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HEALTHY & SUSTAINABILITY PRACTICES APPLIED TO ARCHITECTURE & INTERIORS BY DESIGN & ARCHITECTURE TEAM:
What is a more self-sufficient, healthy home and resilient lifestyle?
Self-sufficient and healthier living doesn’t have to mean moving to a cabin in the woods and going back to basics. When you wish, our planning and design team will help you explore ways to not only plan, permit and build your home, but also how to set up your property to produce your own food, use less energy, live healthier and save money, no matter where you live. Self-sufficient homes usually supply all their own energy, water, sewer needs, and food – they are the ultimate in green living dwellings! A self-sufficient home is built from a large percentage of renewable and recycled products that are locally sourced. You can either start a self-sufficient home from scratch, or you can adopt changes to make your current home and business healthier and more self-sufficient. Our design & planning team advises on your many choices towards self reliance, from new construction to farm site and garden planning.
Benefits of having a healthy and self-sufficient home:
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Lower carbon footprint – It’s important that we take steps now to reduce our negative impact and help to sustain the environment for our future generations.
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Reduced energy costs – Rising electricity prices mean that average energy bills have soared over the past 10 years. Self-sufficient homes use solar power which costs far less than electricity from the grid. It also means that you will never be exposed to energy price rises again. Earth covered and super insulated building can reduce energy cost at least 75%.
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Bill-free lifestyle – Once your systems are in place and paid for, you will essentially have access to free electricity and water supply. This means that you should be able to live a bill-free lifestyle which creates financial freedom for you and your family.
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Higher property value – Buyers are increasingly seeing the benefits that self-sufficient homes offer, from lower running costs to a more sustainable way of living. Green homes now attract a much higher property value than their non-green counterparts.
Ways to create a self-sufficient home?
Here are three things you should consider if you’re looking for ways to improve your home to be more self-sufficient.
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Water management
Securing an independent water supply can be difficult. Drilling a well is one of the more obvious choices, but this is not always an option. Another idea is to collect rainwater and use it as a clean, renewable resource. The water can be pumped through a water filtration system and then used safely for everything. Or, you can simply collect rainwater in water storage tanks and then use it directly in the garden. Tanks For Everything, explain how “there are many benefits to storing rainwater, the main one being the saving made on metered water costs which can see up to 50% savings. Other key benefits to harvesting rainwater include contributing to reduced flood risks and lowering the load on combined sewer overflows improving river water quality.”
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Alternative electricity
The next step to creating a self-sufficient home is to switch to renewable energy, such as solar, hydro and wind power. Although the initial installation may seem costly, it is much more efficient, and is likely to save you money in the long run. Solar power experts. Solar is a clean, maintenance-free, energy source that will provide your home with electricity that has minimal harm on the environment when the proper equipment and systems are used. You also have the potential to earn an extra income with solar via the Feed-in Tariff in locations where this is offered. This is a government scheme where households with solar panels receive a payment for any electricity they generate and don’t use. This payment will eventually disappear as a government offering, so now is a great time to take advantage of this incentive and earn an extra income from solar!
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Food
Growing your own organic fruit and vegetables is a major step towards achieving a self-sufficient home. Although this will require effort and dedication, it is definitely worth it and a pleasurable pastime for many gardeners. Not only will this reduce your carbon footprint, but it will also save you money on groceries, and provide a healthier alternative for you and your family. With the recent increases in food costs and availability it is wise to have at least a three month supply of food stored in your home so you are prepared for unforetold emergencies. When you grow more than you need canning, dehydrating and freezing is a self reliant choice. If you don’t have enough room in your garden to grow all your needs, then start small and choose a few of your favorite herbs or vegetables to grow. You could also look into renting a plot on a nearby allotment. Even if you only have a balcony and live in an apartment there are ways to optimizing your food growing and storing strategies.
Next steps:
You are most likely aware of the increases in the price of electricity, water, utilities, transport and building materials along with growing concerns for our environment and the effects of global warming. In response, more and more people are pursuing the idea of living in a self-sufficient home. Making your home more self-sufficient and safe will save you money and is the ultimate way to minimize your environmental impact. All it takes is some dedication, grounded research, access to reliable advise and you will create your cost-efficient and healthier home. This professional design and planning team has years of experience building and living in resilient self sufficient environments and are happy to share their experiences, solutions and ongoing experiments.
MORE PROJECTS: ARCHITECTURE TO INTERIORS & LANDSCAPE WITH ECO-FRIENDLY HEALTHY APPLICATIONS:
Interior & Garden Design Service are offered on an hourly time rate. No usual additional product markups. Modern to Traditional
Purpose, Vision, Mission and Objectives for Designing Sustainable Architecture with Biodiversity Integrations -
Our purpose is to help people create a better world. We are doing this by creating solutions for better sustainability. Demonstrating a more sustainable and enriching way of living and many open sources to encourage replication. Our vision is to usher in a new age of cooperation, collaboration, and sustainability. We do this by demonstrating what’s possible and making duplication easy, affordable and attractive enough so that positive and sustainable project will spread across the world. Objectives:
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Contribute to creating a more comprehensively sustainable world.
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Make sustainable and ecological living a mainstream option.
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Offer the Planning, Permitting and Construction Documents to clients that will enable them to build their projects.
