewable materials. Wattle and daub is one such method.

The inhabitants would have to not use powered equipment, travel by vehicles or require things to transported to them for their consumption.

As soon as you connect running water, for example, you take on a share in the responsibility for a complicated infrastructure. On the other hand if you just use a stream you incur environmental costs.

In other words you can't judge a building solely by it's absence of an electricity bill.

A single power station could even be less costly for the environment than the extremely large number of power-generating houses needed to replace it.

In other words there is no simple answer, be wary of salesman or evangelists bearing simplistic solutions ...

Am I right in thinking that certain areas of Germany are obliged to have green rooves?

Can't find any direct confirmation of this, using a quick Google search, but they seem certainly have a strong national enthusiasm for the concept.

It solves 3 problems at the same time:

1. You save money
2. It helps the environment
3. You don't have the problem that in the winter the air is too dry and in the summer too humid...as clay for example binds humidity and helps to control the humidity level in a natural way.