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Become an open-source multimedia resources for sustainable infrastructure with freely available resources when possible.
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Provide a pristine working example of sustainable living to promote proof of concept replicable by others environment across the globe.
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Evolve sustainable solutions based on the current needs of people and their environment with design/architecture lab testing.
We offer our services and years of experiences and education to clients seeking custom solutions for their ideas as well as trying to compile links for recommended methods of planning and building more sustainably. Solution-creating models are used to demonstrate the potential of biodiversity and sustainable solutions that hopefully will spread globally and transform life as we know it on this planet by using less natural resources. Most people hope we have the resources and technology to solve our biggest challenges. We generally have the ability to feed, house, and provide energy for every person on Earth, if we want to. These solutions, however, are currently not available to many people. Yet, people can learn to create their solutions specific to their circumstances and needs if they have access to good information and are willing to try to fix their circumstances. Doing this will make food, energy, and housing accessible and replicable by people with average knowledge and little or no experience. We hope to teach people how to also teach what they learn to others and replicate the most successful solutions.
Creating and sharing this non-ideological and broadly adaptable approach hopes to be implemented by many people with differing values and diverse needs. People have different views and philosophies and no one way will be considered the best way by everyone. We specifically want sustainable living to be non-dogmatic, healthy for people, good for the economy and better for the planet. This is a beneficial aspect of any solution-creating solution model because it does not limit the diversity of solution output. The goal in “solutioneering” all the foundations of a sustainable civilization is producing replicable results most people will consider superior to existing options.
Unlike many existing movement for sustainable and biodiverse architecture and planning that uses past building systems like cob, straw bale, adobe, log, etc. we prefer to develop architecture solutions take are a hybrid of old and new method that are strong structurally and follow more classical patterns of development. We do this because we want safely engineered and long lasting structures that are comfortable and attractive to the largest audiences on earth and can be adapted to the architectural and vernacular styles of building that different communities are used to. Yes, a few people may be attracted to Hobbit houses, tepees, yurts, geodesic domes and other unique building types, but most of us like the types of houses that we grew up with. Our planning patterns and building infrastructures are designed to primarily built by building professionals or DIYers with construction experience. With the help of our planning and permitting services and some open source resources, we hope to make projects more buildable and affordable because of the sustainable materials used will last longer, be more energy efficient, and require less energy and maintenance. They can look like traditional and modern homes or more radical designs depending on your specific style tastes.
Some of the primary elements to achieving the best sustainable results is considering each building site and how passive solar elements can be applied to make every building energy efficient. Natural materials with a long life are best so maintenance is minimal. A hybrid of stone and lime mortar, stucco, charred wood, rammed earth, hempcrete, hybrid concrete, hybrid adobe/cob and timber are some of our favorite materials.The structural strength of all building is important. They must meet local building codes. When possible we prefer high density solutions that leave along og the natural landscape intact and intergrated into indoor and outdoor living patterns.
For each of the above areas, there are the different aspects we wish to consider when developing more sustainable plans and models. These are developed in order to make the buildings replication and adaptation as easy as possible:
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Complete building plans/blueprints and 3D models.
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Cost and implementation needs
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Cost analysis for material and equipment
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Time-investment and labor needs for each component
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How to work with local governments, counties, codes, etc. when needed
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Multi-media reports and tutorials sharing what is learned through the process
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An updating list of the best places found for purchasing materials, equipment, etc.
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Complete and on-going sharing of experience, development/adaptation, modification, and evolutions created by us and other using the original solution models.
Once the broader concepts of these solution models are planned, modeled, built and better understood as both possible and desirable, it becomes helpful to address additional implementation details related to bio-diversity, food generation, economics, site placement, etc. These global aspects are important because incorporating their consideration into solution-model design allows us to develop better solutions that can better meet more people's needs and speeds the replication of more highly sustainable and biodiverse projects, whether home, farms or whole villages and towns and cities. We focus on an adaptable models versus a specific model so we can provide a diversity of solutions.
These initial solution models hopefully will provide the living examples for people to evaluate, adapt, and evolve the concepts sufficiently to appeal to mainstream culture. As soon as this tipping point in mainstream interest happens, history has taught us that human ingenuity will find a way to work together to create what they want, problem solve where needed, and start thinking differently. Many of the specifics of eco, efficient, artistic, sustainable and technology-rich design have already been thought of and studies. What’s important to understand is that it is possible with sufficient public support, desire, and involvement to still avoid the climate changes and global collapse that many are predicting. It is important to start developing much more sustainable and biodiverse solutions NOW.
We wish to address the complete human experience in relationships to the sustainably built environments. We are doing this because we see the solutions for energy conservation, global food, housing, education, social inequality, ethical business practices, earth regenerative practices, and a desire for a more fulfilling living experience as inseparably interconnected. As a comprehensive solution, we are addressing all these areas simultaneously when developing sustainable architectural solutions.
This website illustrates many more sustainable solutions being considered and being developed and built. We also use classical and argarian urbanism based farm and village patterns like these below that can avoid suburban sprawl and wasted natural resources when possible. Go to the bottom of "Free Plans" and the "Blog" for more sustainable solution examples.
Good advise on How to Build a Permaculture-Minded House and what building systems often fail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UlqU5-FwjY&ab_channel=TheApocalypticKnight